The local paper reports that Mt Baker had 100″ of snow this WEEK.
Most of which fell on us as rain! (Do remember 12″ snow 1″ of rain though!)
We are hideously waterlogged and one mustn’t stand still or one gets mould, no wonder half the population appears to be in Arizona, Mexico or Hawaii. After getting pneumonia in Wales last autumn I ain’t going anywhere soon, thank God for central heating and a good roof.
How is the weather elsewhere? It is definitely a wetter winter than usual here, doesn’t bloody stop, worse than Wales and that’s going some!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Evidently there isn’t much snow on the Rockies resorts so they are all coming up here, no wonder Mt Baker Highway was rather busy but town like the grave.
Cold in the west of Scotland, as usual.
Sorry to hear of your Welsh pneumonia Mrs O. Hiraeth, indeedy not. (Learned the word last week on Great British Railway Journeys). How bad was it? Any gory details?
I had the bad flu that’s doing the rounds here just before Christmas. Old Braveheart me was floored by it. A full week lying down. It’s long gone now and I can roar again. Roar.
I was fortunate, I’ve had pneumonia and pleurisy so many times over the years, I never move without taking with me a full course of specific antibiotics. Forget relying on the NHS, either you can’t get an appointment and then they want to prescribe cheap antibiotics to which I am allergic! So I carry them with me. I realised I was sickening for something just before I came home so started the tablets, would have been alright but for the flight. Got 7hrs in and started having breathing problems, had to use their bottled oxygen and then got hauled off the flight in Vancouver by paramedics in a wheelchair. Not one of my more elegant arrivals. They wanted to haul me off to a Canadian hospital, (N hours triage, just like the NHS!) Managed to persuade them to let me go, dashed home across the border to my doctor, by which time I could breath again, who thought I’d do fine with the tablets rather than need to go to hospital. I had nipped it in the bud. Was pretty grim for three weeks but no real excitement. Good thing I recognise it!
I am always ill when I travel, that is why I never go on holidays! I have always been a poor traveler. Much better to stay home and do my garden!
Is it more rainy than usual in Scotland?
Apparently, Mrs O, at the other end of the world the opposite has taking place. Some of the big cattle and sheep finishing stations at higher altitudes in NZ, say they have had so little rain in the hills this year that they have been forced to move their stock to lower level pastures. One station that I know of, which is around 1400 hectares in size, has had to round up and transport over 450 head of their Aberdeen Angus down to rented (and expensive) land where water is available. The owners reckoned that the cost of that and and having to carry out a similar operation for several hundreds of sheep will see them facing multi million dollar losses this year.
Extremely wet here throughout 2017 and continuing this month. The forests are waterlogged. 🙂 Gerrit? The farmers are, as ever, unhappy. It’s always too something. As in most recent years we’re seeing little frost or snow – for which may Thor and Odin be praised.
G’day, Christina. No rain to speak of here yet after an exceptionally hot and dry summer. We are worried because when winter does arrive it’s going to be ugly what with having to fit in a whole season of rain, thunder and wind between whenever it starts and the end of May. Had Christmas Day lunch out on the terrace, which reminded me of happy days in Brisbane and the niece who was visiting even had a swim in the pool, but she is from Lancashire and therefore well hard. Caught wolf flu (it’s like man flu but ten times worse) just before New Year. I was very brave and didn’t complain even though I’ve only just recovered. We bought two tonnes of firewood at the end of November so The Cave is warm and dry and you can’t beat a real fire for good looks. This morning was cold (8 deg C) and clear when I took Silvie (our three legged Labrador) out for her early constitutional at just-got-light o’clock but it’s a little warmer now the sun is up.
OZ
Temperatures here have been a little lower this week – 32 today and forecast to drop to around 30 tomorrow. The odd twenty minute heavy down-pour and then back to sunny skies and pretty grim humidity.
I went to Adelaide a couple of weeks ago – and landed in 41+. But the delightful thing about Adelaide scorchers is that it is rarely humid.
I think I read that Paris might be flooded…
The weather here alternated between a pale grey and a sickly blue. There are moderate winds and it’s a bit dank, but not really raining heavily. It’s an improvement, of sorts, over the extreme storms we had over the last few weeks. I was in Île-de-France from Monday to Thursday. The Seine flooded its banks and there have been major regional rail disruptions.
JL, I know the reason for the hemispherical differences and it’s nothing to do with climate change though this galactic chaos was human-induced. The northern hemisphere is experiencing unprecedented volumes of snow, rain, ice, frost and white walkers (winter is here) while the southern hemmy is sun tan factoring in treble figures. It is a classic higher plane, bigger level “Tilt the Bus” scenario.
I have no scientific credentials but I ran my theory past NASA and the boffins there gave me a …Hmmm, indicating that it was possible that the Earth had slightly altered its orbital position. Clearly, the top half of the world had moved a fraction farther away from the Sun inducing extreme coldness, and proving once again Newton’s Third law the bottom part was edged closer to the Sun. Dimples.
But, you ask, what caused the obscure body in the SK system to alter it’s axis? I can exclusively reveal why. At one point in the near past the majority of people in the northern hemisphere jumped (various reasons: joy, anger, frustration, madness or just the thrill of jumping) at the same time. The force of this multitude banging down on terra firma shifted the planet and put it on a road not taken.
Any chance of you southerners doing a double jump so we can get some sunshine up here?
JW, your insightful theory explains the recent popularity among Antipodean denizens of the new Olympic sports, the synchronised jump and beach jumping involving teams of 50 participants.
Not to mention Strictly Come Jumping. 😎
Joking apart, the one thing everyone here has in common weatherwise is that wet places have been wetter, hot places hotter, cold places colder than usual.
Everywhere is more extreme than usual.
The accepted PC reason being climate change, human induced. (Not proven of course)
Other reasons.
1. Oceans warmer than usual, the El Nino/Nina effect, known to exacerbate weather.
2. Sun spots, rarely discussed. These have been fairly well documented since the 1600’s and are easily seen without a lot of fancy equipment. I gather there is a fair degree of correlation historically between outbreaks of sunspots which are evidently cyclical in nature and outbreaks of extreme weather.
Whilst it generally does no more than inconvenience those that live in temperate latitudes, those nearer the equator, especially the drier spots are going to have real problems all too soon in already overpopulated lands. So much of Africa is already marginal in agricultural production, famine through drought just ends up as more of them heading north to Europe with the ensuing problems.
Nice little snippets for you of previous climate changes affecting everything within historical time.
1. The Roman Empire, of which Tunisia was a long term province, grew all its grain for the people of Rome in the North of Tunisia. It was fertile and highly productive. Hence the Romans dished it out as a free dole to Roman citizens as a sweetener so they would put up with too many immigrants from the newer provinces in the city. They became very lazy with free food. In the 300’s AD the weather changed and the area slowly went dry, now desert today, the corn was no longer forthcoming, so no free dole and what they had to buy became expensive through lack of production, caused mass unrest in the city. Legions were recalled from the provinces, (410AD from UK) and others, the citizenry were no longer to be trusted and would not defend the city. Hence when Attila arrived, 465?ish, no body gave a damn, took the place without much of a fight at all. End of Roman Empire with a whimper.
2.Cleopatra was extremely rich which is why she had so much credence in Rome. Basis of her money?
Virtual control of aromatics trade for embalming and perfume trades. Frankincense and Myrrh. Both are resins derived from trees. These trees grew in the Yemen on the west facing the Gulf coast coast. There are a series of valleys running from the mountains down to the sea which, back in the day, had rivers, hence the trees, which were tapped like maple syrup. The rain stopped, the trees died, no money, Egypt lost its power and its Empire. It carried on a while but no longer centred on Cairo and Alexandria, went to the South where there was still water. Again today it is totally denuded desert.
I find it interesting that these climatic changes are never touted in history books as being causal in change. History is written by people who abrogate to their species the responsibility for change. Nothing could be further from the truth!
But then it seems humanity can stand even less the concept of being helpless and at the whim of vicissitudes completely beyond their control. The one place the real history is written indelibly is in the rocks!
Which have the nasty habit of being able to be read for the next 500 million years or so, take that transient humans!
What a jolly thought for a monochrome cold and windy day pissing with rain!
Indeed, CO. The panacaea of ‘bread and circuses’ was no longer feasible. The North African bread-basket was empty.
The sunspot cycle is 11 years and 2017 was supposed to be the year of maximum activity. What was actually recorded was the lowest level of sunspot activity for a peak period for the last 100 years or so, although how this really effects the climate in detail is an unknown. The last lowest recorded activity in recent times was in 1963/4 which (
possibly coincidentally) was the year of an exceptionally cold winter. I tend to share Mrs O’s attitude towards reported “statistics” anyway, as one can never be sure that they are not just being used to further the interests of some large corporation or other. I think one can often learn more about the accuracy of the figures being reported by finding out who funded the study in the first place.
Wonderful weather here in Harare though we need rain.
But we are in nothing like the dire straits in which the residents of Cape Town finde themselves. The city has suffered 3years of drought and by mid April, unless rains come first, the place will run out of water. Municipal supplies will be turned off. Already people are rationed to 50 litres a day, for all use. When Zero Day arrives. tbe city will set up 200 distribution points. Try and picture how a city of 4 million will cope with that. I simply do not think it is logistically possible. 50 litres weighs 50kg. How can a family of 4 carry 200 kgs unless they have a car? Think of the parking and general traffic challenges that will arise as thousands of cars make their way to and from these points. Of course most of the poorer residents don’t have cars. There will be violence. http://www.newsweek.com/day-zero-drought-cape-town-792036
JL Yes, statistical source is all important. You may/may not know that various weather stations (mainly in the far East) were omitted from the data when they were ‘proving’ global warming to prepare for the Paris Accord. Bunch of shysters! I don’t suppose for one minute humanity is helping but causal? God bless Al Gore!
sipu, yes Cape Town is a real mess, have seen various segments here in the USA on the TV. Piss poor planning. It would have been an ideal site for a solar powered seawater desalination plant and tap water restricted to drinking etc. It need not have been a fancy one a la Dubai, could have been done on the cheap on the beach! How stupid of the wealthy whites not to have seen the writing on the wall when there was no alternative source of water to rainfall. One did not have far to look to see the effects of drought in the southern hemisphere. The Murray Darling river basin has been abandoned recently. Farming being finished I gather they are turning it into a National ‘grassland’ park (as they did in the Texas panhandle in the 40s) I agree that violence is probably inevitable. Let us hope the rains come this year.
I feel rather sorry that the flora of Table Mountain will take such a beating, some of the most amazing flowers in the world right there. Those amazing proteas, hope they survive.
We’re doomed!
Weather changes, climates gradually change, we’re overdue an ice age, floods in Paris, droughts in Cape Town……
Stop whining and just adapt, stop taxing and innovate instead like our ancestors, let go of the fear, it’s all artificially peddled by governments and media with big businesses behind them. Just like the need for an enemy keeps economies churning and governments in power.
I’m bored of it all. Que sera, sera and there’s fuck all I can do about it.
Now where’s the Telly remote……. 🙈