5 ms·

This is not something for the future, this is happening right now. Sitting on the chairlift in Canada just pre-covid it was a daily occurrence to talk to an Am

by grecy 5y ago

This is not something for the future, this is happening right now. Sitting on the chairlift in Canada just pre-covid it was a daily occurrence to talk to an American who had come up to Canada for a week because their local ski resort had no snow. They all said their resort used to get a ton, now it's lucky to get a foot for the whole season. This is a reality now. EDIT: Also worth mentioning the capital city of Alaska had zero recorded snowfall for an entire winter for the first time in recorded history. Yes, it's very real.

vmception 5y ago
Sometimes, more often than prior decades, but sometimes
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  The great thing about the concept sometimes is it covers a few times, all but one or two times, and actually all the time.
BitAstronaut 5y ago
While we are in the process of getting dumped on here in Colorado, the lack of snow has been depressing so far.
ahelwer 5y ago
I grew up in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. Right in the middle of the bare Canadian prairie and near Winnipeg, commonly called "Winterpeg". In my teenage years and during university (late 2000s, early 2010s) I could look forward to returning over Christmas and going for a skate at the outdoor skating oval or going cross-country skiing at some trails in the Brandon hills. Not so for the couple years prior to covid. I haven't returned during the pandemic but it also wouldn't have been possible to do winter outdoor sports if I had. Christmas is considered "early season" now I guess.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
treis 5y ago
>This is not something for the future, this is happening right now. What you're describing is due to the La Nina effect: >La Niña could also worsen California's ongoing drought and make its wildfire season even more of a threat. As Bloomberg explains, the state usually gets most of its annual water from rain and snow between November and April — the same period when La Niña is predicted to shift storm tracks north and away from the region that needs it. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/15/1046313870/la-nina-winter-weather-us-temperatures-rainfall https://www.npr.org/2021/10/15/1046313870/la-nina-winter-wea...
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  Agree, my relatives have stories of Christmas in the 70s in the Midwest. And then sometimes there's ice storms. Extreme weather is not itself a good argument for climate change, you need to show you've bucked 100+ year trends (which has been done).
chrisco255 5y ago
No, it's not: https://globalcryospherewatch.org/state_of_cryo/snow/fmi_swe_tracker.jpg https://globalcryospherewatch.org/state_of_cryo/snow/fmi_swe... Northern Hemisphere snow mass is one standard deviation above 1982-2012 average. Anecdotal data points are meaningless in systems as complex and dynamic as weather.
- new_realist 5y ago
  “excluding mountains” Further, the aggregate for all of North America hardly excludes the possibility of regional snow drought.
- AbrahamParangi 5y ago
  My personal experience growing up in the northeast is that storms are warmer and wetter than they used to be (maybe that means more snow on net), but with winters on the whole being warmer snow doesn’t accumulate like it used to. The line where snow sticks around for the whole season has been steadily moving north.
  - fwsgonzo 5y ago
    Same for me here in northern Norway. The winters are milder, less snowy. It's clear as day to me and the people around me.
- it_does_follow 5y ago
  What does the total snow mass for the entire Northern Hemisphere have to do with parent's observation (especially since it explicitly excludes mountains, the subject of the parent's point)? It's completely possible that the Northern Hemisphere also has more rainfall then ever before, would that mean that lake Mead isn't drying up right now? I find it a bit hard that you're really posted that information in good faith given it would require an almost willful misunderstanding of what the parent is saying and how hemisphere wide observations completely miss essential regional variation in weather patterns.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Anecdotal data points are meaningless in systems as complex and dynamic as weather. Exactly. "global warming isn't real because it's still snowing" gets ridiculed (as it rightly should), but I find it appalling that "global warming is real because it snowed really late where I lived" gets a free pass.
edgefield 5y ago
I don’t understand why the OP is being downvoted. Climate change is real and causing temperature and weather anomalies all over the world, including record warm temps and droughts in the western continental United States.
- it_does_follow 5y ago
  In recent years HN has becoming increasingly aggressive in it's climate denial. Not in the classic sense of denying that there is climate change at all, but generally holding these assumptions as a sacred: - climate change is not happening in a meaningful way now. - the future impacts of climate change are wildly overstated. - all potential issues that may come up with climate change can be mitigated through technology. Any comments that violate any of these assumptions will be aggressively downvoted or often times even flagged. I have alt accounts that have had the latter happen frequently and I know because the flagged comments are always unflagged on review (conveniently hours after the article is no longer on the front page, and the discussion is effectively over). This tendency may have always been a part of this community, but it has become a bigger issue in recent years because it has been increasingly apparent that severe climate impacts are being felt "faster than expected" right now, there is absolutely existential risk at play (on both a civilization and species level), and that nothing short of immediate reduction of the use of hydrocarbons can prevent extreme impacts (i.e. no techno solution). Personally I think this is largely because these ideas pose major challenges to the ideological foundations of most of the HN community. In general people are brought here out of a common interest in the future, and the belief that technology (specifically VC funded technology) can solve any problem out there. Our current understanding of climate change and its impacts shake this ideological foundation and makes a lot of people uncomfortably in a very profound way. Their only way to react is to try to make it go away. Down voting and flagging comments happens precisely because these realities of climate change hit a bit to close to the bone.
  - _3u10 5y ago
  - gruez 5y ago
t-3 5y ago
> EDIT: Also worth mentioning the capital city of Alaska had zero recorded snowfall for an entire winter for the first time in recorded history. Yes, it's very real. It's also worth mentioning that the recorded history is rarely more than 100 years, and in almost no case more than a thousand.
Eric_WVGG 5y ago
pretty cool that SLC hosted the Winter Olympics while they had the chance

by grecy 5y ago

vmception 5y ago

Sometimes, more often than prior decades, but sometimes

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
The great thing about the concept sometimes is it covers a few times, all but one or two times, and actually all the time.

BitAstronaut 5y ago

While we are in the process of getting dumped on here in Colorado, the lack of snow has been depressing so far.

ahelwer 5y ago

I grew up in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. Right in the middle of the bare Canadian prairie and near Winnipeg, commonly called "Winterpeg". In my teenage years and during university (late 2000s, early 2010s) I could look forward to returning over Christmas and going for a skate at the outdoor skating oval or going cross-country skiing at some trails in the Brandon hills. Not so for the couple years prior to covid. I haven't returned during the pandemic but it also wouldn't have been possible to do winter outdoor sports if I had. Christmas is considered "early season" now I guess.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

treis 5y ago

>This is not something for the future, this is happening right now. What you're describing is due to the La Nina effect: >La Niña could also worsen California's ongoing drought and make its wildfire season even more of a threat. As Bloomberg explains, the state usually gets most of its annual water from rain and snow between November and April — the same period when La Niña is predicted to shift storm tracks north and away from the region that needs it. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/15/1046313870/la-nina-winter-weather-us-temperatures-rainfall https://www.npr.org/2021/10/15/1046313870/la-nina-winter-wea...

R0b0t1 5y ago
Agree, my relatives have stories of Christmas in the 70s in the Midwest. And then sometimes there's ice storms. Extreme weather is not itself a good argument for climate change, you need to show you've bucked 100+ year trends (which has been done).

chrisco255 5y ago

No, it's not: https://globalcryospherewatch.org/state_of_cryo/snow/fmi_swe_tracker.jpg https://globalcryospherewatch.org/state_of_cryo/snow/fmi_swe... Northern Hemisphere snow mass is one standard deviation above 1982-2012 average. Anecdotal data points are meaningless in systems as complex and dynamic as weather.

new_realist 5y ago
“excluding mountains” Further, the aggregate for all of North America hardly excludes the possibility of regional snow drought.
AbrahamParangi 5y ago
My personal experience growing up in the northeast is that storms are warmer and wetter than they used to be (maybe that means more snow on net), but with winters on the whole being warmer snow doesn’t accumulate like it used to. The line where snow sticks around for the whole season has been steadily moving north.
- fwsgonzo 5y ago
  Same for me here in northern Norway. The winters are milder, less snowy. It's clear as day to me and the people around me.
it_does_follow 5y ago
What does the total snow mass for the entire Northern Hemisphere have to do with parent's observation (especially since it explicitly excludes mountains, the subject of the parent's point)? It's completely possible that the Northern Hemisphere also has more rainfall then ever before, would that mean that lake Mead isn't drying up right now? I find it a bit hard that you're really posted that information in good faith given it would require an almost willful misunderstanding of what the parent is saying and how hemisphere wide observations completely miss essential regional variation in weather patterns.
gruez 5y ago
>Anecdotal data points are meaningless in systems as complex and dynamic as weather. Exactly. "global warming isn't real because it's still snowing" gets ridiculed (as it rightly should), but I find it appalling that "global warming is real because it snowed really late where I lived" gets a free pass.

edgefield 5y ago

I don’t understand why the OP is being downvoted. Climate change is real and causing temperature and weather anomalies all over the world, including record warm temps and droughts in the western continental United States.

it_does_follow 5y ago
In recent years HN has becoming increasingly aggressive in it's climate denial. Not in the classic sense of denying that there is climate change at all, but generally holding these assumptions as a sacred: - climate change is not happening in a meaningful way now. - the future impacts of climate change are wildly overstated. - all potential issues that may come up with climate change can be mitigated through technology. Any comments that violate any of these assumptions will be aggressively downvoted or often times even flagged. I have alt accounts that have had the latter happen frequently and I know because the flagged comments are always unflagged on review (conveniently hours after the article is no longer on the front page, and the discussion is effectively over). This tendency may have always been a part of this community, but it has become a bigger issue in recent years because it has been increasingly apparent that severe climate impacts are being felt "faster than expected" right now, there is absolutely existential risk at play (on both a civilization and species level), and that nothing short of immediate reduction of the use of hydrocarbons can prevent extreme impacts (i.e. no techno solution). Personally I think this is largely because these ideas pose major challenges to the ideological foundations of most of the HN community. In general people are brought here out of a common interest in the future, and the belief that technology (specifically VC funded technology) can solve any problem out there. Our current understanding of climate change and its impacts shake this ideological foundation and makes a lot of people uncomfortably in a very profound way. Their only way to react is to try to make it go away. Down voting and flagging comments happens precisely because these realities of climate change hit a bit to close to the bone.
- _3u10 5y ago
- gruez 5y ago

t-3 5y ago

> EDIT: Also worth mentioning the capital city of Alaska had zero recorded snowfall for an entire winter for the first time in recorded history. Yes, it's very real. It's also worth mentioning that the recorded history is rarely more than 100 years, and in almost no case more than a thousand.

Eric_WVGG 5y ago

pretty cool that SLC hosted the Winter Olympics while they had the chance