Wacky Weather

We're having the strangest weather this year!

First it stayed warm 'til the end of October... We didn't even take out the air conditioners until right before Halloween!   Usually we have freezing temps at night in October.

Then November was unusually warm, with sweater weather for most of the month.

NOW, of course, most of the country is suffering from the cold.

This morning when I got up (at 9AM) it was 19 degrees outside... and it's supposed to get down to NINE degrees tonight!!     ¡Ay, caramba!  It's freakin' cold!

We got some nice snow yesterday   and it was too slippery for me to go to work.  We got about an inch here.  Corvallis, though, got a whopping 8 inches   -- HIGHLY unusual for the Willamette Valley!  I saw some college students sledding -- shirtless! -- on TV.    haha

I hope everyone is keeping warm, and I'm praying no one loses power!

We've been swinging madly on the weather front.  Three days before Christmas it was almost 60 degrees, then freezing, then mild again (although not quite so warm   )  This week was pretty mild, then BOOM!  The cold and snow hit!  This morning there was a 25-car pileup on I-5, just south of town.  6-7 inches of snow in Albany.

I had to leave work just after mid-day because of the snow and slip-slidey conditions.  It's only 21 degrees out there, so the snow is very dry.  There's only about an inch and a half at the moment (OK, maybe two), but it's been accumulating, and we're expecting snow for the next two days.

Eh~  It's not that bad compared to what's been going on back East, but people in the Willamette Valley don't seem to know how to drive on ice and snow!   No school or work tomorrow, and I can't say I'm sad about getting to sleep in tomorrow!

Holy WOW!  Since I posted an hour and a half ago, we've gone up to 4+ inches!   We usually don't get snow like this!

If it's any consolation, and I'm sure it's not, I am back into winter pajamas again - in the middle of an Aussie summer! Disgusting! Finally got my lovely new (summer) clothes from layby, and won't be able to wear them for 9 months! (long winter in my corner of Aus)

We're up to 6 inches last I checked.  Beautiful, pristine snow, so pretty... but so COLD!  

7:30 PM EDIT:  On the rails of my deck, the snow was measuring at 7 3/4 inches... But I had to go and knock snow off of the satellite receiver, and I sunk (with my sneakers on, which have at least a half inch heel) to over half way up my calf!   I've NEVER seen this much snow before, and they're saying another 5 inches possible tonight!!

We ended up with over a foot of snow here -- 15 inches at least, but I stopped going out to check after it went over a foot   After being in the 20's for a week, we've had a "heat wave" with highs in the mid-50's!  Now we're on flood watch.  No surprise there

I just got this e-mail from my brother's wife.  They're stationed on-base near Tokyo, Japan:

Genki's SiL wrote:Hey y'all!  We got hit with our second, crazy, "never happens", snow last night.  Snapped branches on our big shade tree out front. One of the branches took out our smaller beautiful tree as well. :(   I am guessing we got at least 20 inches. We just got mostly unburried  from last weekend's 18 inches.  I heard that there are many trees down and a few people have said that their front awnings collapsed. The big thing, is that they are forecasting an even BIGGER amount of snow to hit us Tuesday night through Thursday morning!

Here are a couple of the pictures she sent:



Feb. 24, 2014 EDIT:  We've been in the 50's since our mega-snowfall, and while we didn't flood, one of the streets I take to work every day was closed due to high water all last week >_<  So happy to be able to take my regular route again!

April 27, 2014 EDIT:  Aw, maaan.  It's been so nice here lately!  Rainy and cool, just the way I like it!

Then this:
 

Except for a few hot-day exceptions, things were really mild here until almost the end of May, and then... BOOM!  Sweltering!    

Oh man it's been SO HOT!  We're moving this week, and this was me all weekend:   I couldn't have made it through without some Cokes, too.  Not only is it hot, but it's MUGGY! 100 degrees yesterday, and looks like it will be more of the same the rest of the week.  Ahhh, I'm going to melt away, and we're not even close to being finished!

(and the two new summer-themed emoticons make 205 smilies! lol~)

Can you add your snow guy, too?  I like him! 

What do you mean?     He's already in the smilies section!  Oh, do you mean move him from the Winter/Christmas section to the Misc section?

Genki, it means I am blind.  Just ignore me.    This one also fits.   

I'm off to

I think we have your weather Genki! Cool and no humidity! Feels like fall already! Last week it was in the 90's.........definitely weird!

In my area, we've had the coldest July on record with daytime temps in the low 70's and plummeting to the 50's at night. We've had so much rain, too. This is NOT normal weather behavior around here!

After the brutal winter we had, I was looking forward to an amazing summer and it's just not happening. I absolutely dread the upcoming winter.  

I would LOVE to trade weather with you, dj, although I'd prefer the rain stays away until AFTER we finish moving!

Highs in the 70's and lows in the 50's?  My dream weather!

After such a mild spring, we got hot, hot, and more hot for summer!   This is Oregon, we're supposed to have "liquid sunshine" for most of the year, but it only rained twice during the summer (that I remember.)  Long and HOT, and though the rains have finally come back in, it's staying unseasonably warm.  Take a look at the forecast from last night:


Looking back, it looks like we were unseasonably warm at this time last year, too.  Huh!

pippi wrote:Genki, it means I am blind.  Just ignore me.    This one also fits.   

I'm off to

Huh?  What happened to my post?

We're getting snow for Halloween.  I am so very excited.    I'm going to dress up like a snowman!

Really?? Wow!  This is going to be the warmest Halloween I ever remember having here -- It's nearly 60 here right now, and the overnight low will be 42.

As for the pics, some image-hosting sites will delete your images after a certain amount of time with no views.  I'm guessing it's something like that

SNOW?!? Isn't it like, the first month of fall or something?

Hey pippi! 

Was just thinking today - where has that woman got to? Where were you when the cool kids (that's us remember, you passed the initiation) where discussing the merits of Frankenstein the game? Which I had a personal invitation to review from the developers - the ultimate cool! Oh, yeah, I should post that now!  

Yay! pippi is back! 

was 31c here yesterday in the mountains, two weeks ago it snowed 4klm up the road to the west and blizzard conditions at 20klm cutting both the highway and the railroad.......last year at this time we had the high winds and heat that caused the bushfires here, which took over two hundred homes, year before heavy snow followed by heat.............go figure..........

doctor! hi!

You serious? You guys still having snow!? I will shut up my whinging about the cold here then! We never get that low!!

Loved the front garden, btw. So, what is it? 8 or 9 am there? It's 6 here and I am just having the final hours' after party of my Halloween bonanza one woman super-party with frenzied dragon egg snatching for almost 24 hours straight! 

Yeah, I know, I'm a bloody nutcase - but it was fun! 

Hi just found my way back here, 24hrs of egg snatching????????? did you get some good ones?

got snow at Wentworth falls and blizzards at Lithgow and Mt Vic. plus heavy snow at Katoomba which cut rail and road,

last couple of days just high winds, beaut yesterday now just cool. off to bed in a tick, been doing 6 nights a week....and you think you're a nutcase?

if it's six there it's nine here, we have daylight saving.

glad you like the garden is coming on well but roadworks are sending me spare. 
see you girl,

The cold has finally arrived here in the Willamette Valley.  It's been so warm (for November), but we've had this arctic air come in, and our first bad (for driving) weather.  At 4AM it was snowing, which turned into freezing rain.  It's just rain now, but my car had a quarter inch of ice on it when I went out! 

It's warmed up here to early fall-type weather (40-50 degrees), but New York is being slammed by snow

Buffalo, Western New York Buried by Another Wave of Snow
From nbcnews.com,By Erin McClam and Daniel Arkin

A second band of lake-effect snow pounded cities and towns near Buffalo, New York, early Thursday, piling more misery on communities already paralyzed by a 5-foot blanket of snow. Authorities confirmed an eighth death blamed on the storm.

“A few areas are getting close to a foot right now, but the worst of it is the additional accumulation and that will occur today,” The Weather Channel’s Michael Palmer said. “So its just going to prolong people getting in and trying clearing the snow away — that’s just not going to happen until the weekend.”
The Buffalo area was buried under as much as 5½ feet of snow Wednesday. Two additional feet were expected in some areas during the day, topping off with another 5 to 8 inches on Thursday night.
The eighth death was a 60-year-old man who had a heart condition and was stricken while operating a snowblower, said authorities in Erie County, which includes Buffalo.

Because wet air blowing in from Lake Erie is so much warmer than the prevailing air in the region, the result will again be thunderstorms that drop snow, not rain — the oddity called thundersnow.

The snow had taken a break in downtown Buffalo by 6:30 a.m. ET, but was picking up steam south of the city, with areas such as Dunkirk, Gowanda and Springville especially hard hit, according to The Weather Channel.

“It may still come back [to Buffalo] late morning, early afternoon,” Palmer said. “Buffalo may not be done with this, and they’re getting creamed in areas that got heavy snow on Tuesday.”

The new snow began falling as troopers in all-terrain vehicles and rescue crews working without sleep were still trying to reach drivers trapped in the first wave of the ferocious storm.

About 140 miles of Interstate 90, the main artery running east and west across New York state, remained closed Thursday morning, from Rochester to the New York-Pennsylvania state line. There was no word when it would reopen.

More than 100 cars were reported trapped at one time. Drivers ran out of food and patience.

“Mother Nature is showing us who's boss once again," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday. "This is an historic event. When all is said and done, this snowstorm will break all sorts of records, and that's saying something in Buffalo.”

A Greyhound bus was stranded for a day and a half on I-90. People stared out the windows at a highway littered with abandoned cars. The bus was running on a generator, and passengers could charge their phones, but they were hungry, said Endjie Ulysses, a college student who was on board.
After 34 hours, the people on board were finally rescued by a state trooper.

"I'm feeling OK. I'm just tired," Ulysses told NBC News by phone from the bus. "I've only slept for about two or three hours."

Authorities around Buffalo reported the fifth, sixth and seventh deaths from the snowstorm: a 46-year-old man found in a car, someone who had a heart attack while operating a snowblower and an elderly man who needed care for what doctors called an "urgent cardiac condition" who died because rescue crews couldn't get him to a hospital. Four deaths were reported Tuesday, one in a car crash and three from heart attacks, including two people who were shoveling snow.

On social media, people posted pictures of drifts taller than their garage doors and of whole houses all but invisible under thick, white blankets of snow. Authorities responded to 911 calls as they could, but ambulances couldn't get down side streets in some places.

The towns south of Buffalo were believed to be the hardest hit. The National Weather Service said some places could approach the record for a single-day snowfall in the U.S., 6 feet 4 inches.

Outside, the temperature hovered in the high teens, with a wind chill below zero.

The totals that came in from cities and towns in western New York were daunting: 5 feet 5 inches in Cheektowaga, 5 feet 3 inches in Lancaster, 5 feet in Gardenville.

There was 4 feet of snow in Orchard Park, where the Buffalo Bills are set to host an NFL game Sunday, against the New York Jets. The team put out a call for volunteers to help shovel the stadium clear of snow — an estimated 220,000 tons of it — and offered $10 an hour, plus tickets to the game.

Temperatures are expected to climb above freezing by Saturday — raising the possibility of flooding as massive banks of snow begin to melt.

"When we say stay home, really, stay home," Cuomo said.

On Wednesday, the focus was on the trapped. Before dawn, a college basketball team had to be rescued after its bus got stuck in heavy snow for 26 hours about 50 miles from its home campus in Buffalo.

Elsewhere, the last of 40 people who'd been stranded at a highway toll booth were rescued Wednesday morning, said Mark Poloncarz, the Erie County executive.


Cuomo declared a state of emergency for 10 counties, and the National Guard was activated to help clean up. The state deployed 526 snowplows and 17 large snowblowers.

The snow pattern was part of a punishing blast of cold air so broad that temperatures in all 50 states fell to freezing or below. In all, 22 deaths have been reported across the country since Saturday.

__________________________________

Hope y'all are staying safe and warm!

We've got windy windy weather here, with sustained winds of 30-40 mph, and gusts up to 60!   I hear that the coast was getting up to 80 mph winds.   And the temp...!?  It's nearly mid-December, and it's 62 degrees right now!  Look at this forecast!


It's nearly mid-December, for goodness sake!  This is early fall temps we're having!  Sheesh!  Well, of course I'm glad it's not freezing out there with the high winds, I'm just surprised, is all :p

Meanwhile, Down Under, where it is supposed to be summer already and we're usually into the 3rd month of drought conditions and bushfires, and when we generally have temps in the low 30C (that's in the low 80s F I think), we are having days in the 50s and 60s F. 

I don't even want to think about how cold the nights are. Jeesh! We were down to 10C the other night. That's my cutoff temp for the heater! Anything under 10C and I am allowed to use my heater  - the rest of the time I have laid down the law with myself, and must grin and bear it. 

Your winds sound like a nice day for sailing to this tropics-hardened lass. We often get much much worse, and usually on high fire risk days.   But seriously, we do get winds like that here all the time. Something to do with being so close to the Antarctic weather, I believe. And in the tropics of Papua New Guinea, where I lived for a short time as a kid, it was also like that - maybe due to the nature of the mountains there? I don't know, but they do still have active volcanoes.

Sorry, I'm waffling. I'm going to bed now.

According to the latest news report, NYC is expecting up to 2 feet of snow and 65mph winds -- true blizzard conditions

Meanwhile, here in good old Oregon we've been sitting near 60 degrees for the highs lately.  Two days ago it was 63 degrees!   That's late spring weather for us, and December was nearly the same!  Yikes!  I don't like being cold, but I HATE being hot, so I hope this doesn't mean another blistering summer for us :(