It was a nice summer here. More than made up for the past winter. Plus, the past winter at least made me feel better about keeping a down parka around the house.
When Moby keeps a down parka around the house, he really keeps a down parka around the house.
They believe that the stream is locked in a "positive" phase, meaning it's hauling warmth up to the West and then blasting the East with polar chill. As the climate continues to warm, these stream-derived temperature differences could become entrenched, the scientists say, with the West experiencing more "mild, relatively warm winters" and the East increasingly winding up underneath a "freight car of arctic air."
This is no good. I bought property in New Hampshire under the specific expectation that it would be getting warmer.
with the West experiencing more "mild, relatively warm winters" and the East increasingly winding up underneath a "freight car of arctic air."
agghghgh nooooo
I do not like the thought that we will continue to have winters like the last one. That one sucked, and not just because our house sprouted icicles from every crevice (well, that was a big chunk of it, honestly).
I've known that the oscillation that brings polar weather down was likely to keep happening, but I was thinking that would mean weather in off-years would be disorientingly warm.
A colleague of mine in the power business spent a dinner complaining about the Northeast's mild summer, which kept demand for electrons* down.
* I like when power folks refer to their business as "selling electrons."
Ha. Last week I was reading around, trying to figure out if there's a "good" place to be, given climate change projections. For the US, the answer is basically no. Assuming we don't lose the ability to grow food and descend into apocalyptic anarchy, the best bet seems to be the upper Midwest, given the abundance of fresh water (again, assuming some crazy algae bloom doesn't make it undrinkable) and the relative absence of calamitous events like hurricanes and wildfires. But the weather is going to suck.
I like when power folks refer to their business as "selling electrons."
This is bullshit. They are selling alternating current, which just moving the same old electrons back and forth over and over again. If they want to claim to be selling electrons, they need to move to direct current.
11: This seems to misunderstand the nature of a circuit. Alternating or direct current, you still don't get to keep the electrons: you always have to give them back.
selling electrons
I'm glad professionals use this term. This has become standard jargon in our house for charging devices. "Oops, the phone needs more electrons."
What the-- I recognize these electrons! What is PG&E trying to pull?!
, you still don't get to keep the electrons: you always have to give them back.
This is a song lyric in the alternative world where the success of "Wichita Lineman" led Glenn Campbell to specialise entirely in recording electricity-based C&W songs.
16 - I knew PG&E was up to something when they appointed Zombie Billy Sol Estes as their CEO!
Alternating or direct current, you still don't get to keep the electrons: you always have to give them back.
My understanding is that with direct current you give them back, but with AC they are simply taking the ones you already have and shaking them back and forth really quickly.
14: they're not selling the electrons, they're selling the holes. (Not really. Spike is right at 19.)
19: to be honest, electric current moves so slowly (a matter of inches per hour) that you would have to have a DC hookup running for months at a time for an electron to have entered your house's wiring harness from the cable under the street, gone all the way through your appliance, and left the house again.
Least interesting thread derailment of all time? Could be!
45 right now, headed for 81. No clouds, and no smoke. RH is currently 60%.
It's better than where you are.
22: The original post was about the weather. There wasn't a whole of room for decline.
23 actually sounds almost exactly like where I am.
Charley the weather a lot of places is stunningly nice right now. If the article said "in the future, the entire country will be stuck with the weather pattern that obtains today, specifically" I think a lot of people would be happy.
61 this morning, 65% humidity, going to 72. It's better than CC because who the hell would even think of reporting whether there's smoke, unless you're near the student tenements in Allston?
Anyhow, if this polar vortex thing is really going to keep happening easily the worst part is that Washington DC is one of the places that will be unusually cold, because this means that we'll have to deal with decades of politicians saying "so much for global warming hurr hurr" as the world drowns/burns/melts.
Down here in North Kackalacky, this has been one of the rainiest summers I can remember (sorry, California), which has kept temperatures mostly reasonable. With this much precipitation, we're going to need a bitterly cold winter to keep the mosquitoes in check.
All the Carolinas and Georgia needs to do to prepare for the new normal is buy a few snow plows from the Pacific Northwest localities that will no longer be seeing snow. And do something about the highways which seem to inexplicably transform into solid sheets of ice. Here in rural PA, it's going to be unlivable. By which I mean it's going to be like rural Vermont.
You're not supposed to live there. It's just a place to visit.
I can't tell if the common projections incorporate a funkily-shaped jet stream. We've barely had a hot day this summer, and apparently this winter is forecast to be brutally cold again. Anyone know?
I am looking forward to the upcoming reversal of Gulf Stream, and the corresponding trade of climactic conditions of same-lattitude places like London and Labrador.
Of course, I get my climate news from the Labrador Real Estate Newsletter (tm).
I am looking forward to the upcoming reversal of Gulf Stream, and the corresponding trade of climactic conditions of same-lattitude places like London and Labrador.
Good luck with that, independent Scotland, or as it will be known in 2050, Svalbard Jr.!
Glenn Campbell to specialise entirely in recording electricity-based C&W songs
I always wondered what was going on in Joni Mitchell's life when she recorded "Electricity" and "You Turn Me On I'm a Radio" on For the Roses. Was she dating an electrical engineer? Did that mean I had a shot? The answers, instantly apparent, were "Really really unlikely" and "No."
33.1: Wasn't that what killed Bilbo in the beginning of "The Day After Tomorrow"?
Unusually cold Washington DC will be good for Democrats, who tend to come from the colder states and are therefore prepared (and indeed evolved) to handle it. As the thin-blooded Republicans from Georgia and Mississippi and Texas succumb to frostbite, hypothermia, snow-blindness and so forth, the delegations from Minnesota and Wisconsin and Vermont will be snowshoeing effortlessly into the voting lobbies.
You should all move down into the deep South. The weather will be perfect, the price will be right, and you can start turning those states blue.
Unusually cold Washington DC will be good for Democrats
Made for Sarah Palin Republicans and their snowmobiles machines.
Oh I wish I was in the land of cock jokes
Where some of my best friends are black folks
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dix--
Ha ha, dicks.
Optimistically, maybe if the entire eastern seaboard and mid-atlantic region turns into frozen wasteland Chicagoans will finally shut up about "Bears weather."
...but if the 2010 Bears-Patriots debacle didn't do it, I sincerely doubt anything will.
To the post title: And not about the war.
Optimistically, maybe if the entire eastern seaboard and mid-atlantic region turns into frozen wasteland Chicagoans will finally shut up about "Bears weather."
This is where I feel LB's pain about what people say or instinctively feel about New Yorkers, much as any of us feel about Americans abroad, or Protestants, or any other group we belong to somehow represented by its absolute worst element.
And this always happens, because those people are always looking to establish an identity, inevitably crudely understood, and the insecurity of being away from home brings it out.
Sally and Charlie Brown to the "same electrons back and forth subthread.
There didn't seem to be much to say about it. Write a guest post here in the comments and I'll put it up.
Back to the weird weather thread, holy shit what happened to Phoenix?
51: Holy shit indeed. I got an email from the corporate overlords telling people at the home office to stay home because of rain, which was a little WTFy to me. But that's pretty serious.