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Five freaking inches of ice covers Dallas-Fort Worth. No snow, just ice. Grandson discovered he could sneak out the front door while I was making dinner and slide down the deck stairs on his butt - in his pajamas with no shoes. It's 27F outside with a wind chill of 18F. It took me 30 minutes to get the front door opened yesterday. The roads are so dangerous it isn't even a joke and some idiot tried to drive on the interstate that runs through my town and wound up sliding off the bridge into the lake and dying pretty immediately. I'm stuck in the house with a hyperactive 2-year-old, a completely emo 21 year old, my husband and my mother - and the three dogs who are completely against the idea of going outside to do their chores.

 

On the plus side, I got my paper on the Decameron done early and now have freedom to study for my finals - if people will leave me alone.

 

This happens every few years or so but I still hate it beyond belief.

Atleast you dont get it nearly every year and have to work outside in it!!!

Put your feet up, have a nice cup of tea and think of the 5 inches...

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Five freaking inches of ice covers Dallas-Fort Worth. No snow, just ice. Grandson discovered he could sneak out the front door while I was making dinner and slide down the deck stairs on his butt - in his pajamas with no shoes. It's 27F outside with a wind chill of 18F. It took me 30 minutes to get the front door opened yesterday. The roads are so dangerous it isn't even a joke and some idiot tried to drive on the interstate that runs through my town and wound up sliding off the bridge into the lake and dying pretty immediately. I'm stuck in the house with a hyperactive 2-year-old, a completely emo 21 year old, my husband and my mother - and the three dogs who are completely against the idea of going outside to do their chores.

 

On the plus side, I got my paper on the Decameron done early and now have freedom to study for my finals - if people will leave me alone.

 

This happens every few years or so but I still hate it beyond belief.

 

Well, it's even bad enough that BBC just did a brief report on it. And usually they are filled with thinly-veiled contempt for America and would never bother covering something unless it was Katrina-esque.

 

Whenever I hear of bad weather in places like Texas, I'm so confused. I just don't fucking understand how a place that is so normally associated with scorching hot deserts filled with fucking rattlesnakes and shit like that can get such icy death-weather just because it's December. It's one of those things that will always be a mystery to me, like...... how people find American football entertaining, and other stuff like that.

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Five freaking inches of ice covers Dallas-Fort Worth. No snow, just ice. Grandson discovered he could sneak out the front door while I was making dinner and slide down the deck stairs on his butt - in his pajamas with no shoes. It's 27F outside with a wind chill of 18F. It took me 30 minutes to get the front door opened yesterday. The roads are so dangerous it isn't even a joke and some idiot tried to drive on the interstate that runs through my town and wound up sliding off the bridge into the lake and dying pretty immediately. I'm stuck in the house with a hyperactive 2-year-old, a completely emo 21 year old, my husband and my mother - and the three dogs who are completely against the idea of going outside to do their chores.

 

On the plus side, I got my paper on the Decameron done early and now have freedom to study for my finals - if people will leave me alone.

 

This happens every few years or so but I still hate it beyond belief.

 

Well, it's even bad enough that BBC just did a brief report on it. And usually they are filled with thinly-veiled contempt for America and would never bother covering something unless it was Katrina-esque.

 

Whenever I hear of bad weather in places like Texas, I'm so confused. I just don't fucking understand how a place that is so normally associated with scorching hot deserts filled with fucking rattlesnakes and shit like that can get such icy death-weather just because it's December. It's one of those things that will always be a mystery to me, like...... how people find American football entertaining, and other stuff like that.

 

I don't have an answer for the football, but I can answer the weather question.

 

North Texas is in a part of the US called the Great Plains. This area of the world has the highest instance of violent weather in the world. Convection is fed by the warm, humid air rising from the Gulf of Mexico combined with a large variance in temperature with altitude. Adding in a high propensity for wind shear driven by high pressure systems to the east, lift from upper level troughs and the air that comes off the Rockies and large,powerful, unstable thunderstorms will produce hail and tornadoes in the spring. Large ice storms in the winter and compounded by large cold fronts that come down from Canada with absolutely nothing to stop them. When the circumstances are perfect, which they are sometimes, these cold fronts hit the moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and ice storms result. If we are really super duper lucky, we get ones like we had this month.

 

In the summer, a high pressure system will descend on this part of the country and basically park. These systems remain intact for months, stopping all other weather systems from coming in. Temperatures rise. And rise. And rise some more. And the total lack of movement in the air does all kinds of wonderful things with the pollution.

 

And then there's El Nino.

 

TL;DR - Texas has the perfect geographic location to be tornadoed, hurricaned, blown around, hailed and iced to death. We love it. Except when we don't.

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Five freaking inches of ice covers Dallas-Fort Worth. No snow, just ice. Grandson discovered he could sneak out the front door while I was making dinner and slide down the deck stairs on his butt - in his pajamas with no shoes. It's 27F outside with a wind chill of 18F. It took me 30 minutes to get the front door opened yesterday. The roads are so dangerous it isn't even a joke and some idiot tried to drive on the interstate that runs through my town and wound up sliding off the bridge into the lake and dying pretty immediately. I'm stuck in the house with a hyperactive 2-year-old, a completely emo 21 year old, my husband and my mother - and the three dogs who are completely against the idea of going outside to do their chores.

 

On the plus side, I got my paper on the Decameron done early and now have freedom to study for my finals - if people will leave me alone.

 

This happens every few years or so but I still hate it beyond belief.

 

Well, it's even bad enough that BBC just did a brief report on it. And usually they are filled with thinly-veiled contempt for America and would never bother covering something unless it was Katrina-esque.

 

Whenever I hear of bad weather in places like Texas, I'm so confused. I just don't fucking understand how a place that is so normally associated with scorching hot deserts filled with fucking rattlesnakes and shit like that can get such icy death-weather just because it's December. It's one of those things that will always be a mystery to me, like...... how people find American football entertaining, and other stuff like that.

 

I don't have an answer for the football, but I can answer the weather question.

 

North Texas is in a part of the US called the Great Plains. This area of the world has the highest instance of violent weather in the world. Convection is fed by the warm, humid air rising from the Gulf of Mexico combined with a large variance in temperature with altitude. Adding in a high propensity for wind shear driven by high pressure systems to the east, lift from upper level troughs and the air that comes off the Rockies and large,powerful, unstable thunderstorms will produce hail and tornadoes in the spring. Large ice storms in the winter and compounded by large cold fronts that come down from Canada with absolutely nothing to stop them. When the circumstances are perfect, which they are sometimes, these cold fronts hit the moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and ice storms result. If we are really super duper lucky, we get ones like we had this month.

 

In the summer, a high pressure system will descend on this part of the country and basically park. These systems remain intact for months, stopping all other weather systems from coming in. Temperatures rise. And rise. And rise some more. And the total lack of movement in the air does all kinds of wonderful things with the pollution.

 

And then there's El Nino.

 

TL;DR - Texas has the perfect geographic location to be tornadoed, hurricaned, blown around, hailed and iced to death. We love it. Except when we don't.

 

So it's all Mexico's fault. Yeah I should have guessed that one ;):glare::lol:

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Where did the rest of him go?

 

jeansfrozenquebec.gif

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I'm sorry, what month is it again?

 

I've got the window open right now and thinking about doing a barbecue later....

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Guest Droosy

My favourite weather-girl is Jenny Harrison from CNN!!!

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My, it's VERY breezy outside today in North Devon. I've just seen one of my neighbour's chickens blow past - and my neighbour lives half a mile away. The chicken was not looking entirely in control and heading in the general direction of London. She should be there in about an hour and a half.

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Guest Patricia Serra

E Aqui no Rio de Janeiro, ESTA FAZENDO 40 º.

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Meh......thats Summer up here...

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My, it's VERY breezy outside today in North Devon. I've just seen one of my neighbour's chickens blow past - and my neighbour lives half a mile away. The chicken was not looking entirely in control and heading in the general direction of London. She should be there in about an hour and a half.

 

She could have had my ticket to see Frank Turner at the O2 if I'd known. I chickened out of attempting the journey.

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Anyone else have a huge storm yet today? It was great here, hailstones, massively loud lightning and everything. Must have lasted half an hour.

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The other day, in Stevenage, we had the longest rumble of thunder I've ever known. Must of lasted a full 30 seconds. Off to try and see if there is a worlds record.

 

"Ask" quotes a bloke in California thinking "his" was longer than a minute.

 

Trust the Yanks, always bigger, always better...

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The other day we had the longest rumble of thunder I've ever known. Must of lasted a full 30 seconds. Off to try and see if there is a worlds record.

 

WTF? Are you sure you didn't just hear a rumble of thunder at the same time as someone throwing some old sofas into a skip?

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The other day, in Stevenage, we had the longest rumble of thunder I've ever known. Must of lasted a full 30 seconds. Off to try and see if there is a worlds record.

 

"Ask" quotes a bloke in California thinking "his" was longer than a minute.

 

Trust the Yanks, always bigger, always better...

 

Well yes. :D

 

This link gives a rather nice scientific approach to the accoustics of thunder. I've read that lighting can be remarkably long in size (100+ km), so rumbles in the minutes are, in principle, possible. Of course local geography also plays a role by causing echoes.

 

regards,

Hein

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By god, that article is dry...

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By god, that article is dry...

 

Unlike Bank Holiday Monday.

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Does anyone remember an August as shit as this one? Freezing cold from about about day 5 onwards... what a rip off.

 

I remember thinking what grumpy bastards Bibliogryphon and charon were for saying "winter is coming" on Aug. 1, turns out they were pretty much right. :sicktherm::electr2:

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Ive probably spent the last 25 years, give or take a couple, working predominantly outdoors.

Last week, for two days, I could smell autumn in the air. Fuck knows how or why but I seem to be able to smell autumn and spring. The smell of autumn is very fresh and clean, the air is not cold but you can feel a sharpness to it.

Yep, may make no fucking sense whatsoever but, give or take the odd few days here and there, I reckon we are going into autumn already.

This means, at some stage during the winter, I shall be working out in minus 12 or 17, as Ive had to do over the last few years.

Im getting too fucking old for all that now.....

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Ive probably spent the last 25 years, give or take a couple, working predominantly outdoors.

Last week, for two days, I could smell autumn in the air. Fuck knows how or why but I seem to be able to smell autumn and spring. The smell of autumn is very fresh and clean, the air is not cold but you can feel a sharpness to it.

Yep, may make no fucking sense whatsoever but, give or take the odd few days here and there, I reckon we are going into autumn already.

This means, at some stage during the winter, I shall be working out in minus 12 or 17, as Ive had to do over the last few years.

Im getting too fucking old for all that now.....

 

I love autumn and the "smell" of it. Specifically November which is my favourite month by about 10 country miles....... I just don't want it to come in fucking August that's all. If we don't get a half-decent "Indian Summer" to make up for it (by that I mean we get a nice warm September, not a cholera outbreak) I'm gonna go up in a hot air balloon and do something bad.

 

And you'll have to excuse me while I punch the sky.

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Does anyone remember an August as shit as this one? Freezing cold from about about day 5 onwards... what a rip off.

 

I remember thinking what grumpy bastards Bibliogryphon and charon were for saying "winter is coming" on Aug. 1, turns out they were pretty much right. :sicktherm::electr2:

 

Having said that, and it has pissed down since the first, clear skies today, tomorrow and wed.

 

Fucking cold wind though.

 

Plus it is dark NOW, and won't get light until after half five. That's the pisser :(

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Yup, Autumn's definitely making an early appearance...

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