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75% of the US will suffer below-freezing temps this week
- citilife 8y agoIt's supposed to be -18 in mid-Illinois, with a windchill of -48. This typically happens once or twice a year - not fun, three days later it's supposed to be mid-50's. Gotta love the 70+ degree swings. I just want consistent weather, i.e. minimize the distance between the weekly minimum / maximum. Is that too much to ask?
- goda90 8y agoI'm not looking forward to the heat wave this weekend. Either this large accumulation of snow will cause flooding, or it will melt a bit and then turn solid when the temperature drops again.
- hermitdev 8y agoI'm not terribly concerned, and I live right on the banks of the Salt Creek in the western Chicago 'burbs. The creek level is pretty low currently and has plenty of capacity for run-off. I'm sure there are areas that might experience flooding, but I wouldn't expect any more than a heavy summer storm. A thaw/freeze cycle also isn't that bad if you've already shoveled what you need to. If you haven't, yeah, it's going to suck when to get around to it.
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoThat's the new normal friend. AGW means more unpredictable weather from now on.
- reaperducer 8y agoThat's the old normal, too.
- mooman219 8y agoPlaces with more favorable weather usually cost a premium :(. Seattle is pretty mild though if you're in the market.
- irrational 8y agoDoes Seattle have favorable weather? My in-laws live there (Redmond) and every time we go there it is raining. We live in Portland and I can't tell you how many times we've left Portland with sunny weather and it has been steadily raining in Seattle, even in August! I think somewhere like San Diego has what would be considered more favorable weather.
- mooman219 8y agoDepends on what you consider favorable. Winters don't normally ever drop below freezing, and Summers don't normally stick above the 70Fs. It's pretty moderate thanks to the mountain ranges.
- dgzl 8y agoCentral Illinois was my first time experiencing freezing rain. Leaving work, everyone had to spend 30+ minutes chiseling an inch of ice off their windshield with their car blasting heat, while being rained on and whipped with strong wind.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThat sheet of ice over your whole car isn't too bad if you can figure out the right amount of force to crack the ice without also cracking your windshield. :D One day last week I spent my time after work removing it off my car, then driving to where my friend works, and removing it off her car too.
- hermitdev 8y agoIt's not too bad if you're patient and plan ahead: raise the wipers so they're not frozen to the windshield and let the car warm up. After about 5-10 minutes of warming, the ice on a windshield comes off very easy. Granted, the last storm wasn't an inch of ice, it was about a 1/4" of ice, some snow, then about another 1/4" of ice. Took me longer to shovel around the car than it did to clean the car itself off.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThis is what you agree to[1] when you live in Illinois. ;) Hello, fellow Illinoisan. [1] Other things you agree includes a terrible budget, corrupt politicians, and the sad realization that the government here only works here at all when those corrupt politicians are in charge.
- hermitdev 8y agoI live in Illinois, while I accept and can deal with the weather, I neither agree with, nor accept any of the corruption. I generally vote against every incumbent at every election.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoMy sad realization is that when we elected a governor who wasn't interrelated with the existing cronies, we ended up without a budget for over two years.
- gowld 8y agoBig thank you for that lite.cnn.io URL variant. Very apropos to HN. The home page is beautiful: http://lite.cnn.io/en http://lite.cnn.io/en
- enlyth 8y agoI disagree, the lite edition significantly deteriorated my user experience. On a wide 4K monitor, the text is not centred, stretching from the far left to the far right, making it very difficult to continuously read a sentence from left to right. Limits like 80 characters per line exist for a reason. The text is formatted in a very annoying manner, line by line, sentence by sentence, like it was spit out by a debugger in a terminal. I'm trying to compare this to the experience of reading a column in a newspaper with proper typography and visual layout. The page already loads a css stylesheet which is mostly empty, for whatever reason, and also tries to load an analytics plugin with javascript, so I don't see the reason to omit basic stylesheets to at least make it readable. Compared to the "full" version with an adblocker, even with JS disabled, in my eyes it's still a significant step down.
- bmeski 8y agoIt was not meant for a 4k desktop. It was meant for mobile devices.
- devy 8y agoDitto! I didn't even know that existed.
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoAgreed! Wish there was a way to give active feedback to the team that made this a thing. I guess just usage metrics do more than anything else.
- bmeski 8y agoOur CTO whipped it up as a pet project.
- 8y ago
- goda90 8y agoAs someone from the midwest, below-freezing is no big deal(so suffer seems like a silly word). I'm curious how much will suffer below 0F(~-18C) this week. We certainly will, and the wind chill won't help.
- dgzl 8y agoIndeed, below freezing really isn't very bad. I'm sure it was just chosen for the statistic.
- scrooched_moose 8y agoAlso midwest, and below freezing is fine and below 0 is annoying. This potential -60F windchill through Minnesota on Wednesday is terrifying. The worst I've ever experienced is -40 and it was brutal. https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/national/weather-forecast-maps?day=3 https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/national/weather-forecast-... (third map)
- teilo 8y agoRight. MN here. Forecast is for -33, windchill -60. I've been here > 20 years, and can only remember twice when it got to -20s. I'm not sure my car will even start on Thursday morning.
- 2trill2spill 8y agoFunny I had the opposite reaction, I live in Minneapolis and if it gets that cold I'm going on a walk, I've been in -45 and wanted to beat my record. But I also do have a large amount of winter gear.
- upofadown 8y agoOnce the windchill gets beyond -40C/F it doesn't really matter anymore. Any exposed skin is just as frozen. Your eyelashes are still sticking together. It would probably be better to just report it as some sort of "scarf required" zone followed by "scarf required and it might be a bit uncomfortable" zone.
- excalibur 8y agoBelow freezing is nothing, but the people who understand this will see temperatures FAR below that.
- rffn 8y agoWhat do they mean by "suffer"? Isn't this normal in winter?
- thaumasiotes 8y agoNormal to the north; not normal to the south or west. At least, temperatures that allow for snow to appear are not normal in the south or on the west coast. Spot temperatures below freezing are. I'd believe it's normal for 75% of the land area.
- reaperducer 8y agotemperatures that allow for snow to appear are not normal in the south or on the west coast That's more of a stereotype than a fact. It gets very cold in winter in the vast majority of nation, including the south and west. It snows in Las Vegas every year. Las Vegas even has a ski resort.† But people rely on an old cartoon-inspired vision of what a "desert" is, rather than the fact that "desert" means a place with little water, not necessarily high temperatures year-round. Their vision of "American desert" is usually Monument Valley.†† But guess what, that's under snow right now, too. And it's not unusual. † https://www.leecanyonlv.com https://www.leecanyonlv.com †† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_Valley
- thaumasiotes 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_south https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_south Vegas and Colorado are neither coastal nor southern. My vision of "American desert" is probably near Albuquerque where I lived for several years. It snowed every year. But you'll note that New Mexico isn't part of the south either, despite its location on the border.
- reaperducer 8y agoWho mentioned Colorado? Monument Valley is Arizona.
- kushti 8y agoHow many homeless people in the US are dying per day under such conditions?
- himynameisdom 8y agoThis may be a good place to start: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5739436/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5739436/ Conclusion: Our results indicate excessive mortality among the homeless as well as the weak and rather typical influence of atmospheric conditions on mortality rates in this subpopulation, except for a greater risk of cold related deaths than in the general population... Deaths caused by hypothermia were thirteen-fold more frequently recorded among the homeless than for the general population. A relative risk of death for a homeless person even in moderate cold stress conditions is higher (RR = 1.84) than in thermoneutral conditions.
- dgzl 8y agoSome for sure, I've heard plenty of news about incidences. Sub-freezing isn't too bad though, especially with layers and a good sleeping bag. The worst happens if you get wet or are exposed to wind.
- peterwwillis 8y agoAveraged? 1.9 per day, 700 yearly. https://nationalhomeless.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Winter_weather_report.pdf https://nationalhomeless.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Wint... Throughout the US from 1999 to 2011, an average of about 1,301 per year (but not exclusive to homeless). https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6151a6.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6151a6.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf Also there was an average of 658 deaths per year due to heat or humidity (again, not exclusively homeless). https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/prolonged-exposure-to-heat-cho/26887488 https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/prolonged-exposu... These deaths are mostly preventable by just giving people a room to sit in that's warmer/colder than the outside air, for a very small number of nights/days. An outreach program during these periods of extreme temperatures could have a big impact.
- justtopost 8y ago
- himynameisdom 8y agoLiving in Ohio, we're well equipped to handle this. Will be thinking about everyone else who may not be use to these types of conditions. Stay smart, safe, and somehow warm everyone!
- mooman219 8y agoWeather patterns the past week have been very all over the place. It looks like we'll be in an El Niño weather pattern this winter/spring which will make it feel a bit warmer. The polar vortex also is spilling out due to the higher temperatures, which will ironically lead to cooler temperatures in Canada/US like the article mentions. I'm sure this was linked to HN because of larger climate change concerns. Average global temperatures are increasing, but short term periods of warming and cooling are pretty cyclical.
- borkt 8y agoYep, weather != climate, and it goes both ways. Glad the article didn't try to push any climate aspect.
- tom_ 8y agoThe actual headline is "75% of the US population" - something really rather different indeed.
- jandrese 8y ago75% of the US Land Area would be kind of a snoozer headline since that would include Alaska.
- Veelox 8y agoIts a great week to live in the Bay Area.
- masonic 8y agoTomorrow's forecast is 2-3 inches of auto window glass in most parking lots.
- modzu 8y agoand if you're wondering, that's probably 100% for us canadians lol
- mal10c 8y agoI'm from the midwest and it's been pretty darn cold the last few days. This week is supposed to have a low around -30. I live pretty far out in the country, so I've stocked up my truck with extra hats and coveralls (which I call my bunny suit), and an extra set of boots. This morning I saw a few cars in the ditch after some ice last night, so stopped to see if anyone needed a ride or just to get out of the cold. In these temperatures, I try to be a little extra mindful of neighbors in need and helping people who are stranded. Good news though, it's going to be much warmer this weekend, so something to look forward to!
- rdm_blackhole 8y agoMeanwhile, in Oz, we are having one of the hottest Summer on record.