Weather!

[bystander]

Had plenty of moisture here, yesterday. Rained most of the day. We really needed it, but, Orin, please keep your cold up there, I can do without that.

[orin stepanek]

Hey Chris; you can have mine; I scooped a bit off the patio and made a path to my shed. I'm taking a break now and after that I will fire up the old snow blower and get the heavy stuff. bystander; it must be spring in Oklahoma. I'd be willing to trade you some of my snow for your showers.

[Ann]

It's cold here. Cold-cold-cold. Geckzilla, do you have a "freezing" icon?

Starstruck, do you have cold weather in the UK yet?

Ann

[starstruck]

snow.jpg (36.5 KiB) Viewed 9194 times

Temps have been at freezing or below for a number of days this week, getting colder and colder, and then this afternoon the snow started.

It's dark now of course, but this is the view of the garden from my front door . . . . . and it is still coming down!

I'm just staying put. Nothing to see in the sky tonight, apart from snowflakes.

[BMAONE23]

Courtesy of CNN-London — Heavy snow left several Italian villages paralyzed and without power as winter weather and cold temperatures spread across Europe, the mayor of one village said. Many of the 32 villages in the Aniene Valley, near Rome, lost electricity on Friday when an electric pylon fell because of the snow, said Piero Moscardini, mayor of Vallinfreda. The valley, home to about 50,000 people, has received some 100 cm (39 inches) of snow, Moscardini said. “It’s the worst snow since 1956,” he said. “The situation is tragic. We need the Army to save us.”

Ambulances cannot traverse the roads, he said, and some villagers cannot reach their stables to feed livestock. Meanwhile, deaths continued to increase from the cold. In Romania, four people died on Saturday and another six on Sunday, authorities said. A total of 34 people have died since the cold snap began in late January. Nineteen national roads and one highway remained closed on Sunday. More than 30 cities and villages are isolated, authorities said, and power outages were reported in 200 cities and villages. More than 3,000 employees belonging to the Interior Ministry were involved in rescue operations, as hundreds sought refuge in temporary shelters and hundreds more were hospitalized because of hypothermia.

In Poland, TVN Poland said a total of 53 people have died, eight of them in the past 24 hours. The victims are mainly homeless people, according to the report. Heathrow Airport, one of the world’s busiest international airports, canceled about half of its flights Sunday, its owner said Sunday — about 260 more flights than it expected to cancel as of the night before. Between two and four inches of snow fell on London overnight, as the British capital became the latest European city to be hit by winter weather wending its way west. Drivers in both London and Rome will need to worry about ice as temperatures rise slightly, then fall again to below freezing, CNN meteorologist Tom Sater said Sunday.

Full story
Europe and the Ukrainen are blanketed by heavy snows leaving many towns and villages paralized and cutoff

[orin stepanek]

More snow is forecast for tomorrow! After a nice January we are going through a snowy February! I'm glad that Spring is coming in March.

[neufer]

We sat here, right in the middle of Colorado, reading all the headlines about Colorado being "slammed" and "hammered" by a massive winter storm, and never saw more than a few millimeters of snow. The Sun was even out at times. Crazy. I fear for the upcoming fire season if we don't see some moisture pretty soon.

---

<<A record-breaking snowstorm struck Colorado in early February 2012, closing an interstate highway, grounding flights, and dropping more than a foot of snow on the Denver area. After moving out of northeastern Colorado, the storm left heavy snow across Nebraska.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image on February 5, after skies had largely cleared over the region. Snow and mountain peaks create a mottled appearance in western Colorado. Elsewhere, the snow cover forms a wide, uneven track over parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska.

This snowfall did not break all-time records in Colorado, but it did break records for the month of February. The National Weather Service explained that northeastern Colorado generally experiences storms of this magnitude in March or April, and the February storm showed some of the same characteristics of powerful spring storms, including a system from the Pacific Northwest converging with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. The storm set a new record for the heaviest storm snowfall for February, depositing 15.9 inches in Denver, and 22.7 inches in Boulder.

Colorado ski resorts welcomed the precipitation after suffering from below-normal snow cover so far in the 2011–2012 ski season, but the new snow raised the risk of avalanches. As of February 6, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center reported “considerable” avalanche danger across much of the state. Heavy snow was not limited to Colorado. The National Weather Service reported up to 18 inches (46 centimeters) of snow west of Omaha, Nebraska.>>

[Chris Peterson]

We sat here, right in the middle of Colorado, reading all the headlines about Colorado being "slammed" and "hammered" by a massive winter storm, and never saw more than a few millimeters of snow. The Sun was even out at times. Crazy. I fear for the upcoming fire season if we don't see some moisture pretty soon.

<<A record-breaking snowstorm struck Colorado in early February 2012, closing an interstate highway, grounding flights, and dropping more than a foot of snow on the Denver area. After moving out of northeastern Colorado, the storm left heavy snow across Nebraska.

And when it was all over, we ended up with perhaps a quarter inch of snow, and never went more than a few hours without seeing sun or blue sky. A very strange storm, indeed.

[Ann]

All winter and cold and no spring and warmth makes Ann a dull girl.

Ann J. Nicholson

[Chris Peterson]

All winter and cold and no spring and warmth makes Ann a dull girl.

Spring and warmth will come. And think how much sweeter they will be with such a cold winter preceding them!

[Beyond]

Nay, tis better i say, to have the warm year round, except perhaps for vacations, whence one goes sliding down the slippery slopes, and breaks thyself. Then thyself gets to spend the rest of thine vacation in front of Ye merrily warm lodge fire, sipping grog.

[geckzilla]

Perfect weather forever? It's call San Diego.

[Chris Peterson]

Perfect weather forever? It's call San Diego. 8-)

And as someone who used to live in Southern California, it gets depressingly old!

Nothing makes a person appreciate the seasons like actually having them.

[geckzilla]

True enough. If I could trade a few cold, rainy days for a some balmy ones, I would, though. Not that I mind the rain or the cold. It's just that when the two combine and yield no snow for weeks in a row that it upsets me.

[Chris Peterson]

True enough. If I could trade a few cold, rainy days for a some balmy ones, I would, though. Not that I mind the rain or the cold. It's just that when the two combine and yield no snow for weeks in a row that it upsets me.

Yeah, anything gets old if it goes on too long... and for most people, gray weather is the worst- regardless of temperature.

[neufer]

All winter and cold and no spring and warmth makes Ann a dull girl.

Ann J. Nicholson

[img3="
NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen, using data
provided courtesy of the Land Processes Data Active Archive Center (LPDAAC).""]http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/im ... 012025.jpg[/img3]

<<Rare snowstorms in Rome and Tripoli and mounting death tolls from exposure were among the consequences of a severe cold snap in Europe in late January and early February 2012. Meteorologist Jeff Masters described it as Europe’s worst stretch of cold weather since February 1991.

This map above shows temperature anomalies for Europe and western Russia from January 25 to February 1, 2012, compared to temperatures for the same dates from 2001 to 2011. The anomalies are based on land surface temperatures observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Areas with above-average temperatures appear in red and orange, and areas with below-average temperatures appear in shades of blue. Oceans and lakes appear in gray.

Blue dominates this image, with most regions experiencing temperatures well below normal. Some of the most severe temperature anomalies occur in northwestern Russia and around the Black Sea.

Masters explains that the unusual cold is a product of the jet stream. Jet streams are bands of strong, upper-atmospheric winds that blow from west to east around the globe. These bands roughly separate colder air at higher latitudes from warmer air at middle to low latitudes, and they generally blow straight west to east. “But this winter, the jet has had a highly convoluted shape, with unusually large excursions to the north and south,” Masters states. “When the jet bulges southwards, it allows cold air to spill in behind it, and that is what has happened to Europe over the past two weeks.” When the jet stream adheres to a convoluted pattern for long enough, extreme weather can result.

The Arctic Oscillation (AO) Index provides an indication of whether the jet stream has formed an unusual bulge. When the AO is strongly negative, jet stream winds are comparatively weak, meaning it has drooped southward over Europe, dragging frigid air with it. A negative AO also often means unusual cold and snow over North America, but due to other factors, much of the United States has experienced below average snowfall.>>

[Ann]

Today, February 12, we got snow for the first time this winter. Last winter we got snow around November 20. After that, we remained more or less buried under snow until mid-January - we often have a mild spell in January - and then it came back with a vengeance later in January and stayed on until late February, if I remember correctly.

As I said, this winter we got the first snow today. Snow means dirty, messy, wet, slippery, dangerous streets, sidewalks and bicycle paths. Cycling to work tomorrow will be no fun.

Dare I hope the snow will be gone by March 1?

Ann

[rstevenson]

My wife and I once worked in Leaf Rapids, Manitoba, about 700 miles north of Winnipeg. The year we were there it snowed first on Sept. 3rd and last on May 27th. The fact that neither of those snows stayed on the ground didn't relieve the depression one little bit. We cross-country skied a lot that year but hardly ever needed to change wax types. We used the same wax from October until March, since the snow conditions remained the same throughout the heart of the winter.

Rob

[Ann]

Click to view full size image

In Lund, some 13 miles north of where I live, a bus slid on the snow and hit a tree, which fell over two women. Five people on the bus, including the bus driver, were also injured and had to be taken to hospital.


Ann

[orin stepanek]

It snowed overnight about 2 inches! It was a real light powder so i just swept it off with a push broom. It is supposed to snow all day; and the forecast was for a total of about 2 inches. I am hoping we got our limit and are done for the day.

[THX1138]

I don’t recall the meaning of the word weather anymore, what is that stuff anyway? Moreover so far as I can recall we don’t even have seasons here in Southern Cal.
Note to self:
The comments on this thread sure make them sound pretty, must see.

[bystander]

We had 2-3 inches of snow overnight. Won't last long, it's raining now.

[Ann]

We had 2-3 inches of snow overnight. Won't last long, it's raining now.

I'm envious of you. Rain is my favorite weather during winter, because it melts the snow.

Ann

[Beyond]

Yes, Ann, and then the water freezes and you have to put your bicycle tire chains on to get any traction

[BMAONE23]

Balkan area freezes under 15' of snow...Power plant Iced over