OT: Wild Weather

Snow in Arizona?

So, about that whole global warming thing...

Or maybe the "eurotrash" are enacting vengance against the entire state of AZ for Jim's earlier comments? ;)

ROTFL ;-)

The snow up north is not unusual... just the heavy rains/tornados down in the Phoenix area... though we DO have an occasional _summer_ tornado... one in 1972 wiped out most of my neighborhood in North Scottsdale... houses all around me went down... I just suffered sand-blasted paint plus people's roofs in my swimming pool :-(

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

"Mark Jones" wrote

et. al.

-- Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio Consulting Engineer: Electronics; Informatics; Photonics. Remove spaces etc. to reply: n o lindan at net com dot com psst.. want to buy an f-stop timer? nolindan.com/da/fstop/

Nice storm!

We're in the middle of the worst ice storm in over 20 years.

Global warming means more water gets evaporated from the oceans, which in turns leads to wilder weather.

There are more specific effects, and one possible result of global warming would be for the Gulf Stream to turn off, which might leave most of northern Europe covered with glaciers (as it was in the last Ice Age).

Since the U.S.is the biggest single generator of greenhouse gases, good for 20% of the emissions from 5% of the world population, you would seem to be taking vengeance on yourselves, and possibly getting in some kind of pre-emptive vengeance on northern Europe.

------------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I read in sci.electronics.design that snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org wrote (in ) about 'OT: Wild Weather', on Thu, 6 Jan 2005:

The east coasts of North America and China weren't glaciated the last time I looked, and they don't have the benefit of warm ocean currents. But the climate change would be significant; New York, Madrid and Rome are on about the same latitude, as are London, England and Goose Bay, Labrador.

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

I'm not sure where the jetstream is running right now, but we're expecting another storm here in Southern California within the next day or two. You might have more fun this weekend.

We just had an earthquake half an hour ago... not to bad at my house, but it might have been worse nearer the epicenter.

-- Mike --

The word here is that MORE rain is coming this afternoon :-(

Where are you... Bay Area?

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Check here-

Nijmegen - where I'm living at the moment - sits on the southern glacial morraine deposited by the Rhine when it was a glacier, back in the last Ice Age. It isn't coastal, but it isn't all that far above sea level either.

Arnhem - 25km to the north - sits on the northern glacial morraine, so the Rhine as a glacier was pretty wide.

---------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Yep. That SW wind that then swings east is doing a number on us... except our drought is over... the reservoirs are overflowing into the Salt River and there's many FEET of snow in the mountains.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

The biggest concern at the moment seems to be a possible large and sudden rise in sea level due to _melting_ at the poles. The resulting rise in sea level could mean some prime real estate is under water within 80 years. Your children better watch out where they buy a house or expect to see it's value fall.

Quote: The West Antarctic ice sheet is thought to be potentially unstable, and if it collapsed sea levels around the world would rise almost 20 feet. The melting of the larger and more stable East Antarctic ice sheet would raise Earth's sea levels another 200 feet.

Think it won't happen?

In January 1995 around 2000 square kilometers of the Larsen Ice sheet broke up....

"Two dramatic events occurred in the Larsen Ice Shelf in late January of

1995. A large iceberg (70 km by 25 km) calved from the shelf between Jason Peninsula and Robertson Island (see map), and the northernmost part of the shelf, north of Seal Nunataks, disintegrated. The large iceberg calving event received the most notice in popular media coverage but such events are part of the normal mass balance cycle for ice shelves. The northern disintegration, on the other hand, occurred in an unprecedented manner, by the sudden break-up of a region approximately 2000 km2 into many small icebergs (typically 1 to 2 km or smaller). It is the more likely of the two events to be related to climate change."

Same storm that tore part of the roof off the Green Gables restaurant at 3d avenue and Camelback and uprooted huge trees in the neighborhood immediately north? That was back when nobody'd admit tornadoes were possible here; the weatherdrones of the day kept blaming microbursts (but then they didn't have their own Doppler radar either). Also before the current drought started; I remember much more severe summer thunderstorms, sandstorms, and rain, and the occasional Phoenix snowfall in winter though it didn't "stick" very long of course.

Remember Johhny Carson talking about building a snowman in his yard? We got Cali's leftovers that year; my midtown yard's total snow load yielded a three-foot snowdwarf. ;>)

Not evidence of "global warming", just local climate returning to "normal". Just an ex-snowbird's opinion; the drought seems to be ending.

Mark L. Fergerson

all across the southwest. The article made a point

recreation business was said to be way down. Also,

chain is again on.

lakes didn't look to good.

I don't think Arizona gets any potable water from Mead or Powell... just boat recreation ;-) Most of that water goes to Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Although there IS a canal from the Colorado River stretching east to Tucson for agricultural irrigation.

Phoenix water is from wells, Horseshoe Reservoir, and the lake string of Theodore Roosevelt, Apache, Canyon and Saguaro Lakes... all fed from snow-melt... presently at overflow condition, water running down the Salt River thru town, with several roads closed and even a portion of Loop 202 flooded.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Right. We've been getting very weird jet-stream patterns the last few years. Jim, I wonder, are you another one of the crowd that doesn't believe in global warming?

It's nice to see the Salt River running again. I had a great time running the rapids in inner tubes twenty-five years ago. There was a place that rents them, by one of the bridges over the river. The Salt River canyon is thousands of feet deep at that point.

Scary stuff, specially the last rapid which threw me off the tube, the same rapid that had wrecked a large craft a few days earlier. With one arm still over the tube I ran the rest of the rapid (one has no choice, once you enter the only exit is at the end) with my legs hanging down hitting rocks, etc. Anyway, it was so much fun I went back upstream and did it again, alone. This time I stayed on the tube.

In an inner tube your face is only a few inches above the water, so the waves and eddies tower many feet over you, blocking your vision and making a very serious impression indeed. And the sound effects are impressive as well. You go down feet first, to be able to push off rocks you encounter. Furious hand paddling to maintain your orientation. Now and then you go under one of the standing waves, and when you come out you can't see, because your eyes are covered with a thick film of water ruining your focus. Bigtime fun.

--
 Thanks,
    - Win

I saw a NOVA on PBS once about icebergs and the polar flows. Very fascinating stuff. As the water at the poles is frozen out of the ocean, large amounts of salt precipitate out. This salt flows down the ocean floor along channels which have been worn away over the millennia. This salt ends up at the equator, where centrifugal force mixes the salt with the water again and it heads back to the poles. Apparently this cycle takes a few thousand years.

With less ice at the poles, the ocean's salt flows will slow and its salinity will drop. Who knows what that will do?

I read in sci.electronics.design that Mark Jones wrote (in ) about 'OT: Wild Weather', on Thu, 6 Jan 2005:

Fewer fish with hypertension?

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

Of course. It's just left-wing propaganda ;-) Seriously, there is great debate in both directions. Neither side has made a scientifically-significant argument. Personally, reviewing Arizona weather records that go back a hundred years it appears that we are slightly COOLER.

But I understand that you folk, stuck on the East Coast, have a lot of acid rain to contend with. But it's not coming from Arizona. Most of our power plants run on natural gas, plus we have one nuclear facility. There's one big coal plant at Four Corners, but they use scrubbers in their stacks.

[snip]

Yep.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.