Had a record breaking snowstorm today. I drove my daughter to school as the bus was over an hour late and I was cold and impatient. The roads were quite strange; slippery packed snow and ice covering most of the road, even on major arteries. Combination of damp snow, no remaining salt or sand on roads, and traffic I guess. Fingers crossed that it melts tomorrow, I have yet to winterize the cars!
I haven't lived in Canada long enough to comment on that, since recent weather has had little similarity to previous decades.
But as climate change continues to progress, this is what we are all headed towards: "weather whiplash", as those in the know have taken to calling it lately.
"Weather whiplash" is abrupt flip-flopping between drastically different periods of weather. For example, severe drought immediately followed by torrential floods, followed by more drought. Or extreme cold immediately followed by record-breaking heat, followed by severe flooding, followed by severe drought, followed by another record-breaking cold snap. That sort of thing.
Here are a couple of examples:
1) US Midwest skips spring, whiplashing from winter to summer: Weather whiplash: Midwest catapults from coldest April to hottest May on record; Minneapolis notches earliest 100. - The Washington Post
2) California whiplashes between floods and droughts: California, battered by global warming’s weather whiplash, is fighting to stop it | Dana Nuccitelli | Environment | The Guardian
-Gnobuddy
Yes, we know our international stereotype, as I'm sure you know yours.
The correct statistic is that 87% of our population lives within 100 miles of the US border.
Apparently, and I quote, "Our results show that over 50% of the world's population lives closer than 3 km to a surface freshwater body, and only 10% of the population lives further than 10 km away."
So 90% of the world's population lives within 10 km of a surface freshwater body, while 87% of Canadians live within 160km of the US border.
In other words, water is much more popular (worldwide) than the US border is.
Source:How Close Do We Live to Water? A Global Analysis of Population
Distance to Freshwater Bodies
-Gnobuddy
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Nearly, it’s actually “winter” and “construction”. This is invariably a problem because in the winter the roads are bad due to the weather, and when it’s not winter the roads are bad because they are all dug up under repair.
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Given the nature of US beer you’ll realize that being close to the border and being close to water are equivalent...In other words, water is much more popular (worldwide) than the US border is.
We no longer know exactly what to expect here, we sort of have 4 seasons but spring and fall tend to seque rather quickly from the preceding to the following season - particularly the case with spring.
We joke about "winter" and "construction" here too, and as I write this the heat is running.
We joke about "winter" and "construction" here too, and as I write this the heat is running.
I had a look at a few things to work out what is going on.
The most significant thing is the solar wind running into the magnetic poles. These have been wondering about in recent decades and have obviously dragged the solar wind with them including all the energy that generates the northern and southern lights. These beams of energy are starting to get very close to the jet stream making it move.
I searched the NASA web site and they have quite a bit of stuff about it on a need to know basis. Spade craft go badly wrong if they fly through beams of solar energy.
When the energy falls near the edges of ice caps it causes a lot of melting that does not happen near the middle where it is a lot colder.
The most significant thing is the solar wind running into the magnetic poles. These have been wondering about in recent decades and have obviously dragged the solar wind with them including all the energy that generates the northern and southern lights. These beams of energy are starting to get very close to the jet stream making it move.
I searched the NASA web site and they have quite a bit of stuff about it on a need to know basis. Spade craft go badly wrong if they fly through beams of solar energy.
When the energy falls near the edges of ice caps it causes a lot of melting that does not happen near the middle where it is a lot colder.
I keep an open mind for all things. Mostly there is no harm in it if I do. Often I have answered many complex problems by finding the simplest question I could ask. Often these are the tough ones as the answers are also simple and often seem they must be right. The old chicken and egg question is excellent. Chicken seems likely. It isn't what's right or wrong, it's the question I like.
Someone asked me about climate change. I said " doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons". It took me years to see that. That is a book in itself. Maybe not to use oil and coal now is a good idea.
One little idea I didn't totally dismiss is the Sun is in a simple sense a living thing and is working with the Earth. Don't ask me what that means as I didn't really get further with that. We get other ideas like the mass centre of the Solar System is near the orbit of Mercury. I didn't bother with that one much.
Someone asked me about climate change. I said " doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons". It took me years to see that. That is a book in itself. Maybe not to use oil and coal now is a good idea.
One little idea I didn't totally dismiss is the Sun is in a simple sense a living thing and is working with the Earth. Don't ask me what that means as I didn't really get further with that. We get other ideas like the mass centre of the Solar System is near the orbit of Mercury. I didn't bother with that one much.
Last winter we had over two weeks of consecutive days with below freezing temps, immediately followed by a typical summer day, 80+ degree F temps, clear blue sky, which was then followed by several days of cold ugly weather.
Recently our weather had been rather random with hot 80+ degree days interspersed with 40 to 50 degree days.
They don't bother to fix the roads here. Some are down to one lane in places since the other lane just crumbled, or slid over the bank.
Haven't had to run the heat yet. Last Saturday the high for the day was in the 50's F with low 40's at night. It got down to 65 F inside. Sunday I almost turned the AC on. It got up to 80 F inside the house. It was in the mid 80's outside with zero air movement. I spent the day in the basement.
The windows are currently open and it's in the low 70's inside.
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You have to be careful here about the country roads when it snows. The road gets cleared of course, but the snow bank at the sides of the roads tends to fill-in the drainage ditch so you don't know it's there. You can imagine somebody pulling over onto the hard shoulder to take a winter photograph only to discover it's not a hard shoulder and their car is lying at 45 degrees to the horizontal. Perhaps several other cars stop to help and a bunch of people are trying hard to push or pull the car back out. And eventually a tow truck turns up and uses a winch, with some effort, to get the car back on the road. You can guess how I know this !!!!!!!
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