RichVR
6144
We shall do our best. Thanks.
abrandt
6145
First big lake effect snow of the year reminds me how much I hate that weather sites all now default to showing a radar loop that’s primarily their future predicted radar. See, they all suck at understanding/predicting lake effect snow bands so they are just laughably wrong, predicting that the snow will just continue right along with the wind and be gone. That’s not how lake effect works. You know what gives me a much better idea of what the next hour of weather is going to be? Viewing the past radar loop and letting my brain do the extrapolation.
Alstein
6146
I wonder if lake effect works like sea breeze in some aspects. I don’t have experience with lake effects, as all my forecasting was in the South, largely Florida, but I understood sea breeze pretty well.
abrandt
6147
Meteorologists have the mechanics down enough to be able to pretty accurately predict when weather conditions will be right for various amounts of lake effect and where those bands will be located. Although I get the impression that even the advanced models don’t always get this right and it still requires experienced forecasters to hand tune the forecasts. Biggest factors I’m aware of that cause it in the first place is cold air moving over warm water with wind direction affecting where the bands set up. None of that is info I’m going to be intuiting looking at radar. But the thing is once those bands have set up they pretty much affect the same area over hours to days. Sure, individual bands will blow through and then dissipate somewhere inland but once the pattern is establish the bands kick up in the same places and dissipate in roughly the same place(this seems to depend on strength of individual bands).
Eh, it is Buffalo. If it disappears under 42 feet of snow, will anyone really miss it?
Right. Air moves over water and absorbs some moisture. When that air passes over land and cools off, it can’t hold as much moisture anymore, so you get snow. The water isn’t moving, so you can get stationary bands of snow of wind conditions stay the same. Once the water source freezes, the Lake effect goes away.
abrandt
6150
Now if only the auto-playing radar predictions understood that! Or just default to showing the radar animation from the last hour or two like they used to.
Just some pictures of some clouds idk
Kinda sorta weather, but Mauna Loa is erupting for the first time in about 40 years.
— Alan
Petey
6153
So, have a small roof leak and it’s supposed to snow tonight and the roofers are coming out tomorrow to try and find it…what a mess. When is June.
Gah, roof leaks terrify me. Good luck!
BBC is claiming snow is forecast in London this Sunday, and there is a warning, but the actual Met Office forecast disagrees and I’ll believe it when I see it. Apparently there’s a 50% chance of precipitation at 6pm on Sunday, but that’s when it’s 1 C and the rest of the day it’s only 20%.
Edit: No snow here yet, but the fog is so thick I can barely see the ground.
Thrag
6156
Meanwhile here in the sierra foothills it rained all day yesterday then turned to snow in the evening, dumping about two feet by dawn. I just ran the snowblower for two hours to clear a 30" wide path from my garage to the street. Another two inches fell while I was at it. Going to take all day to clear a car width.
It’s up to the top of the blower.
My deck. The 50+ mph winds at the start of the storm blew my grill from the corner of the deck to where it sits under that snow.
One of my security cameras absolutely plastered in snow.
Finally made it to the street.
So, we did get snow after all, and quite a lot of it by London standards (most years we’re lucky if anything settles at all).
Unfortunately, the cold snap seems to have completely fucked with energy prices:
Do people in the UK lock in energy prices? Like here in the US you can sign contracts at a given fixed rate for anywhere from like 3 months to 3 years.
They do, yes, but a) the government has effectively capped end user prices over the winter, this is just wholesale, and b) obviously people come off their fixed rates all the time and have to lock in at the new prices (or go variable).
Anyway, it seems the National Grid has ordered a couple of standby coal fired stations to come online, which produce 1.1 GW.
Edit: I suppose I should add there’s a c) because a whole bunch of electricity suppliers (ie the middlemen, not the power stations) have collapsed over the last couple of years. Their customers get taken over by another supplier, but generally they lose any fixed rate they had. Millions of people have been affected by this.
Your driveway is too big.
Where in the foothills are you? I remember someone was in Grass Valley but wasn’t sure if that was you.
— Alan
Thrag
6162
South of Reno off the ascent up Mt. Rose at about 5500 feet. My prior driveway was just the sidewalk in front of my garage in the bay area where it snowed maybe once every couple of decades. I only had to sweep pine needles off it occasionally. Now I have nearly a quarter mile to maintain. Fortunately I kind of enjoy it.
On another snow related note, I picked up one of those new fangled shovels with two handles and it’s a huge upgrade from a regular shovel. Much less back pain inducing and I can throw snow further with it.
Sounds awesome! What side of Mount Rose are you on?
— Alan
