I would assume soil temperature does play a role. Certainly, one of the reasons it's been so snowy here is that the ground is very cold right now.
Soil temperature is why you can build a cob house with an earthen floor directly on the ground in relatively warm places but no so much around here.
This is a question I've wondered about for many years. My guess is that Stormcrow will actually know the answer.
There are daycare closures in Texas for cold weather?
This morning! A two hour delay, uh because there might have been freezing rain but wasn't actually.
September is not as hot as August and July here. And I usually find the second half of January and beginning of February to be the coldest. This year, of course, and right now it's absurdly cold here.
But usually we get an ice storm maybe once a year that shuts things down.
True, in Michigan, September was distinctly cooler than August, IIRC. Here September is my least favorite month, super unbearable.
I did actually know that from a friend who lives in the Dallas area, but I couldn't resist joking.
This year, late January through mid-February was the coldest period (or so I hope). But, on the plus side ... the days are getting longer, and longer. I can't wait for summer light.
I wonder why that difference from northern US to southern US. Here, the weather seems to pretty reliably change on Labor Day -- 90 or higher the last week of August isn't odd at all, but the first week of September it would be.
It's not quite as reliable on the other end, I think. Serious cold first week of March wouldn't surprise me in the same way that serious heat first week of September would.
It's been so much cold here this winter that I'm turning back to a midwesterner who doesn't complain about single digits.
12: I saw a bit of the CBS Sunday morning show. They said that DC was suffering with 5 degrees, but in Minnesota that would be a heat wave, because they had 41 below. Shudder. With windchill it's been below zero here.
In Alaska this winter has been crazy warm. Yesterday it rained in Kotzebue.
Is this the complaining thread? I can't really complain about the weather (it's 5C and we actually saw the sun today) but I am SO pregnant and really grumpy. I'm sure that's equivalently miserable to -15C, though my situation is likely to end much sooner than the cold weather.
Grump.
I don't recall hearing that before. Babies, hooray.
And by "crazy warm" I of course mean mid-30s. Just warm enough that it rains instead of snowing, and the snow on the ground starts to melt.
Yesterday it rained in Kotzebue
Whoa. Don't tell the Bostonians, they'll start moving there in droves.
16 - thanks! Though at this point I hardly believe that there will be a baby, let alone soon, and it just feels like I will be this awkward and uncomfortable FOREVER. *dramatic sigh*
19: This is one of those rare instances when I feel that I can predict the future confidently. You will not be pregnant forever.
However, it is possible, if unlikely, that you'll be awkward and uncomfortable forever.
The coldest day of the year in Heebieville is January 1 and the hottest is August 11.
18: Well, it snowed later in the day, so they shouldn't pack their bags just yet.
21: My worst fear. I suppose I should plan to retire to a remote mountain hut, in order to hide my shame.
See, this is why the calendar should be moved six weeks to the right. Then Christmas will always be snowy, as it should be, and June will be the hottest month.
In Minneapolis at least it has been swinging wildly back and forth between genuinely cold and warm weather. About every two of three days it switches: today the predicted high is 32, but on Sunday it was 0. I don't know what is going on but it's hard to say whether it's a really cold month or not because it depends on which day you're picking.
Is Kotzebue, AK named after Kotzebue the dramatist?
(Answer: no, it's named after one of his sons.)
22/26: Raw temperature data tells you almost nothing about how miserable things are. What are the days of maximum and minimum RealFeel® Temperatures?
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Okay, so, meh. The ob/gyn billed a visit related to family planning as an illness, so my insurance company says that I owe a co-pay.
This was a follow-up visit t make sure that everything was ok, so I'm wondering if that's how they are supposed to bill it, and it's just not covered.
Right now, I would have to call the doctor's office/clinic (not the billing people for the medical practice and ask why it was coded the way it was).
I don't want to waste too much time, but I don't want to pay it either. Does anyone have any experience with this? I had to pay a co-pay for my physical this year, because something was diagnosed. Feh.
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This lag is one of the confounding things about designing for passive solar: 3 weeks before the autumnal equinox, you sure as well want deep shade; 3 weeks after the vernal, not so much (I guess if you go far enough south, mid-April is shading weather, but that's probably a place where you want full shade on Sept. 21 but not March 21). On the heating side, shading isn't not so critical, but it is true that you need to design for a couple weeks (or more) after the winter solstice. That is, your design case isn't the balance between solar gain/heat loss on Dec. 21, but on Jan 15 or so. You'll have a little more sun, but usually a lot more cold.
Soil temperature is why you can build a cob house with an earthen floor directly on the ground in relatively warm places but no so much around here.
If you run vertical insulation around the perimeter, you can keep that top foot or two of soil at or near room temperature (depending on solar exposure, you could get it above ambient).
29: Additionally, as the map in 26 shows, Heebieville is near the tail end of the nationwide distribution of lag. Furthermore, note that her general point remains: only a tiny bit of the country is hottest on the longest day; most of it lags by 3-5 weeks. Which is roughly 1/3 of a season.
I am so ready for summer. I promise not to complain about the heat.
24: This part is the WORST! And everyone is waiting expectantly, like "Today? Thinking about doing anything BABYLIKE today? No?" and you go to sleep and do it all over again. The worst!
32: Like glue styrofoam to my stone foundation?
Hello, fellow person inside the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge!
Is anyone else terrified that this is what the new normal will look like, and soon? I know that we can't be sure what specific weather events are attributable to climate change and maybe the superstorms and polar vortexes of the last 2-3 years aren't, but this seems like a pretty fair facsimile of the less-distant-than-I-once-imagined future.
I think there are middle term patterns (long but still noticeable within a human lifetime) of cold and hot. I figure these last few cold winters are probably just part of that.
This is pretty much what (some of) our models predict for California, so I figure it is the new normal until things get worse.
I don't know about California. I always figure eventually its doomed because having good weather invites bad karma.
40: I thought I had read that the polar vortexes over North America were directly attributable to the unusually warm air in the artic disrupting normal weather patterns and pushing cooler "artic" air south. That doesn't sound like normal medium-term seasonal variations, that sounds like a "new normal" side-effect of global warming.
Of course, the coming water wars down here should be my more immediate concern.
37: Yes. Some people who are aggressive about passive design will go deeper, trying to capture as much soil within the insulated sink as possible. But I don't know what current best practices on such a thing would be - I'm sure that below a certain depth, the benefits don't justify any more digging or styrofoam.
I had read the same thing as 43. Among other things, the less-cold Arctic is now less of an anchor for the normal polar vortex. Roughly speaking.
But AFAIK Boston's winter is unrelated to the polar vortex.
The other day I heard someone in a bookstore haranguing someone at length about how ridiculous it is to believe in global warming given all the snow. The other person meekly said something about global warming being partly responsible for the cold weather, which made the first person even louder and more agitated.
The other day I heard someone in a bookstore haranguing someone at length about how ridiculous it is to believe in global warming given all the snow.
This was my father-in-law in my house for the whole of the last week. So tiring.
You're supposed to say "weather isn't climate." Delphically, if you think it'll help.
Just say something about 2 sigma events becoming routine will ruin humanity's investment in infrastructure, it sounds sophisticated.
Where is JPS with the answer? Does someone have his email?
You're supposed to say 'have you any idea what's happening in Alaska? In Montana?'
Seasonal lag because it takes a while for stuff (especially water) to heat up and cool down (thermal lag). These diagrams show it for both the diurnal and the annual cycle (incoming radiation is basically proportional to length of day, while outgoing is proportional to the temperature of the ground and water--on average they balance twice a year on the coldest and warmest average days ). Yearly and daily re essentially due to the same mechanism which yields a somewhat similar pattern (details somewhat different as, for instance, on the diurnal cycle you have a long period* with no incoming radiation whatsoever), but I think the daily one is easier for most people to grasp intuitively.
*And of course if you plot actual average temperature by hour instead of daily, the diurnal is a high frequency pattern superimposed on the yearly one.
Every thing else being equal the lag at a location is generally determined by the extent to which the air temperature is influenced by large bodies of water like the ocean (more true in summer than winter). So deserts and interior areas generally have maximums closer to the summer solstice. Heebieland is in the area which "benefits" from a lot of air coming up from the Gulf due to the frequent pattern of having the Bermuda high (air comes around clockwise) especially in the summer. The narrow strip of the US Pacific coast west of the Coast Ranges not only has the marine influence (winds generally from the west so more marine influence than most of the east coast), but the currents come down from the north so the water is even colder and lags it even more (and the resulting fogs amplify the effect). Not really sure why the inland western and northern parts of the US lag somewhat more in the summer may be the remote influence of air form over the Pacific, or seasonal variations in wind patterns.
Heebieland is in the area which "benefits" from a lot of air coming up from the Gulf
Why Texas Sucks: The Science
46, 43
I read the same thing. I think it was an NYTimes article a few years ago?
I'm suddenly in Northern China for a few days, and I am not adjusted for indoor heating. My body has so adjusted to a constant ambient temperature of 40-60 degrees that anything above that feels like a sauna.
I just want to take this opportunity to taunt all you cold-ass motherfuckers. I'm at my sister's place. It is 91 degrees F, no humidity, and there is plenty of cold beer.
57: If you had said 82 degrees F, low humidity, I'd be jealous.
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Speaking of air coming up from the Gulf
I have my work visa! *
And here I was worried about the timing of moving out of my apartment in Queens at the end of February.
Now to finish my temporary move out to LI, get rid of yet more stuff, buy some more stuff - but not too much- , pack all the remaining stuff and sell my car. Wooohoo!
*Naturally, there's a mistake in it. For my DOB they got the day wrong which is both odd because they have clear scans of my passport as well as other forms I've filled out but also oddly comforting because if there wasn't some kind of bizarre error in it it wouldn't be my work visa.
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Yay Barry. But be careful about the Date of Birth Thing. Double check that it's still okay.
53 beat me to it. We have seasonal lag because our planet is mostly covered with a gigantic watery heat sink. Mars lacks this lag, so you can reasonably assume that the longest sol of the year is the hottest (not that that means much on Mars).
Okay, my comment didn't seem to go through. Congrats Barry! But make sure that getting your date of birth wrong isn't a big problem.
Well, now it went through. It hadn't on refresh.
Oh yeah. No way I'm going to the airport with that. I'll let them know and have them get me a new one. Also now I'm going to double check that they have my passport # and everything else correct. I wouldn't have thought to check it if not for that obvious error.
53, 54: Thanks! You're perfect.
