Weather!

[Ann]

A brown Christmas is always better than a white one. When is snow good? When it stays in the countryside and in the parts of our planets where we don't want glaciers and peat bogs to melt.

Ann

[geckzilla]

You could always move to some place where it doesn't snow.

[Beyond]

A brown Christmas is always better than a white one. When is snow good? When it stays in the countryside and in the parts of our planets where we don't want glaciers and peat bogs to melt.

Ann

Peat bogs to melt Poor peat. Nothing like melted bogs to ruin your day

[starstruck]

When is snow good? When it stays in the countryside

Er, hold on one moment there Ann, I live in 'the countryside' and I don't want any of your snow or anyone else's thanks very much! It might look like a pretty picture postcard, but speaking from the experience of having been snowed-in for three weeks (!!! - one for each week) in January, the year before last, by deep snowdrifts blocking my half-mile long access track, I can honestly say that snow has lost just about all of it's appeal, visual or otherwise. The only way in or out was on foot, even the quad-bike couldn't hack it!

[neufer]

Santa Ana wind damage stuns Southland residents
December 01, 2011|By Sam Quinones and Abby Sewell, Los Angeles Times

[img3="Santa Ana winds are: "Strong down slope winds that blow through the mountain passes in southern California. These winds, which can easily exceed 40 mph, are warm and dry and can severely exacerbate brush or forest fires, especially under drought conditions." This map illustration shows a characteristic high-pressure area centered over the Great Basin, with the clockwise anticyclone wind flow out of the high-pressure center giving rise to a Santa Ana wind event as the airmass flows through the passes and canyons of southern upper level winds are favorable, this high altitude air mass spills out of the Great Basin and is propelled gravitationally towards the southern California coastline, generally as a northeasterly wind."]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _winds.jpg[/img3]

<<Southland residents, tens of thousands of them without electricity, braced for a second onslaught of cold and freakishly powerful winds late Thursday, having barely had time to assess the fallen trees and shredded rooftops left by the previous night's barrage. "Nobody in our department has ever seen such widespread damage. Nobody," said Jon Kirk Mukri, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, talking of scores of city parks so littered with broken branches and teetering trees that they were considered a threat to public safety. Officials took the rare step of temporarily closing Griffith Park because of the windstorm, fearing that downed wires might spark fires in piles of dry, shattered trees. Utility workers struggled to restore power to about 370,000 customers in the city and other areas darkened by the first, and broken traffic lights and downed trees snarled traffic across affected communities.

In heavily hit Pasadena, it was a question of where to begin. Sixty people, many of them elderly and disabled, were bused to a Red Cross shelter from an apartment building on Hudson Avenue that flooded after a tree crashed through the roof and broke a water pipe. Roof shingles were peeled off and garage doors knocked askew. Thousands were without power and 200 buildings were damaged, more than three dozen residences so badly that they were "red-tagged" — deemed unsafe to use. "Throughout the entire 26 square miles of the city, streets are littered with trees and tree limbs, downed power lines and wires," Pasadena City Manager Michael Beck said in an interview in the basement of City Hall. People who called the local utility were given the grim word: Get some ice. Some flashlights.

In South Pasadena, residents were urged to conserve water Thursday morning because a pump to the city's reservoirs failed as part of a widespread power outage, resulting in critically low pressure, authorities said. On Grace Street, Tom Slattery said he lost power about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and was jolted awake by the storm in the middle of the night. In the morning, "I geared for a cold shower," said Slattery, 38, an attorney. "And then I realized there would be no shower."

The windstorm produced a peak gust of 97 mph, reported at Whitaker Peak Wednesday night west of the 5 Freeway north of Castaic. The winds had calmed by morning, but the storm's second round — predicted to be more of a classic version of Santa Ana winds from the northeast — was expected to lash the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood Hills and Malibu before diminishing later Friday. The winds, though in far weaker form, will probably return over the weekend. The foothill communities of the San Gabriel Valley were the hardest hit by the windstorm. States of emergency were declared in Alhambra, South Pasadena, Pasadena, San Marino, San Gabriel, Temple City, Sierra Madre, Monrovia, Glendora and Arcadia.

But in places as far away as the Westside, 29,400 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers were in the dark by daybreak. Thousands were also stripped of power in Los Feliz, Hollywood, Highland Park, El Sereno, Glassell Park, South Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. A power outage in northeast Los Angeles affected pumps supplying water to Mount Washington and some surrounding areas, causing low pressure. So many lost electricity that the University of California offered the possibility of reprieves on its Nov. 30 application deadlines to last-minute applicants stymied by blackouts.

And the storm seemed to save some of its most malicious tricks, Grinch-like, for Christmas preparations: It wreaked havoc on Altadena's Christmas Tree Lane, snapped the top of the 100-foot tree at Americana at Brand in Glendale and blew over Monrovia's city Christmas tree, forcing officials to postpone the community's annual lighting ceremony and Christmas parade. The Americana mall set about repairing its tree by inserting steel rods into the trunk so the top portion could be reattached. But in Monrovia, though residents called City Hall to talk about the fallen tree — a 50-foot evergreen used in Christmas festivities for years — officials were swamped with calls about power outages.>>

[b][color=#0000FF]Not Föhn at all: Santa Ana Winds are an adiabatic wind, they are not a Föhn wind. A Föhn wind results from precipitation on the windward side of a mountain range which releases latent heat into the atmosphere which is then warmer on the leeward side (e.g. the Chinook or the original Föhn). The Santa Ana winds do not originate in precipitation, but in the bone-dry high deserts.[/color][/b]

---

<<The Santa Ana winds are strong, extremely dry offshore winds that characteristically sweep through Southern California and northern Baja California in late fall and winter. They can range from hot to cold, depending on the prevailing temperatures in the source regions, the Great Basin and upper Mojave Desert. The winds are known for the hot dry weather (often the hottest of the year) that they bring in the fall, and are infamous for fanning regional wildfires.

According to the Los Angeles Almanac: "The original spelling of the name of the winds is unclear, not to mention the origin." The name "Santa Ana Winds" is said to be traced to Spanish California, when the winds were called devil winds due to their heat. Santa Ana winds may get their name from the Santa Ana Mountains in Orange County, the Santa Ana River or Santa Ana Canyon, along which the winds are particularly strong. The original form may have been an Anglicized version of the Spanish, Satana's winds, from the Spanish vientos de Satán ("winds of Satan"). Sanatanas is a rarer form of Satanas and is a translation of a native name in an unspecified language. Dr. George Fischbeck was a widely viewed newscaster in Southern California in the 1970s and 1980s who helped to familiarize Californians with the winds, which he referred to by their other common name, the "Santana winds" (Santana is a Spanish contraction for Santa Ana). He delighted in the symbolism of the devil's breath playing havoc with Southern California.

It is often said that the air is heated and dried as it passes through the Mojave and Sonoran deserts, but according to meteorologists this is a popular misconception. The Santa Ana winds usually form during autumn and early spring when the surface air in the elevated regions of the Great Basin and Mojave Desert (the "high desert") becomes cool or even cold, although they may form at virtually any time of year. The air heats up due to adiabatic heating during its descent. While the air has already been dried by orographic lift before reaching the Great Basin as well as by subsidence from the upper atmosphere, the relative humidity of the air is further decreased as it descends from the high desert toward the coast, often falling below 10 percent.

The air from the high desert is initially relatively dense owing to its coolness and aridity, and thus tends to channel down the valleys and canyons in gusts which can attain hurricane force at times. As it descends, the air not only becomes drier, but also warms adiabatically by compression. The southern California coastal region gets some of its hottest weather of the year during autumn while Santa Ana winds are blowing. During Santa Ana conditions it is typically hotter along the coast than in the deserts.

The combination of wind, heat, and dryness accompanying the Santa Ana winds turns the chaparral into explosive fuel feeding the infamous wildfires for which the region is known. Wildfires fanned by Santa Ana winds burned 721,791 acres in two weeks during October 2003. These same winds have contributed to the fires that have burned some 426,000 acres as of late October 2007.

Although the winds often have a destructive nature, they have some positive benefits as well. They cause cold water to rise from below the surface layer of the ocean, bringing with it many nutrients that ultimately benefit local fisheries. As the winds blow over the ocean, sea surface temperatures drop about 4°C (7°F), indicating the upwelling. Chlorophyll concentrations in the surface water go from negligible, in the absence of winds, to very active at more than 1.5 milligrams per cubic meter in the presence of the winds.

During the Santa Ana winds, large ocean waves can develop. These waves come from a northeasterly direction; toward the normally sheltered side of Catalina Island. Protected harbors such as Avalon and Two Harbors are normally protected and the waters within the harbors are very calm. In strong Santa Ana conditions, these harbors develop high surf and strong winds that can tear boats from their moorings and crash them onto the shore. During a Santa Ana, it is advised that boaters moor on the back side of the island to avoid the dangerous conditions of the front side.

A Santa Ana fog is a derivative phenomenon in which a ground fog settles in Southern California during the end of a Santa Ana wind episode. When Santa Ana conditions prevail, with winds in the lower two to three kilometers of the atmosphere from the north through east, the lower atmosphere continues to be dry. When the Santa Ana winds cease, the cool and moist marine layer forms rapidly. The air in the marine layer becomes very moist and fog occurs.

A related phenomenon occurs when the Santa Ana condition is present but weak, allowing hot dry air to accumulate in the inland valleys that may not push all the way to sea level. Under these conditions auto commuters can drive from the San Fernando Valley where conditions are sunny and warm, over the low Santa Monica Mountains, to plunge into the cool cloudy air, low clouds, and fog characteristic of the marine air mass. This and the "Santa Ana fog" above constitute examples of an air inversion.

The similar winds in the Santa Barbara area occur most frequently in the late spring to early summer, and are strongest at sunset, or "sundown," hence their name, sundowner. Since high pressure areas usually migrate east, changing the pressure gradient in southern California to the northeast, it is common for "sundowner" wind events to precede Santa Ana events by a day or two.

Winds blowing off the elevated glaciated plateaus of Greenland and Antarctica experience the most extreme form of katabatic wind, of which the Santa Ana is a type, for the most part. The winds start at a high elevation and flow outward and downslope, attaining hurricane gusts in valleys, along the shore, and even out to sea. Like the Santa Ana, these winds also heat up by compression and lose humidity, but since they start out so extraordinarily cold and dry and blow over snow and ice all the way to the sea, the perceived difference is negligible.

The winds carry Coccidioides immitis and Coccidioides posadasii spores into nonendemic areas, a pathogenic fungus that causes Coccidioidomycosis ("Valley Fever"). Symptomatic infection (40% of cases) usually presents as an influenza-like illness with fever, cough, headaches, rash, and myalgia (muscle pain). Serious complications include severe pneumonia, lung nodules, and disseminated disease, where the fungus spreads throughout the body. The disseminated form of Coccidioidomycosis can devastate the body, causing skin ulcers, abscesses, bone lesions, severe joint pain, heart inflammation, urinary tract problems, meningitis, and often death. The United States government worked on a vaccine for Coccidioidomycosis during the mid-1960s, in the hopes of weaponizing C. immitis for use as an incapacitant. But the work was abandoned when medical epidemiology uncovered lethal effects on several segments of the population, and C. immitis was reclassified as a lethal agent. The winds also create positive ions which affects people's mood negatively, and statistics show increases in the number of suicides and homicides.>>

[TNT]

I like snow, thank you very much.
But I hate the rain, which is what is happening here.

[Ann]

When is snow good? When it stays in the countryside

Er, hold on one moment there Ann, I live in 'the countryside' and I don't want any of your snow or anyone else's thanks very much! It might look like a pretty picture postcard, but speaking from the experience of having been snowed-in for three weeks (!!! - one for each week) in January, the year before last, by deep snowdrifts blocking my half-mile long access track, I can honestly say that snow has lost just about all of it's appeal, visual or otherwise. The only way in or out was on foot, even the quad-bike couldn't hack it!

Click to view full size image

I take it back, Starstruck!!!

The situation in Malmö last winter was nowhere near as bad as it was where you live, of course. But it was bad enough. This picture shows you what it generally looked like. This picture was taken very close to where I live, even though you can't see my house.

Anyway, you can see that a narrow "path" has been cleared of snow on the sidewalk. (I think you'd say pavement, Starstruck.) You can also see that the street has been, sort of, cleared of snow. Except that the snow that was removed from the sidewalk and from the "middle of the road" has been piled up where the sidewalk meets the street. The street thus became half as wide as it used to be. You can see that cars have been parked in the street, away from the snowy mess near the sidewalk, making the street even narrower. And much of Malmö looked much worse than this. In many places, it was impossible to drive a car on the streets at all.

I usually cycle everywhere, but last winter I took the bus for weeks. Sometimes the streets had become so narrow due to piled-up snow on both sides of the streets that buses could barely meet on them.

Now you are perhaps wondering why the local authorities didn't try to remove the snow altogether, instead of just piling it up along the sides of the streets. Actually they did remove as much as they could, but they were not allowed to dump it in the strait of Öresund. So one of the places where they did dump snow was in "Pildammsparken", the park right next to where I live. (You can actually see my house here.) At center right in the picture, you can see a round open place in the park, the so called "Tallriken", the Plate. Here the authorities dumped tons of snow.

This is what "Tallriken" looked like late last April. When the snow was gone everywhere else, the dirty and disgusting snow was only slowly melting here.

Of course, in parts of the countryside the situation was worse than in Malmö. Below you can see is a nice gallery in the countryside not too many miles from where I live.


The gallery is owned by an eighty-year-old lady - or it was. After last winter, she closed it down. She had been trapped in her gallery for a week because of the snow, and she didn't want to go through that experience again.

Oh, snow, snow, stay away!

Ann

[Ann]

A brown Christmas is always better than a white one. When is snow good? When it stays in the countryside and in the parts of our planets where we don't want glaciers and peat bogs to melt.

Ann

Peat bogs to melt Poor peat. Nothing like melted bogs to ruin your day

There are large, permanently frozen peat bogs in northern Russia and in Canada. The frozen peat bogs contain a lot of methane. If they melt, large amounts of methane will be released into the atmosphere. If we don't have global warming now, we are sure to get it when the atmosphere gets loaded with methane, which is a very potent greenhouse gas.

Ann

[Beyond]

Ah, ok. I was thinking of the non-frozen type of peat bogs. So it's better that we keep giving the northern peats a really cold shoulder and keep them as peat-sicles.

[BMAONE23]

Consider though that, when the Peat Bogs formed thousands of years ago, the region was already warmer and wetter than it is now. Life (Mega fauna) flourished in the area. Mammoth, Woolly Rhinos and Lions roamed the wetter tundra, died there and were entombed in the Tundra Peat Bogs prior to the area becoming the permafrost in which their remains are found. Peat requires moist conditions over a long period of time in order to grow and deepen. Typically at a rate of 1 meter per millennia.
So while it was warmer and wetter thousands of years ago it still refroze.
Climate changes
No Climate condition is permanent
Nature sees to that

[Ann]

Consider though that, when the Peat Bogs formed thousands of years ago, the region was already warmer and wetter than it is now. Life (Mega fauna) flourished in the area. Mammoth, Woolly Rhinos and Lions roamed the wetter tundra, died there and were entombed in the Tundra Peat Bogs prior to the area becoming the permafrost in which their remains are found. Peat requires moist conditions over a long period of time in order to grow and deepen. Typically at a rate of 1 meter per millennia.
So while it was warmer and wetter thousands of years ago it still refroze.
Climate changes
No Climate condition is permanent
Nature sees to that

All good points, BMAONE23. Certainly life on Earth is compatible with considerably higher temperatures than the ones we have now. The question is whether considerably higher temperatures are compatible with anything like the human life we are having today.

This figure shows how the human population has grown during the last 2,000 years. I'm too lazy to google when mammoths and woolly rhinos became extinct, but I think it is fairly safe to say that during the time when these huge mammals and humans were co-existent, there were no more than, at most, 200 million people spread all over the Earth. The actual number of humans may in fact have been much lower.

But let's say that the much warmer Earth was able to support 200 million people at that time. Of course, the people who existed back then must have consumed very small amounts of the Earth's resources. Fossil fuels were all but unknown back then, and the large-scale mining and other kinds of exploitation of the Earth's resources barely existed. Back then, very many individuals must have subsisted as hunter-gatherers.

Today, humanity is critically dependent on a few crops for its survival. What if rising temperatures and new fungi, insects and other pests were to permanently destroy one or more of humanity's main crops? What would happen if we could no longer grow wheat? Or corn? Rice?

We may never find ourselves in a situation where rice, corn, wheat and other crops become completely extinct, but what if rising temperatures lead to diminishing harvests?

There are seven billion people on the Earth today. Do we "need" so many individuals? No, of course we don't. But if humanity is going to "lose weight" by "shedding a few billion individuals", who will foot the bill, so to speak? Who will be forced to have no children, or who will be forced to see most of their children die? And what will happen when people feel threatened, because they see so much death around them? Remember that many countries possess terrible weapons. If we help create a climate crisis where perhaps billions of people will literally fight for their very survival, and if a non-negligible number of these desperate people come to see other people in other countries as the main cause of their own awful plight, then I fear terrible and devastating wars may break out.

And that is why I fear the melting of the peat bogs.

Ann

[orin stepanek]

Man is very resourceful Ann! If the weather does become warmer; crops will probably be grown further North; and crops requiring warmer weather will replace the ones grown in the warmer areas. Extinctions of some types of animals will probably happen! I'm sure there will be problems to solve!

[owlice]

Yesterday was clear and cool, perfect for riding. It was 45°F and dark by the time I got home from my ride. Today is supposed to be much the same, only warmer. Orin, I'm sorry you have snow, and I'm really glad I don't!

[owlice]

Here's a picture from my Thanksgiving Day bike ride; that was another beautiful day for riding!

[orin stepanek]

Here's a picture from my Thanksgiving Day bike ride; that was another beautiful day for riding!

Pinhead rides again!.jpg

Nice capture on the shadow owlice!

[owlice]

Thanks, Orin. Here's a picture from today's ride; I was not on the bike when I took this!

[TNT]

I woke up to see the first snow. At first I thought it was our white concrete, until I noticed that the street was white. It came as quite a surprise.

[Ann]

I woke up to see the first snow. At first I thought it was our white concrete, until I noticed that the street was white. It came as quite a surprise.

I go to work in one of these trains every day. At this time of year, it is very often dark when I'm on the train. One early morning a few years ago, as I was looking out the window as the train was approaching the town of Eslöv, I saw what I took to be white sand that someone appeared to have spilled all over the park that the train passes on its way into Eslöv.

I was so surprised when the "white sand" turned out to be snow!

Yesterday we got the first snow in Skåne, not in Malmö where I live - thank goodness!!! - but in the town where I work.

Ann

[Beyond]

Here it is in the afternoon, in the hottest part of the day this time of year, and my outside thermometer's pointer is smack-dab on 20' F. BRRR. And i was just getting used to the more seasonal high 30's.

[orin stepanek]

Here it is in the afternoon, in the hottest part of the day this time of year, and my outside thermometer's pointer is smack-dab on 20' F. BRRR. And i was just getting used to the more seasonal high 30's.

We're in the middle of a mild spell! Looks like I may get my brown Christmas after all as most of the 8 inches of snow we had on the ground is almost all gone.

[Chris Peterson]

Here it is in the afternoon, in the hottest part of the day this time of year, and my outside thermometer's pointer is smack-dab on 20' F. BRRR. And i was just getting used to the more seasonal high 30's.

I'll trade you. Went out and cut our Solstice tree today, and it was 51°F. It just didn't seem right... and worked up a sweat carrying it 1/4 mile back to the house.

[TNT]

Here it is in the afternoon, in the hottest part of the day this time of year, and my outside thermometer's pointer is smack-dab on 20' F. BRRR. And i was just getting used to the more seasonal high 30's.

We're in the middle of a mild spell! Looks like I may get my brown Christmas after all as most of the 8 inches of snow we had on the ground is almost all gone.

Yeah, it was almost in the 50s yesterday, and now it's in the mid-50s, quite a ways from the average 40. But the next few days will bring snow, rain, and temps ranging from the mid-30s to 40s.

[Beyond]

Right now, at 8:00pm, The tempreture has dropped to 10' F, and there's another 12 hours to go before there's much of any warming effect from the sun. You can have ALL of this you want Chris, but you'll have to come get it. I can't deliver. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it dropped to 0' F by morning.

[geckzilla]

When you have two fluffy layers of white fur like a polar bear, 0 degrees is nothin'.

[Beyond]

I thought the two white layers would be (1)-fur (2)-fat. So only one layer would be fluffy. As for me....I don't have the fluffy furry layer, so i don't really like the cold. Chris, being the Abominable Snowman however, should know all about the fluffy furry layer.