Apocalyptic weather

To be fair to HRH Sausage Fingers, isn't anyone who's not an actual architect kind of an 'architectural retard' by definition, on account of their not being actual architect?

Getting to experience a more traditional north east winter this year, currently sitting through a blizzard as this blows through, roughly 12 inches of snow since midnight with another 6-10 forecast.

No better way of starting your day than having to dig a pathway through the snow so the dogs can have their morning pee..

It's been very snowy and cold all winter in Chicago. Actually really enjoyed it. I guess it helps we have a snow blower and I genuinely like the cold.

It then shot up to 65 degrees last week only to be down to -9 and snowing today. Nothing like the North East right now but it keeps you on your toes.

Chicago: Rough riding it.

Revised forecast for today is now 24-30 inches, so far we’ve had 18 according to reports, and another 10 is forecast later in the week

The dogs pee tunnel is now buried again.

Fortunately the snow blower is primed and ready for action when it finally stops…

Final score was 35 inches of snow.. only took 5 hours to clear my driveway and the 2 of my neighbors, there is a law here that you are supposed to clear the pavement near your house, given mine is currently buried in a 10ft pile of snow (courtesy of the town ploughing the street, including a JCB digger picking up and dumping snow that had nowhere to go) I can confidently predict that’s not happening.

That sounds simultaneously ace and horrific at the same time. We are the same. If there is ice or snow then we have to clear it otherwise we could be help liable for any accidents. Bit rubbish but I suppose rules are rules. I hope you had some decent tunes on your headphones as you cleaned up that mess.

Also where's the picture of the snowman. you've got to have a snowman. You probably won't get that much again. must say 3 feet of snow is pretty amazing. Can't say we have had close to that. Might be a blessing as I still have to work 12 miles away.

Chicago: Impressed.

I can't be the only one singing the Mr Plough song.

That song again?

Loving the turn of weather here in the UK. Forecast says it might get up to 14° tomorrow.

Is that the British English version?

The rain dump on Wellington made the NYT for the state of emergency.
Impressive floods.

It's still disappointingly parky in the UK.

Do you mean Northern or dead or both?

With recent temperature records for May being set, I was taking a look at figures for heatwaves over the years since 1972 (data goes back much further, but the analysis takes ages).

Because the Central England Temperature series is used (records dating back to the 17th century), the benchmark for a heatwave is a maximum temperature of 27 or higher for three or more consecutive days.

The first thing I noted was that 1976 still holds the record for the longest heatwave with 14 days, and this 14 day period was the only time that the heatwave criteria was met; the summer was very warm and well above average, but in terms of average temperature over the summer, it is now third on the list behind 2032 and 2018. As warming continues, I'd expect to see 1976 slip further down the list, but this won't stop climate change deniers from claiming it was far warmer. 1976 will remain notable for the extreme drought which began in 1975 and persisted to September 1976.

The period from 1972 to produced 69 days of cumulative heatwave conditions. The period since 2000 has seen 129, 102 of which have occurred since 2010. 88 of those 102 heatwave days have been since 2018. 2018 had five separate periods of heatwave conditions from totalling 23 days/ nearly a third of the summer ranked as heatwave conditions.

Temperatures rise much faster in the modern climate than 50 years ago. There are many reasons for this, but one is that warming over France and Spain means that when we have a southerly flow, the temperatures at the source are higher by several degrees than they were 50 years ago; in the past it would take five days or so of settled weather before reaching 30 degrees. Now we can see 30+ within a couple of days. However, that was not the cause of the recent May records.

For the recent spell, we had an usually deep high pressure establishing very close or over the UK (the media likes to call them "heat domes" nowadays). As the pressure was high right up through the lower atmosphere, we had sir descending from high altitude (air descends in a high pressure and rises in a low pressure) which compressed and warmed rapidly as it fell towards the surface. With the sun being close to its strongest at this time of year this led to very rapid warming and the resulting record temperatures.

We didn't just beat the May record; we smashed it. The previous record for May was 32.8; 35.1 was recorded on Tuesday May 26th. Breaking records by such large margins is nearly unprecedented, and falls far outside any expected statistical norms. The probability of reaching such temperatures without global warming would be less than 0.01. With current warming it rises to 0.03. The UK has warmed by 1.1 degrees since the 1961-1990 30 year rolling averages when compared with 1991-2020, with that rise accelerating since 2010.

Anyway, lower temps on the way from Sunday, although still above average, it will feel almost fresh.

Snow forecast for parts of Massachusetts and Vermont tomorrow, we'll be back in single digits celsius... its almost June, I'm all for cold crisp Winters but the last 3 months have been mostly awful weather wise..

The next week is glorious for us, temps varying from low to high 20s and nothing but sun. Going for a picnic Sunday afternoon.