snow!

In advanced industrial countries they use weather radar to collect that kind of information. You should think about immigrating to one.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

"John Larkin" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Looks like what we have here on the east coast. Thought you said you measured snow in feet?

Cheers

Ah. I miss those times. Used to get like that maybe 3-4 times a year here. Now? Maybe once every 3-4 years.

Local newspaper dug out old records for Portland going back into the 1800's and showed that up until a few decades back, our average snowfall for the area was about 26 inches a year. Now, it is less then 2 inches on average per year.

I love snow days and nights. Especially nights, when I'd walk in the snow for hours and look at the stars.

Lucky dog.

There's a local saying in my area, "Don't like the weather right now? Just wait a few hours. It'll change."

The geography includes the Columbia Gorge, which acts like a slipstream of sorts, and terrain elevation changes of 11,000' over a matter of ten and twenty miles across broad areas. I can't say if it would make a lot of difference, but this may be compounded by a lack of knowledge about upper air patterns, since gov't hasn't spent money to map them out in this area. (I've asked and had that verified through conversations with local meteorologists.)

Regardless, local weather prediction is not an easy problem in my area. By comparison, sitting in the midwest plains of the US you can often "see" the weather heading your way from thousands of miles off, so plenty of useful warning.

Still, it's possible with enough experience of an area to recognize patterns of rapid change. I can't tell what is coming from days away, as I've no built-in long-range radar sense. But having lived here all my life, I can often recognize when big changes will happen over short periods. It's not at all uncommon that I can take a look at the skies and stand outside and feel the wind over a matter of minutes to then know the local forecasters are wrong when predicting "more of the same" for a while and not realizing that it is all just about to become very different.

But snow is good!! Love it.

Jon

Ah, then you won't like it here. Right now, at 2 am, the thermometer on my desk reads 21.2 C (70 F). It's probably around

It wouldn't be fair to expect accurate predictions here. It's not at all rare to have a downpour in one half of the town while the other half is bone dry. Often you can see a clear line of demarcation right across the street.

Not! That's my remote webcam. The Brat is up there this weekend with her friends. I'm stuck near sea level, behind a keyboard, writing a "requirements document" for a laser controller. Hey, if someone wants to buy something, shouldn't *they* write the requirements document? But it seems that *they* don't work weekends.

The cabin is just a few miles east of the Sierra crest, not quite as high as up by you. The prevailing wind from the ocean climbs up the western slope of the mountains, dumping snow on the way up. I think the record was over 800 inches one year, on the western slope. We still get a lot in Truckee. By the time the air reaches Nevada and Arizona, we've wrung most of the moisture out. So sue us.

The trains have to go through tunnels and snow sheds.

ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/CW_snow_shed.jpg

Mandatory chain controls are common on I80. Looks OK just now. Wish I was there.

John

Watching a wall of rain coming in on radar, ETA an hour or so, doesn't sound like very fancy simulation to me. The guy in the boat is cheaper and just as accurate. The computer forcasts are terrible here: the storms swirl in from the west, over the Pacific, and can change their minds about where they are headed in, literally, hours. The 5-day predictions change every day! Shameless.

John

It's 72°F/22°C here right now, sunny enough to require dense sunglasses... and partially closed shutters so I can see the monitors ;-) ...Jim Thompson

We've got about 4" of partly cloudy all over the back deck down at the

Jim

Yeah, I just hate shoveling partly cloudy.

John

I'm never more active and energetic than I am in a snow environment and at 2AM in the morning! I'm mostly Swedish, by descent. Basically, transparent skin. So perhaps snow and months-long, active nights are in my blood.

I've been in a situation like that in San Jose, raining in the front yard and not raining in the back yard, for example. And yes, it happens like that more than a few times every year here in Portland. You can see the sleeting lines from the clouds and the difference at impact on the ground as it lays before you. We may not get as much rain as you, though. I see as much as 50-60 inches per year.

Jon

Sure, they're only weathermen, predicting the weather. If they were real climatologists predicting climate, they'd be right on the money.

That high just off So. Cal finally dissipated, so they were forecasting "showers in the evening." I went out at about 11 AM and it was already drizzling.

They can't even predict the weather TODAY!!! =:-O

Cheers! Rich

A few years ago (maybe 10-15), in Bloomington, MN, I was on the third-floor screened porch watching a freak thunderstorm approaching from the south-souhteast; we'd seen it on the weather radar earlier in the day; I thought it'd be fun to watch.

The storm was rolling in _fast_, like those clouds in sci-fi flicks and stuff - I was watching these dark, angry clouds roll in faster than any clouds I'd ever seen, and WHAM!! I was hit in the face with 100 MPH straight-line winds and marble-sized hail. Thank DAWG that the screen on the porch held - but it was deflected in the middle by about 6" and riddled with marble- sized dimples. It blew out my bedroom window, and there were hailstones in the closet at the far side of the room. The storm blew over in what seems like minutes, and there were hailstones piled up in drifts very much like snowdrifts.

The next time we drove down to Mankato to visit the rels in the Valley of the Joly Ho Ho Ho Green Giant, at one point, I saw a stand of trees all broken off as if there'd been a tornado, but they were all pointing the same way. When we got to the next town, (St. Peter), I remarked, "Hey, aren't we supposed to be in St. Peter about now?" EVERY TREE IN THE TOWN WAS GONE!!!! And most of the roofs were plywood or blue tarps.

Of course, everybody in the state chipped in and sent them seedlings and saplings to plant.

Cheers! Rich

Nah. that's denialist propaganda. >:->

Today, I got rained on while the sun was shining through a hole in the clouds. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Weather reports are much better on the East Coast, because there are all those folks upwind gathering data for us. When I moved here 20 years or so back, I was surprised at how good the weather predictions were.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

It can be quite comical to see people caught outside on the wet side of town emerge dripping wet on the dry side. I've never measured the rainfall myself. One source cites an average of 100" a year for the whole state.

Blatant GW!!!

...like Japan, which has done that for over 30 years.

If the boat is in the right place. Weather radar has a longer range the human eye, particularly when the weather is cloudy.

Not enough off-shore weather sensors? I thought that was what satellites were good for - or are the forecasters simply incompetent?

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen