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It's been a pretty insane 12 hours across the Bay Area
- swayvil 6y agoStrange weather here in Southern IL too. Wettest August I've ever seen (In my ~30 years here). It's supposed to be dead dry right now. It was dead dry last August. But now we've been getting random thunderstorms almost daily. Weirdass weather.
- 11235813213455 6y agoIt's called (human-induced) climate changes
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoWait i thought the problem is that it creates droughts, not more wet weather? Or is it one of those things we could to point at if the needle moves in any direction?
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y agoClimate change causes... climate change. Whatever the climate has been for centuries in your area it will probably be different in the next 10-20 years. It might be warmer, wetter, cooler, drier or just more variable. It's hard to predict.
- 11235813213455 6y agoExactly, it causes more instability, plus a slightly but steadily growing temperature. And unfortunately, vegetables, plants, trees, nature like stability
- Izkata 6y agoEveryone is seeming to notice it more this year, so I can't help but wonder if it's the opposite: That human effects on the weather (not climate) had reached an equilibrium, and everything stopping from the pandemic is causing local weather to chaotically revert to what it was before. One example of how an effect like this could work: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/04/09/coronavirus-plane-free-skies-spur-research-warming-impact-aviation/ https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/04/09/coronavirus-pla...
- unemphysbro 6y agoI recently moved from champaign to the bay area. I was reminiscing and missing the midwest summer storms earlier this week.
- huy-nguyen 6y agoWhen the National Weather Service calls something “insane” in their bulletins, you know it’s actually insane.
- ak217 6y agoIt's insane by Bay Area standards, but having lived in Atlanta it reminds me of typical Southeast summer weather.
- 40four 6y agoYeah, I read most of it. Sounds nasty. Lots of wind, lightning, only scattered rain though? I can’t really figure out what is so insane, or even very interesting about this at all? Just that it’s uncharacteristic for the area? Is it that a large number of HNers are in the Bay Area this is trending?
- c54 6y agoIt’s quite unexpected weather for the region— though of course what’s seriously abnormal in one place might be old normal hat for another. The dumb example here is “Oh, snow in the sahara? Well, here in Alaska we get snow all the time so what’s the big deal!” For me the chief concerning thing is the “literally dozens of new fires” around the area.
- 40four 6y agoThis is true. I was confused at first, but I can imagine how it would be jarring to locals. Let’s hope the fires don’t get out of control. I live in the south east, I remember a few years ago we were in a serious drought, and we experienced a run of widespread wildfires. For weeks on end there was a visible ‘fog’ in the air from the smoke. Very strange.
- Izkata 6y ago> Let’s hope the fires don’t get out of control. In the realm of Apocalypse 2020, yesterday (Saturday) northern California had a fire tornado.
- unemphysbro 6y agoCoincidently, the transformer unit in our neighborhood failed on Friday. The storm was a welcome surprise.
- vikramkr 6y agoI can't say I've read a ton of NWS weather bulletins, but are they usually so colloquial in the discussion or is this one of those "so nuts its warranted" situations?
- rriepe 6y agoI live in SF. I'm from Florida. I was impressed.
- vikramkr 6y agoImpressed compared to the craziness that is the southeast's weather we all know and love/hate when the elements decide to spice things up, or compared to the usual bay area fare?
- rriepe 6y agoIt was impressive by Florida lightning-capital-of-the-world standards. I don't have any SF Bay Area standards for lightning storms. I think I heard more lightning last night than in the ten years before that.
- jml7c5 6y agoThis is not a weather bulletin meant for public consumption. It is a semi-formal "area forecast discussion"[1], aimed at other meteorologists. [1]: https://w1.weather.gov/glossary/index.php?word=AREA+FORECAST+DISCUSSION https://w1.weather.gov/glossary/index.php?word=AREA+FORECAST...
- vitaflo 6y agoEntirely depends on who is writing it. I like to read the forecast discussions because they tend to give more of the rationale for the forecast. You learn the thought process that goes into it, based on what they're seeing. That said I'm also a trained severe weather spotter so the forecast discussion is where I go to see if spotter activation may be likely or not.
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- craftinator 6y agoAs a former forecaster, I've always appreciated the little Easter eggs and irreverent comments that are occasionally embedded in forecast discussions... But yeah, this actually sounds like insane conditions for that area.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jonwinstanley 6y agoUK weather has been very odd over the last 12 months. We’ve just had a week of record August temperatures, and very few people in the UK have air conditioning in their homes. Climate change seems to be really starting to have measurable day-to-day affects.
- simonbarker87 6y agoCoupled with the ludicrous rain storms we’ve been having there is clearly something going on. 36deg one day and then inches of rain the next and 18deg!!!
- seizethecheese 6y agoHere in Seattle we’ve had an exceedingly mild summer. Anecdotes work in both directions.
- aaomidi 6y agoMILD SUMMER? We've been breaking records... And we don't have AC either really
- seizethecheese 6y agoWhat records? We’ve only had a few hot days all summer.
- aaomidi 6y agohttps://twitter.com/NWSSeattle https://twitter.com/NWSSeattle
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y agoSo your weather has been unusual as well? Would you say that this might be reminiscent of a changing climate? The anecdotal accounts of weird climate changes in many locations are really stacking up at this point. Together with the scientific data it is looking like all the changing climate is due to climate change.
- fastball 6y ago2500 lightning strikes does sound like a lot. Would be interesting to know how the world stacks up in terms of "average lightning strikes per hour" during a typical thunderstorm for that area.
- ghouse 6y ago> during a typical thunderstorm for that area. That's why this is "insane." It's not typical to have _any_ thunderstorms in this area. It's also not typical to have rain in August.
- plorkyeran 6y agoThe median number of lightning strikes per year is zero.
- samcheng 6y agoThere are plenty of Bay Area adults who can't remember the last time there was lightning here. It's that rare. Fun times! I worry about wildfire in the hills, since it hadn't rained for months. Thankfully, it wasn't an entirely dry storm. We had quite a bit of rain in my corner of Palo Alto last night - more than the 0.01 trace amount officially reported.
- vmception 6y agoThe great thing about having so many transplants is that nobody cares about basic weather patterns like this. The only news is the fires if there are an abnormal amount of them.
- Redoubts 6y agoYeah seriously. This gave me flashbacks to Boston.
- kurthr 6y agoAdults in the Bay Area. who can't remember lightning have memory issues. There was a huge [lightning] storm in 2012, and there was lighting in [edit: this] May... I've seen lighting, thunder, and hail (caught on video) in the last 12 months. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Thunder-lightning-could-hit-Bay-Area-in-weekend-15303095.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Thunder-lightnin...
- samcheng 6y agoHmm. I must have slept through the 2012 event. This one definitely woke me up. I do remember a glorious ~2004-ish thunderstorm, right at dusk, rolling over the Santa Cruz mountains. So maybe a little more than once a decade or so for the big lightning events?
- ianai 6y agoI thought it rained frequently there? I love far enough away to not know. Have also lived in the driest part of the US in the past...gratefully the past.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoI'd expect geocentrism from local media but not a federal domain. There are numerous bay areas in the US. Maybe drop an SF in that headline NOAA?
- detaro 6y agoIt clearly marks the San Francisco/Bay Area office in the header of the site and in the header of the content.
- stonogo 6y agoIt's a local area forecast discussion from the local office and the local area is officially named "San Francisco Bay Area/Monterey". What do you want from them exactly?
- wolfgang42 6y agoThe HN headline is a representative sentence taken from the body of the article by the poster. The title provided by NOAA is “Area Forecast Discussion, National Weather Service San Francisco Bay Area, 1117 AM PDT Sun Aug 16 2020”.
- chrisamiller 6y agoI'm sure this is abnormal for the Bay Area, but insane seems kind of overblown - this doesn't sound out of the ordinary for the midwest at all. Thunderstorms, hail, and occasional tornados are routine in the summer. Just last week, the windspeed equivalent of a category 2 hurricane rolled through IA/MO/IL, destroying homes, business, and billions of dollars of crops: https://twitter.com/coldbrewedtool/status/1294079600428044290 https://twitter.com/coldbrewedtool/status/129407960042804429...
- ghouse 6y agoIn the 26 years I've been in the bay area, nothing like last night has occurred here. So, a qualified "insane" for the Bay Area.
- jeffbee 6y agoIt's very rare here. I grew up in Oklahoma City so I know thunder, but last night I leaped out of bed because it was so spectacular, and the character of the thunder is pretty different with all the mountains around here. Initially it wasn't raining and I assumed the oil refinery in Richmond was exploding. Then after a moment it started hailing and I felt right at home.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y agoBut they are not in the Bay Area. This sort of climate change is probably due to climate change. Who knows what climate change climate change will bring to the Midwest. If it is the sort of unpredictableness happening where I live it will be unpleasant.
- gretch 6y agoIt's all relative... That's like saying if it was -40 degrees where ever you are and then someone else says "that's nothing, we get that in Antarctica all the time"
- verst 6y agoWould be good for the HN community to keep in mind what a global audience cares about. If the insane Bay Area weather affected major internet services globally for example it would be relevant. This certainly can be the top story in local Bay Area news, but too often does the HN Community conflate local Bay Area top stories with stories of global significance.
- WalterBright 6y agoI've been reading about rolling power blackouts in California due to excessive demand. Shouldn't this situation be ideal for solar power? high power demand during the day, lots of daylight hours?
- p1mrx 6y agoThe blackouts start around sunset, when solar drops off the grid but people still want A/C.
- booi 6y agoIf only there were some way to store power so we could use it when solar drops off...
- dehrmann 6y agoHow does the cost of storage for p999 events compare to the cost of natural gas or nuclear?
- sliken 6y agoOr just run your AC down to 65F till 5pm and turn off the AC till 9pm.
- beamatronic 6y agoThat’s true. Your house becomes a negative thermal battery
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoIf only we had some sort of energy clean generation technology with a high duty cycle which could ramp up regardless of sunshine or wind...
- lightgreen 6y agoIs that sarcasm? That technology is nuclear power plant.
- 40four 6y agoSo this is news because lighting is so rare there, it’s literally ‘once in a lifetime’!? I couldn’t figure out why this was here :) It is kind of weird to see this kind of reaction, to those of us in most other parts of the country. Edit: I didn’t really appreciate the drought conditions, let’s hope the wildfires don’t get bad.
- noncoml 6y ago100% agree. In many other places in the world this would be just Sunday. HN is so SF Bay centric sometimes
- verst 6y agoA good reminder that technology opinions here too only represent the tip of the iceberg of the software engineering world and hardly are representative of the industry at large.
- secondcoming 6y agoIndeed, 'Silicon Valley Privilege' is a thing
- trimbo 6y ago> HN is so SF Bay centric sometimes Given that 21% of global VC money is pumped into the Bay Area[1], that seems like a pretty natural thing. [1] - (Through 2017 though): https://hbr.org/2018/11/how-the-geography-of-startups-and-innovation-is-changing https://hbr.org/2018/11/how-the-geography-of-startups-and-in...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kurthr 6y agoThere was lightning and thunder (and hail depending on where you were) in the last year and even big summer across the sky lightning events like this in the last 5-7 [actually 8]years (I was on an airplane landing at SFO for it). It's just not common, and 100+ temperatures aren't common so together it's pretty weird. If it was the US central plains, it would be Tuesday during every summer month. [Edit It was 2012:] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Thunder-lightning-could-hit-Bay-Area-in-weekend-15303095.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Thunder-lightnin...
- neilv 6y agoThere's additional evidence that someone is adopting Colloquial Millennial in a Federal weather advisory: > The biggest impact appears to have been numerous fire starts. The fire agencies are still flying recon but literally dozens of new fires from the North Bay, East Bay, South Bay, Santa Cruz mtns and down to Monterey. I don't understand the need to say "literally" there. Until recently, "literally" was a powerful word, arguably best held in reserve for important occasions. The most recent years of popular use have diluted it. I don't believe that "literally" was intended to be said by a speaker numerous times each day, to be a filler word like "um", nor for general-purpose emphasis, nor to express unhinged enthusiasm, nor to convey "listen to me, I am the center of the universe right now!", nor to plead "I'm actually not lying this time". I blame Rob Lowe for this (and other things).
- dmoy 6y agoLanguage evolves Linguistic prescriptivism is usually a losing endeavor.
- meroes 6y agosince at least 2002 https://www.weather.gov/media/pub/pdf/sdata/072002.pdf https://www.weather.gov/media/pub/pdf/sdata/072002.pdf
- taeric 6y agoPretty sure the first known uses of literally were in way that would literally upset you.
- nickysielicki 6y agoWhat I take issue with is that there’s no verb in the second part of that sentence. The overuse of “literally” is one thing, but the fact that, “literally” has come to mean, “literally [there are]” bugs me a hell of a lot more.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dahart 6y ago
- b34r 6y agoGusty wind gusts
- ChuckMcM 6y agoNot nearly as common at night. The last time I recall a night time thunderstorm was in the 80's. That said, this morning at dawn it felt straight out of a movie thriller. All we needed was the leading edge of an alien spacecraft to emerge from the cloud bank :-). It was also interesting to note on Nextdoor the Midwesterners who were unfazed by the storm and people who have lived here their entire lives freaking out. Those roles reverse when we have a magnitude 5.x or lower quake.
- samcheng 6y agoBy the way, if you want to learn a bit more about your local weather, start reading your local "Area Forecast Discussion" (just search for that phrase plus your local region / airport) - you'll end up predicting the weather on a qualitative basis, while picking up new vocabulary and observing more about the world around you. I think the format predates ASCII. As a bonus, if you watch the local news on TV, you'll hear the local weather personalities parrot language from these forecast discussions...
- rediguanayum 6y agoI love the NOAA commentary as it adds context to what is expected. Having (barely) slept through the bay area weather this morning, others took advantage of the situation to get some gorgeous photos of lightning. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/08/16/rare-august-thunderstorm-rolls-through-san-francisco-bay-area-lightning-strikes-sparks-widespread-wildfires/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/08/16/rare-august-thu... There's also some maps for lightning strikes in the bay area that are fun to look at: https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;ts=0;y=37.3228;x=-121.9762;z=9;d=2;dl=2;dc=0;ar;as=20-08-16T12;src=6;ts24=0; https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;... (8-16-20, 12 UTC for example)
- booleanbetrayal 6y agoMeanwhile in Colorado, dry conditions and lightning sparked the Pine Gulch fire, which is just one of four major fires ongoing right now. People are getting pretty concerned. https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/16/colorado-wildfires-pine-gulch-grizzly-creek-cameron-peak-williams-fork/ https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/16/colorado-wildfires-pin...
- IAmGraydon 6y agoI'm in Southeastern VA. We had our first hurricane this year in early August, which is very unusual for for region. July was unusually hot with no rain, and now August is nothing but rain every day. What's most interesting to me, however, is that it seems that weather prediction models have literally stopped working all together. I use Windy.com (incredible weather site if you haven't tried it) and you can look at the ECMWF (aka European model), NAM, GFS and Meteoblue models. ECMWF is the most accurate model we have, and it has always been very reliable in my experience. Starting this spring, it seems the model has become wildly inaccurate. It can't even predict the weather anywhere close to accurately even the same day. Highs and lows are often off by 10 degrees F, and rain...forget it. I don't know the exact source of these inaccuracies, but I would be willing to bet climate change has broken some of the assumptions that these models rely on to make their predictions. Those factors may be in a state of flux so that the model can't even be corrected at this point. I would be very interested to hear from anyone else who is familiar with ECMWF and has (or hasn't) noticed the same problems.
- spacephysics 6y agoI believe I heard on NPR that due to the grounding of many planes from Covid, weather models have less data points for prediction.
- eXpl0it3r 6y agoYes, a lot of the detailed weather data is actually provided by planes, but with a lot fewer planes flying, they get fewer data points and the models lose accuracy.
- sliken 6y agoNormal passenger planes provide significant data collection for weather predictions?
- IAmGraydon 6y agoInteresting! Thanks for that.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
- popup21 6y agoRun for your lives, the sky is falling. That's nothing but a common weekend in Florida.
- supernova87a 6y agoI don't know how in my mind weather forecasts and discussion from NWS came to carry such weight, but they do. Generally, they are not BSing. I think the most frightening thing to read in Courier all caps is, "EFFORTS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD NOW BE RUSHED TO COMPLETION". F-- Twitter and the political BS, this kind of all caps is real.
- sizzle 6y agoThe NOAA.gov mobile site is a joy to use and should be a case study on usable mobile design. Everything is where it needs to be, contextually relevant, and easy to navigate back and forth between cities and forecasts. Check it out if you haven't already, if you add it as a bookmark on your home screen (Android), you can launch it as a webview chromeless app.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y agoMeh. You have seen nothing! Imagine walking home at night, along a park which gives unusually wide views of some parts the horizon. Weather feels OK, partially cloudy. Nonetheless something is OFF. What is "off"? Startled you see glowing and flashing clouds, but it is so far away, you can't exactly tell. Also dark. And no sound of thunder at all? Then you see tiny bright threads arcing between mountains of towering dark clouds, maybe 30 to 45° upwards from the horizon. The dark clouds begin to glow stroboscopically. Still no sound at all. It shines pink, violet, electric whiteblue, orange, yellow, sometimes, especially in the upper regions even greenish. You stand there, awestruck, and still don't know what it is. Cars on the street stop, drivers getting out, asking you what that is, because they've seen it since maybe 10 minutes, and didn't know what it was either. You tell them you have no clue, never seen something like this before, but it's probably just a large thunderstorm, far away and high up in the sky, maybe 50 to 60km away. About 10 minutes later, back home, you open https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en and see an inferno unfolding. It dawns on you that the "tiny threads" which flickered horizontally between the glowing clouds for up to 1.5 seconds must have been dozens of kilometers long. For some strange reason I had clear line of sight in form of a cone into that front, maybe 60 to 80° wide. Very unusual. Next day the media is full of it. Also some very impressive videos of it in the net. Anyways, I'd have expected that one can see this far from some mountaintop, or tower, or a plane, but not from the ground. TBH my first thought was: Is this how it(WWIII) begins?
- stunt 6y agoWhile a lot of it is just humor, some people are really nervous about everything because of COVID19. It seems pandemic stress is intensifying our feeling about other events. People immediately relate every incident to 2020 as if everything is getting worst. I don't remember any year that some places on earth didn't report unusual weather conditions. Maybe people are reading more news and incident news are trendy and get more coverage.