The timing of actual winter

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drm
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The timing of actual winter

Post by drm » December 28th, 2021, 9:02 am

By actual winter, I mean winter weather, not winter on the calendar. It seems like in the NW we get a few weeks or a month of winter weather each year and it can occur any time from December to early March. Last year it was February. I don't like it when winter hits late. They days are already getting longer and the mind is thinking of the spring thaw, so it's jarring to get cold and snow then.

So what we are getting this year is just perfect. We are getting our cold and lowland snow at the same time as our shortest amount of daylight hours. And no ice storms - can't emphasize that enough. I'm watching very dry fluffy snow fall outside of my window this very moment.

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BigBear
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Re: The timing of actual winter

Post by BigBear » December 28th, 2021, 11:10 am

I agree. I hate it when the weather happens at an inconvenient time and makes me alter my plans. How disrespectful. :)

I also dislike it when we get a big snow year and the trails are late in clearing out. And those damn trees that can't take the weight and have the gull to fall across the trail instead of off to the side. If they weren't dead already, I'd give them a good swift kick in the knothole. :)

On a more serious note, I noticed that the media has become fixated on "climate change." If it rains, it's climate change, if it doesn't rain, it's climate change. If it snows, it's climate change. If it doesn't, it climate change. If the wind blows or doesn't blow, it's...you guessed it...climate change.

You know what the truth is: the climate is constantly changing. California is the perfect example - they're not in a drought, the 7,000 years of rings on bristlecone pines let us know the last century was the abnormally wet period of time for the region. 10,000 years ago Willamette Valley was covered in hundreds of feet of ice, sometime before that the oceans covered Oregon. Antarctica once was the tropics, so the ice melting is really a return to normal. Humans have inhabited the earth for a micro-cosmic of time (not sure if that's really a scientific term or not). The seas will rise, it will get hotter, it will get colder. It's going to get really, really inconvenient.

But anyway, yeah, I do dislike it when bad weather gets in the way of my plans, too. Mother Nature has her own plan and we're just not consulted ahead of time...or even in hindsight.

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drm
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Re: The timing of actual winter

Post by drm » December 28th, 2021, 1:12 pm

Who said anything about weather getting in the way of plans? This weather impacts my "plans" more than last year's did.

Oh, you just had to go into politics huh? There have been wildfires in all of history too - I guess we couldn't be starting some of them too. A few decades ago, folks like you said we couldn't pollute the air - too much of it, or our rivers. Then a river caught fire. Yeah, stuff happened in the past that humans were not the cause of. That says absolutely nothing about what we are doing now. Yes, if global heating warms the planet a lot, it will get closer to what has been more typical - except no human has ever lived in that climate. Maybe we should leave that hotter climate for the dinosaurs.

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BigBear
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Re: The timing of actual winter

Post by BigBear » December 28th, 2021, 2:12 pm

Oh, I thought you were saying how jarring it was to get out into the cold in March, like you had to opt to stay in and read a book by the fireplace.

For me, it is a deal killer. I've camped and hiked in single-digit temperatures...but that was 20-30 years ago and now I've grown wimpy. In short, getting cold is just ok, or getting wet is just ok, but getting cold-and-wet is not okay.

And, who was talking politics. I was just talking about the ever-changing weather and how inconvenient it is ;) Wow, you can't just talk about the weather anymore.

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Re: The timing of actual winter

Post by retired jerry » December 28th, 2021, 3:26 pm

60 Minutes did an interesting piece about wine growing in France. They have 100s of years of records. It is getting too warm to grow the same grapes they used to in the previous 100s of years.

In UK on the other hand, it is now getting warm enough to grow great wine grapes.

Just another piece of data that shows it is getting warmer.

On the other hand, it shows how we can adapt - find grape varieties that grow in a warmer climate and grow things further north (south in the other hemisphere). Maybe climate warming won't be catastrophic. We'll be able to adapt.

Just in case it won't be so easy to adapt, we should quit putting out greenhouse gasses, but it probably doesn't have to be done immediately. We should at least do the things we can agree on. Like solar and wind are actually cheaper.

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Re: The timing of actual winter

Post by drm » December 29th, 2021, 8:15 am

Tree ring data makes clear that California's drought is not just going back to normal. It's also good to note that while we are freezing here, Alaska has had record heat over Christmas and December in general. Their normal cold found it's way down here. That warmth might have felt nice, but it resulted in a sheet of ice that may now last the winter. This is bad for people and wildlife. Many types of wildlife depend on being able to dig through the snow, and they can't break the ice.

Jerry - Adaptation will work best and be easiest if the warming is held to a moderate degree. We are in the earliest phases of this thing. The farther north you go, the less soil there is. Warm weather does not allow you to grow wine grapes on rocks.

And yes, I don't think the snow patterns - December or January or February - affect my hiking much. It always seems to get warm enough to melt it off in time for the summer hiking season. Weather is not political, but global warming is.
Last edited by drm on December 29th, 2021, 8:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The timing of actual winter

Post by retired jerry » December 29th, 2021, 8:40 am

I prefer backpacking in the winter. Few people. I can find places to go although flexibility of timing based on weather reports is required. I haven't noticed any difference because of global warming.

If the ocean is warmer, then more water will evaporate. Then, there may actually be more snow in the mountains. This is an "interesting" science experiment seeing just what happens.

And there's this weather pattern where high pressure sets up on the west coast and the cold arctic air flows down to the middle of the country, making it colder than normal.

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Re: The timing of actual winter

Post by BigBear » December 29th, 2021, 11:42 am

Actually, the Alaska cold still hasn't migrated down here yet. It's been pretty normal this winter. Getting a little bit of snow and freezing temperatures was pretty standard fare when I was a kid. Growing up in the Gresham area, I remember the silver thaws of 1977-78 and 1978-79 that produced single-digit temperatures and ice that wouldn't melt east of 82nd Avenue. That was a Alaskan low. Generally that low drifted down east of Oregon and into the Midwest and to the East. The drift hasn't happened here on the west side of the Cascades, but did happen in eastern Oregon. Still, 1 degree and 4 degree lows don't approach the record lows (Seneca had a -54 in 1933 and Meacham claims to have matched it in my lifetime).

A couple of years ago after a dry summer the forecaster all got on TV thumping their chests about how the next few years would be dry. A couple months later, we had a record or near-record wet spell and those same forecasters were thumping their chests telling us how the next few years would be wet. Hmmm?

But it's alright, we used to have the rain bucket in the daily paper showing how we were doing and that stopped when the forecasters wanted to scare everyone into thinking it was a drought when the bucket had 110% of average. Good luck finding anywhere that has that rain bucket to know the truth.

About 20 years ago we had a record snowpack in the mountains which remained on the trails throughout the year and the following winter had less-than-average snowfall so the forecasters were saying there was no snowpack...even though the trails still had the previous year's snow.

I'm not trying to make a political statement, just reinforcing the fact that what the weather does this year doesn't have anything to do with what it will do next year.

Oh, and if you keep dismissing the return to California's 400-year droughts being anything but normal, you're going to get mighty thirsty. I'd think about desalination plants really fast. Then again, you could keep arguing it isn't happening and get even more dehydrated. It is a big snowpack this year, but it may not be in the decades to follow. Personally, I'd be looking for a new source of water, but that's just me, I like to stay hydrated.

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Re: The timing of actual winter

Post by Aimless » December 29th, 2021, 12:36 pm

BigBear wrote:
December 29th, 2021, 11:42 am
But it's alright, we used to have the rain bucket in the daily paper showing how we were doing and that stopped when the forecasters wanted to scare everyone into thinking it was a drought when the bucket had 110% of average.
When those forecasters are using the term 'drought', they are using it professionally, not casually, as the rest of us would. The established criteria for officially determining whether there is a drought in progress are more complex than just whether there has been near-average rainfall for the past few months, which is the only data which that 'rain bucket' in the newspaper would record. If you were a tree farmer, for example, you'd probably understand that the more sophisticated and longer-term model of drought is a lot more accurate to your experience and needs than someone whose income isn't dependent on rainfall amounts over longer periods.

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Re: The timing of actual winter

Post by retired jerry » December 29th, 2021, 1:20 pm

https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/ ... s-say.html

The Southern most glacier in Oregon, on Mt Thielson, is now melted.

The southern most glacier in Oregon is now that glacier on Broken Top that people are a bit uncertain of it's real name. Crook glacier maybe. I wonder when it will be gone...

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