Is it ever going to stop SNOWING?????

[PepperFritz]

Anybody else affected by the snowstorm moving through southwestern Canada and the northeastern U.S.?

Here in Southwestern Ontario we've been hit by more than a foot of snow, and it just keeps falling. By poor body is ACHING from having to shovel out our LONG driveway every couple of hours. And when I last took the dogs out for a romp in the snow, I took a nasty fall on the ice, and banged up my knee real good. Now it's swelling something awful and I can barely walk.

We haven't seen this much snow in a long, long time. We've been seriously spoiled by increasingly mild winters over the last 20 years or so. But now I'm looking at snowbanks as high as I remember when I was a kid. I wonder if it signals the end of "global warming" and the beginning of the kind of wildly fluctuating and unpredictable weather we've been led to expect as 2012 inches closer and closer....

 

[dant]

All that exercise should be of some use as some of us are lazy couch
potatoes, eh? ;)

I wonder if you are thinking about that movie, 'The Day after Tomorrow'?

Hmm. Spring is supposed to coming around and it should be
warming up, but I guess we are gonna have to 'wait and see'?

 

[Erna]

Here in SA we don't know snow, in fact, I have never seen snow with my own eyes, but what struck me from your post was when you mentioned weather you were used to as a kid. Here we have the same thing, when I was a kid we always used to have late afternoon thunderstorms and heavy showers, that lasted for a bout half an hour or so and then the sun would come out again. Then it stopped, for about 20 years or so, and this Summer it's back. I'm loving it. It starts going VERY dark at about 16:30 in the afternoon, and the wind starts blowing. That's my favourite part, I always have this feeling of anticipation. Then we have the most impressive displays of thunder and lightning and then a short cloud break. Sometimes it rains so hard that you have to pull off the road, cause even if your windscreen wipers is at it fastest speed, you still cant see a thing.

It brings out nostalgia in most people, and others say it must be global warming, cause the weather has gone mad.

 

[Z...]

Hmm, if I were you I would start learning to like snow, considering that new ice age is more or less around the corner ;)

As the time passes by I am more or less convinced we are indeed being influenced by the dust cloud that precedes comets ,
I live in the midst of Mediterranean, where it never ever snowed and throughout winter temperature rarely drops below 8-10 degrees.
Its March now and the other day it hailed heavily while temperature dropped below 5 degrees.
Also last winter has been the coldest winter since the record started which was the beginning of the last century.

 

[Erna]

Hmm, if I were you I would start learning to like snow, considering that new ice age is more or less around the corner

I'll cross that bridge when I get to it ;)

 

[Z...]

I think you are pretty much safe in South Africa :)

 

[Jacques]

Anybody else affected by the snowstorm moving through southwestern Canada and the northeastern U.S.?

Here in Southwestern Ontario we've been hit by more than a foot of snow, and it just keeps falling. By poor body is ACHING from having to shovel out our LONG driveway every couple of hours. And when I last took the dogs out for a romp in the snow, I took a nasty fall on the ice, and banged up my knee real good. Now it's swelling something awful and I can barely walk.

We haven't seen this much snow in a long, long time. We've been seriously spoiled by increasingly mild winters over the last 20 years or so. But now I'm looking at snowbanks as high as I remember when I was a kid. I wonder if it signals the end of "global warming" and the beginning of the kind of wildly fluctuating and unpredictable weather we've been led to expect as 2012 inches closer and closer....

See: http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=8340.msg59653#msg59653

We had another tough one yesterday. Two snowstorms in the same week. We received more than 30 cm of snow and the wind was over 130 km.
That was quite scary.

For the first time in my life (over 50), the unviversity was forced to close twice in the same week.

And so far we are received more than 450 cm just for this winter and we are going to beat the all time record of 457 cm.

If you want to see some pictures: (on the french forum) http://www.sott.net/signs/fr/forum/viewtopic.php?id=463

 

[PepperFritz]

If you want to see some pictures: (on the french forum) http://www.sott.net/signs/fr/forum/viewtopic.php?id=463

Yep, those are the kind of snowbanks were're looking at here too. There's simply nowhere left to put it all!

Pleased to report that it has finally stopped snowing here. In fact, it's a beautiful, sunny, winter day....

 

[meat robot]

Due to the pattern of huge dump directly followed by fast melt,
(at least here in Onscario), the existing snow banks become hard ice triangles.
Then new fine fluff snow falls in bulk and as you throw it up onto these large “ice triangles” it just slides on down in a little avalanche of futility.

The fact that you can only find these cheap Chinese made plastic scraper shovels and not the hardcore steel ones we used as kids makes it nearly impossible to “terrace” the icy banks to hold more snow, a technique I mastered as a kid shoveling many miles of snow in Northern Onscario.

Personally, I love shoveling snow.
I even do my direct neighbors drive so that I can build the banks for maximum storage.

There is a certain calm that is achieved, sort of like those Buddhist sand boxes, I’d imagine, in clearing and banking the snow.
It is sort of like bringing a tiny taste of order out of the sky wrought chaos to your little patch of the world.
Pacing your breathing, finding a rhythm, avoiding a heart explosion, it is almost a form of meditation for me.
I have many a Eureka moment,
(often considering much of what I read here and on the greater network),
while pushing and piling snow.

If I wasn’t in my late thirties I would go down the block and offer to shovel other driveways for a very small fee, but the illusion of time passes me by quickly and I could hardly justify spending entire evenings shoveling my block.

Having said all of that I must admit that I am glad the temps are moving above zero this week bringing a big melt because I have officially run out of places to store the white stuff.
I do hope this is not the year that spring does not come.
My love could quickly turn to spite in the face of certain death.

 

[PepperFritz]

MeatRobot:

I just love your post. Takes me back to when I was a kid and couldn't wait to go out and help my Dad clear the drive after a big snowfall. We had a contraption then (don't know if they even make them anymore) that only he was allowed to use, it was like a huge metal scoop the you pushed along to collect the snow, then you tipped it up on end to empty it out. Remember how you'd just get the drive cleared, and then the snow would come along and dump a wall of snow across the bottom? We kids would stand in the drive screaming "NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" as the plow went by....

I continued to enjoy the snow-shovelling ritual until I hit 45 and developed an arthritic condition that wreaks havoc with my back. Now it's just a painful chore.

 

[Charliebox]

Up in Ottawa we got 51cm over the weekend. I'm pretty sure we had the highest amount dumped on us during that storm.

We are now 33cm away from our all time record snowfall in one winter. I have a feeling we'll get there no problem, considering what they (weatherpeople) are saying about the rest of the month.

It was funny, on Saturday night, it seemed as though everytime we went outside for a cigarette, there'd be someone else to push out of the snow. It was almost like clockwork. I'm sure one could have sat outside all evening helping people out. As much as this weather is terrible, there definetly is a 'bright side'. People who have lived near each other for years, are finally meeting, having converstion and helping each other out.

I have not felt this sense of 'community' in my whole life. You can really tell which people are out to help thier fellow human beings and which ones are too busy worrying about themselves. Thankfully the vast majority of the people in my area are of the former type.

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

It was funny, on Saturday night, it seemed as though everytime we went outside for a cigarette, there'd be someone else to push out of the snow. It was almost like clockwork. I'm sure one could have sat outside all evening helping people out. As much as this weather is terrible, there definetly is a 'bright side'. People who have lived near each other for years, are finally meeting, having converstion and helping each other out.

I have not felt this sense of 'community' in my whole life. You can really tell which people are out to help thier fellow human beings and which ones are too busy worrying about themselves. Thankfully the vast majority of the people in my area are of the former type.

Wow, that practically mirrors my own observations from a freak snowstorm here in Massachusetts back in december.

From http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=7814&p=1

Ah whatever. I'm excited! It's lots of lights everywhere. And snow! Oh boy is there snow. I'm on the east coast US and we just had a major freak snow storm (actually 2 of them). Took 7 hours to get home from work that day, and had to use my snow blower for the first time, which meant learning to use it - otherwise I couldn't get in the driveway. And I'm not complaining, to the contrary, I actually had a great time. It's just so much fun standing in one spot for hours or moving 2 miles an hour because someone stopped and now their car is stuck and won't move (or your car). It's a weird feeling seeing people get out of their cars on the highway and just kinda smoke a cigarette or clean their cars. For the first time in my life I actually felt a sense of community on the road. We were all on our way home, but we were all stuck in the same situation. So we got out of our cars and actually communicated, said hello, laughed about the situation, and basically for the first time I actually felt there were other humans on the road, if that makes sense. The roads "came alive" that day. People weren't honking and screaming at one another that I could tell, but the opposite, came to each other's rescue. Provided jumper cables, pulled each other's cars, even borrowed each other's windshield squeegees, etc. I mean sure there were some really upset people, but surprisingly not as many as I would've thought.

 

[PepperFritz]

As much as this weather is terrible, there definetly is a 'bright side'. People who have lived near each other for years, are finally meeting, having converstion and helping each other out....

I used to have a fast-paced career in Toronto, working in publishing. After I developed my medical condition, I moved to a small town for a slower pace of life, doing freelance work out of my home. For a year, to help supplement my often varying income, I took a job delivering a local paper on weekends to rural mailboxes. Driving out there on remote country roads with my dog were some of the best moments of my life -- fresh air, gorgeous scenery, beautiful animals and wildlife.

However, the job became a little treacherous in winter time. At least once every weekend I would get somewhere. But after a while I never worried about it, because within a very short period of time someone would always come along to help me out. Sometimes all I needed was a push, sometimes a farmer would have to go and get his tractor and chain to pull me out of a ditch, but I was rarely stuck for more than 15 or 20 minutes without being rescued. I only had to call for a tow truck once, late at night on a very remote road, where the only passing car was driven by an elderly couple unable to provide any assistance. Nonetheless, the couple insisted on staying there with me until the tow truck arrived (almost 2 hours later), saying they would not be able to sleep without knowing that I'd gotten out of there safely.

I eventually gave up the gig because driving on gravel roads was doing a real number on my car. But I miss it. Most of all, it really restored my faith in people. I realized that when push comes to shove (literally), the vast majority of people are decent human beings.

 

[JonnyRadar]

well, if any of you guys every decide you're just yearning for the snow and can't stand it, you're always welcome to the keweenaw! :D

EDIT: incidentally, our record snowfall was 390.4 inches, in the winter of '78-'79... _http://www.pasty.com/snow/

haven't seen anything like that lately, as it's been pretty nice around here. we did have a few whoppers earlier this winter...

 

[Keit]

Well, unfortunately we don't have snow, but we had a weird fog in Tel-Aviv on 6th of March. It was noon when suddenly huge fog cloud came from the sea. It was so rapid, it looked like in the movies. Meteorologists reported that such thing is very rare and happens only once in several years and only at night. Someone commented that maybe it was a cold front and there was a drastic decrease of temperatures above the sea. Others said that maybe it was a sand cloud, but it wasn't really yellow and moved very fast. In any way, it was the day of Jerusalem shooting, so it kind of made me thought about 4D battles/activity disguised as weather. But maybe it's just a fog :)

I took pictures of this fog from 17th floor. Notice the high building on the first 3 pictures and the progression of the fog. After an hour the sky was clear again and we could also see the sea.