How cold is it where you are?
This is what we had in the Seattle area on Dec 7th
Clear
Actual: 32 | 19
Precip: 0.00
Average: 46 | 36
Precip: 0.19
Weather Underground. I understand there is snow about the country. People going to work? Staying home? What are you talking about it is sunny and hot where I am?
Just curious. Anyway, I'm off work in 2 hours, so go home to nice bed and sleep soon. Oh, and a pond on the campus where I work froze.
Two pieces. The thicker one took a hammer to break ice and get out.
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So... getting on the colder side for this part of Texas. Unfortunately, looks like it's going to start heating up again in the coming days. Really hoping we get some snow this year. Which, I understand snow can be a serious pain in other parts of the world, but down here it's mostly still a welcome novelty given that actual snowfalls that accumulate on the ground are a rarity. I think in my life it's happened three, maybe four times? Most years even flurries are a rarity that we may not see.
Still, one of those handfuls of times we actually had a heavy snowfall started around 11pm on Christmas Eve. It was pretty freakin' awesome.
We get snow later and later every year.
We're not supposed to get snow until late december (earliest), but mostly it happens in early February and early March. So, having had two snow storms this year (and already beating our yearly snowfall total in two weeks!) is quite unusual.
Edit: My kids school is canceled because a lot of the backroads are still a bit slippery, but it's finals week at my uni and the roads are clear enough for the adults to go get their testing on.
-13°C / 8.6°F
Liable to get warmer tomorrow or Wednesday. So far the cold record of the winter has been -37°C / -34.6°F in the northernmost part of the country.
People here practically never stay at home, nor do places/universities/shops/whatever close due to cold/snow. It's a bizarre thing I've never understood about the U.S.
Yay snow!
A lot of that in the US is in regions that don't get regular massive amounts of snow. I'd wager if heavy snowfall were enough to shut down Finland the country wouldn't operate for a quarter of the year. For y'all, it's a part of life, and society just works around it.
Like here in Southeastern Texas we'll close down a lot of things, because of how rare major snowstorms are. And enough people are absolutely retarded and don't realize that icy conditions are nothing like rainy conditions when it comes to driving, and when it happens there's oodles of wrecks from idiots trying to zoom around at 75mph in their oversized pickups... doesn't tend to end well. So we shut things down, because it'll probably only be for the day, and it'll encourage people who are ignorant of the conditions, or simply inexperienced in driving in those conditions, from going out on the road, and to keep the people who do know how to drive in icy conditions from getting killed by someone who doesn't.
Which is also part of it. Public transportation in most of the US outside of NYC is looked down upon and the vast majority of people drive themselves, and part of that is the more "sprawling" design of American cities compared to European ones.
So, to summarize:
1. Less frequent/heavy snowfall in much of the country
2. People in that much of the country by and large have no idea how to handle driving in snowy conditions.
3. Alternative forms of transportation to driving yourself are typically off the table.
Ah, that actually makes it a lot clearer. I wonder why I didn't think of it that way before.
I imagine the problem with nr. 2 is that there's a... "4WD"-problem? People thinking that just because they have a huge 4WD truck, they have magical traction? I've seen some videos on youtube where people start slipping with their cars, and just gun it, as if though slamming the throttle on full would fix the slide.
So basically fuck Midwestern winters.
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At least in Texas, yeah, that's a big part of it. The majority of the people I've seen driving recklessly and causing/getting into accidents in cold weather around here have been guys in the bigass pickup trucks.
And, unfortunately, Texas is chock-full of rednecks who love to drive the biggest pick-up trucks they can as fast as they can (and then bitch about high gas prices). Sure, all that weight will help prevent hydroplaning in the rain, but on ice it just means it'll be that much harder for you to get control over your Ford F450 Super Duty when it goes into a slide (which, when you're going 70, it almost certainly will).
Because it's a cycle. Everyone in the US is raised with it, thus it's what they're comfortable with, and thus it's all we use, meaning the next generation grows up with it...
Everyone with half an education is aware how silly it is, but if you started blurting out "it's -5 degrees outside" over here, 9/10 you'd be met with a blank stare while the other person tried to figure out if you had a broken thermometer, were bullshitting them, or finally coming to the conclusion "Oh, right, Celsius". Same reason we still use feet and miles and pounds over here. Sure, they're kinda silly, but they're also deeply ingrained into the culture at this point.
And I'd argue it's not a big deal. It's only a factor with international/scientific interactions, and Americans participating in either are more than happy to abandon our F for C.
Tomorrow: Goddamn chilly
The heat is one of two things I don't like about living in Texas.
The other is the more "fundamentalist" branch of Republicans.
Thankfully, the all the thunderstorms and the more fiscally-focused conservatives help balance that out.
Also? Blue Bell ice cream. I've tried all the other "major" brands, and can confirm they are utterly inferior. Nothing like Blue Bell chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream on a scorching summer day.
Fahrenheit is not a dumb scale.
Its temperature ranges match up well with what people are likely to experience, and there's no inherent reason to like it more or less than Celsius - it has the same benefits and flaws, the only reason it's less useful in science is because it's not as easily converted to Kelvin, the One True Scale.
It just kinda gets thrown in with the rest of the metric stuff, which actually is superior because of ease of conversion and relation between units. But as much as I hate the US clinging to imperial, Fahrenheit isn't inherently inferior (unlike, say, pounds/feet/inches).
Which wouldn't be so bad but we haven't had power since 2:00pm yesterday, so it's that cold inside now, too!
Had a light dusting of snow, but the roads were fine this morning.
Also, feet / inches aren't totally stupid, at least for construction. 10 doesn't divide into thirds cleanly, and even quarters make you deal with fractions / decimals. Twelve is much easier to work with when you're doing a lot of measuring and cuts, and makes most everything into integer operations.
Weight / volume are similarly handy for divisibility in the imperial system. Volumes also have a nice progression from teaspoon -> gallon that are easily divisible, and progress in simple measurable units that relate to the commonly used volumes of ingredients for cooking. But hey, metric is still better all around if you're used to it.
Just that imperial isn't as completely useless and backward as it's made out to be.
Only good thing about this weather is that the lakes and rivers will be ready for ice fishing soon :P
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This has always been my stance in life. Hell of a lot easier to warm up than cool off.
The Canadian in me would like to play the smug card and laugh at the people going nuts over -2/30 weather. But I can't anymore. I was born and raised in -40 Albertan winter. But I've lived on Vancouver Island for too long. Now I'm acclimatized to the weather here, and when it hit -2 a day ago, it was cold. It actually fucking snowed here too, but the typical snow we usually get - if at all - where it barely covered the grass and is gone by day's end.
I'm silently hoping we get dumped on. It's not unheard of, it just rarely happens. I've got pictures of the last dump we got a few years back. You'd swear the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man had exploded outside the window.
It's slightly below freezing here, but it feels much warmer than that for some reason.
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REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS
But, yeah, much prefer cold to heat... especially hot and humid.
Why I still live in Virginia, I may never know.
So...fuck.
Also snow, all of the snow.
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Snow still all over the place, but the major roads are pretty clear. Yay, Colorado.
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Temp wise it's 26f
It's also important to note that areas that might be considered to have typical "winter" weather will vary heavily on this as well. Areas near large bodies of water tend to have milder temperatures, but get inundated with the white stuff - systems pick up moisture in large amounts, then happily dump it on the coast. Inland areas are the opposite - less water means less snowfall, but it also means more extreme temperatures.
We'll pay for it in Feb I'm sure
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