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Weird Weather

10:23 and it's 97 degrees F., with an expected 107 today. (Thank the gods I no longer live in South Australia)

Your mind does learn to cope with it.
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knackered.
 
Not that I'm complaining, but.....all UK media-driven weather reports over the past week seemed to be filled with mildly-apocalyptic warnings of "Arctic Blast Approaching"....and the usual 'UK braced for impending cold-snap'. This weekend just past was when it was slated to start.

And what actually happens? Zilch. Perfect lovely weather. Weekend (certainly in Scotland, but media reports agree) it was glorious. Amazing red skies on Sunday night.

Predictions for next week look great. Temperatures appear amazing for the time of year.

So what the hell is going on? I don't think meteorology is as inexact as some forms of predictive processes. But it is massively-inaccurate, for much of the time.

My point is not that predicted weather formations were late. Or different on severity. They just didn't happen at all. And this is far from being a first, recently: certainly in the British Isles
 
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Not that I'm complaining, but.....all UK media-driven weather reports over the past week seemed to be filled with mildly-apocalyptic warnings of "Arctic Blast Approaching"....and the usual 'UK braced for impending cold-snap'. This weekend just past was when it was slated to start.

And what actually happens? Zilch. Perfect lovely weather. Weekend (certainly in Scotland, but media reports agree) it was glorious. Amazing red skies on Sunday night.

Predictions for next week look great. Temperatures appear amazing for the time of year.

So what the hell is going on? I don't think meteorology is as inexact as some forms of predictive processes. But it is massively-inaccurate, for much of the time.

My point is not that predicted weather formations were late. Or different on severity. They just didn't happen at all. And this is far from being a first, recently: certainly in the British Isles

*dons her conspiracy beret*

Because they like to make sensational headlines. "The weather is going to be nice and calm" doesn't feed into the climate change hysteria which pervades everything nowadays.

Further thoughts... perhaps its a ploy by the supermarket giants to make us all go out and stock up on provisions... you know what it's like at Christmas when shops are shut for a day, two at the most... its like the end of the world. So tell the masses that they'll be stuck under ten feet of snow for a week, then sit back and watch those tills ring!


I always wonder how many people actually take weather forecasts seriously... here in the Zebra household we may watch it if it happens to be on, but we certainly don't plan anything around it, because it just never (or hardly ever seems to) reflect reality.
 
*dons her conspiracy beret*
Because they like to make sensational headlines. "The weather is going to be nice and calm" doesn't feed into the climate change hysteria which pervades everything nowadays.
I agree that the media thrives on hype, and it's disgusting, but Climate Change is a tangible threat, regardless of that hype or not. Ask Australia. They just got a wake-up call.
 
...but Climate Change is a tangible threat, regardless of that hype or not. Ask Australia. They just got a wake-up call.

Australia is a hot, dry desert. It burned before modern man; it would burn if people became extinct today.

"A study of charcoal records from more than 220 sites in Australasia dating back 70,000 years has found that the arrival of the first inhabitants about 50,000 years ago did not result in significantly greater fire activity across the continent - although this date is in question, with sources pointing to much earlier migrations at perhaps 100,000 and 120,000 years ago.

The arrival of European colonists after 1788, however, resulted in a substantial increase in fire activity. The study shows higher bushfire activity from about 70,000 to 28,000 years ago. It decreased until about 18,000 years ago, around the time of the last glacial maximum, and then increased again, a pattern consistent with shifts between warm and cool climatic conditions."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming

maximus otter
 
Australia is a hot, dry desert. It burned before modern man; it would burn if people became extinct today.
The centre of Australia is a desert. The East Coast of the country is not desert, it varies between arable land, forests, hills, and mountains. Large portion of Australia's north is Rainforest (until it burns). Yes, it burns because eucalypts are native to Australia, and they renew themselves thru fire, but not on a scale like it has between November 2018-Present. That has never happened before in recorded history, as far as I am aware. The smoke has literally circled the globe now: link, and is coming back to Australia from the opposite direction. Show me evidence that this has happened before in recorded history and I will be considerably more likely to accept your opinion. If not, then this is an atrocious emergency and you should be taking it more seriously.
 
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1. That has never happened before in recorded history, as far as I am aware.

2. The smoke has literally circled the globe now: link, and is coming back to Australia from the opposite direction. Show me evidence that this has happened before in recorded history and I will be considerably more likely to accept your opinion.

1. As Australia’s recorded history only goes back a couple of hundred years, that’s not the conclusive argument it might be for older civilisations.

2. As we have only had the technological and meteorological know-how to establish that in the last few decades, again not conclusive. We do know that ash from the 1939 Black Friday fires - “lit by the hand of man” - fell as far away as New Zealand.

We do know that during the last 70,000 years, Aboriginals lit fires of such extent/duration/frequency that 60 species of land animal were driven into extinction.

l am not downplaying the seriousness of the recent fires; merely trying to put them in context.

maximus otter
 
l am not downplaying the seriousness of the recent fires; merely trying to put them in context. maximus otter
Firstly, I don't think that you actually are putting these fires in their proper context. They are the equivalent of a major and extended volcanic eruption in terms of how much material they have put into the air. The sheer number of dead animals, (half a billion) should be immense cause for concern too. In terms of CO2 emissions, this is catastrophic.

Earlier, over 2018-19 we had the deliberately incompetently handled Brazilian fires, immense fires in Siberia, Southern France, Scandinavia, Japan, Canada, China, India, etc, all occurring after extended droughts in the northern hemisphere. So not only do we have all that captured carbon in plants being released, but we now have a situation where rain is falling less frequently because temperatures are too high due to global warming, and these fires are working to increase the problem by adding to desertification.

You may think you are putting things in context, but in fact I think you are actually downplaying them. I have lived in Australia, and I pay attention to what happens there. This is far and away the worst fire season the country has ever experienced. Perhaps not in terms of lives lost, or homes burned, but in terms of the area of forests burned and animals killed it is beyond atrocious. Having every tree in the UK suddenly catch fire would only be a fraction of the damage we have just seen. The UK has s. Australia has seen 12.35 million acres burn, and the UK only has slightly under 8 million acres of forest, and the fires are still going.
 
"Once in a lifetime floods" in France, two dead, more missing:
News story
(loads of terrifying clips on that page)

Seems to be more and more once in a lifetime weather events happening.
 
"Once in a lifetime floods" in France, two dead, more missing:
News story
(loads of terrifying clips on that page)

Seems to be more and more once in a lifetime weather events happening.
Flooding events are often categorized based on averages over 10 yrs, 100 yrs, etc. We can't really make that judgment anymore because it's not going to hold in the future. Climate change means that we will see "novel" events happen more frequently. With the continuously changing conditions, we can't look at the past to determine what is probable for the future.
 
Mediterranean 'episodes' like this aren't a rarity in southern France during the autumn and winter months, but the one associated with Storm Alex was astonishing in its severity - 500.2 mm of rain in 24 hours at Saint-Martin-Vésubie in Alpes-Maritimes, an all-time record daily fall for the station and the département. This from Météo France (in French, sorry) includes startling data on how these episodes have increased in intensity and frequency since 1961, and how "intense precipitation and its future course remains a major challenge": https://meteofrance.com/actualites-...es-diluviennes-exceptionnelles-dans-les-alpes
 
I can't say we 'ave too much of that down here in Wagga Wagga...eh.
 
We get some of that here in the Rockies. It's not really common, as far as I know, but it's cool when it happens. The first time I heard it, I was confused.
 
Here's some situational man-made weather. A Wisconsin power plant's smokestack emissions contained enough moisture and particulates(?) to interact with atmospheric conditions and generate a 100-mile-long plume of snowfall.
Power plant causes 100-mile long snow plume

A combination of weather events Monday morning caused a snow plume for about 100 miles.

The plume originated from the smokestack at a power plant in Portage. ...

The Weather Watch 12 team determined the plant's operations were emitting enough condensation nuclei into the air to form snow.

Cold air allowed for the mist and steam to turn into snowflakes.

A westerly wind sent the plume of snow all the way to the shores of Lake Michigan.

The National Weather Service reported a half-inch of accumulation in Rio, Wisconsin, about 15 miles down the road from the plant.

The conditions allowed for the snow to fall for about four hours.

FULL STORY: https://www.wisn.com/article/power-plant-causes-100-mile-long-snow-plume/35246128
 
A dusting of ice ... On sand dunes .... In the Sahara ....

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Ice covers the Sahara Desert for just 4th time in 50 years

On Tuesday (Jan. 19), one of the world's driest places awoke to an otherworldly dusting of frost.

In the Sahara Desert of northwestern Algeria, just outside the town of Ain Sefra, sand dunes were streaked with ice crystals as far as the eye could see. Local photographer Karim Bouchetata captured the unusual weather in pictures and videos that have since made headlines around the world.

Ain Sefra sits about 3,280 feet (1,000 meters) above sea level and is surrounded by the Atlas Mountains, near the Algerian-Moroccan border. While summer temperatures in the region regularly soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), January days average a much milder 57 F (14 C), according to Sky News. Tuesday's ethereal display of frost followed a rare night of 27-F (minus 3 C) temperatures.

Snow and ice accumulation in the northern Sahara is unusual, but not unprecedented. Tuesday's dusting marks the fourth time in 42 years that Ain Sefra has seen snow, with previous occurrences in 1979, 2016 and 2018. Those past snowfalls were much heavier than this week's display; in 2018, some areas of northwestern Algeria saw up to 15 inches (40 centimeters) of snow, while the 2016 blizzard dumped more than 3 feet (1 m) in select regions ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/sahara-desert-ice-beautiful-photos.html
 
I saw and unusual sky in Ealing tonight at just after nine o’clock. I’ve taken two photos but only on an iPhone so not great quality. Hopefully you can see the hazy yellow area in the sky. It was about a hands length across as I held my arm straight out in front of me,the rest of the sky was dark.
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It’s not something I’ve seen before but hopefully one of you may not what it is.
 
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I saw and unusual sky in Ealing tonight at just after nine o’clock. ...

My first guess would be the light of a substantial fire in the distance (e.g., a major house or building fire).
 
My first guess would be the light of a substantial fire in the distance (e.g., a major house or building fire).
It’s gone now. I don’t think it was a fire. The light seemed too high up in sky to be a fire. I’m guessing some unusual atmospheric phenomenon, it’s probably got a name. I’ll do a bit of googling.
 
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