rclab

45 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

21 minutes ago, SRRTA22 said:

Happy New years!! Crazy how I basically grew up with you guys from eastern and tristate in 2003 , now it's 2024. Love y'all crazy mfs! Till many more 

We must always remember what we have because we may never forget what we’ve lost. Happy New Year everyone, as always ….

11 minutes ago, dryslot said:

The personal losses and tragedy trumped anything weather related for me in 2023, We turn the page.

We must always remember what we have because we may never forget what we’ve lost. Happy New year everyone. As always …..

9 hours ago, donsutherland1 said:

GFS, please give us a white Christmas:

No success. We're not 384 hours out.

AI, please give us a white Christmas:

For now, AI grants such wishes. But that may change in the future. Then, as AI "learns" the realities of the New York City area climate, it may well deny such requests.

Last White Christmas in NYC: 2009.

2 hours ago, forkyfork said:

it's not christmas it's boxing day eve

Happy Boxing Day forky. Stay well read, dry and gifted. As always …

12 minutes ago, LongBeachSurfFreak said:

Merry Christmas, to my weather extended family. Been on this board since 2011, that’s a long time. Hope everyone had a nice day irregardless of religion. Pretty typical Christmas weather these days. To think it was -01 for my first Christmas…

Happy Christmas and Blessed New Year LBSF  and all forum members. Even through the overcast, late last night, my favorite light still did shine on the postage stamp. Stay well.  As always …..

9 hours ago, Juliancolton said:

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all. I hope everyone's having fun with family or at least making it through.

Thank you Julian. Late last night I walked out into the postage stamp, no jacket, just to feel the chill but not very cold Christmas Eve night. I was alone, as I’ve been for the last six years but then I felt I wasn’t. I listened to the unusual quiet of this inner city Sunday night. In the silence I found all I was looking for. The lights of a celebrating neighbor, my four very special snowflakes that regardless of the boundary layer …. never melt and finally looking up I saw through the overcast the light that has never left me. Happy Christmas and blessed New Year to you and all our forum members. 
As always …

16 minutes ago, forkyfork said:

gaze upon the brown landscape and remember what we've lost. merry merry! 

Don’t blame me …. We all thought this was forky’s house. Happy Christmas and blessed New Year, just the same. As always …..

4 minutes ago, IrishRob17 said:

 

Rob …. forky was in the military? …As always ….

30 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

the earth is flat at the poles thats why it's an oblate spheroid

With our luck the PV would still be on the other side. Stay well, as always ….

1 hour ago, STORMANLI said:

And then "Frank It Up"!!?

“Ouch” as always …..

1 minute ago, donsutherland1 said:

Thanks for the kind words. I threw it together this morning after reading some of the commentary here.

Well done … Get an agent. As always …

6 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

The Snow Returns

The calendar marched into January. There was no snow in Snowtown.

 

To the local residents, it seemed that their village had taken its name from a time that was now lost forever. In coming years, only the oldest residents would be able to say that they had actually experienced a snowfall. Once they departed, they would take their precious winter memories with them.

 

Snowtown found itself mired in the grips of a dreadful multi-year snow drought. Even the GFS computer model had abandoned its long-range fantasy snowstorms. Those digital depictions had continually raised hopes. Yet, over and over again, those hopes were dashed on the jagged rocks of reality, as the promised winter storms never materialized. It appeared that the GFS model had finally surrendered to reality.

 

Everyone in the village had taken notice. At the local college, students taking the Philosophy 101 course used the absence of snow to argue their understanding of eternity. The local shops that still sold a range of winter goods were placed on an “endangered business list” that the local Chamber of Commerce had compiled to bring attention to the village’s plight. Its winter charm was disappearing just as the snows had vanished into a receding past.

 

The only places snow could be found were on aging photographs, digital images, and the paintings that hung in the local art gallery. The gap that divided imagery from real experience was an unbridgeable one.

 

The two century-old Maple Tree that dated to the village’s establishment still stood. One day, its rings would tell amazing stories to any scientist who examined them. It had weathered droughts, violent thunderstorms, pounding hail, torrents of rain, howling blizzards, and two hurricanes. During summers, the shade from its thick leaves provided a measure of refuge from the wrath of an increasingly vengeful sun that ruled summers that now stretched from late May into October.

 

The night was mild. Large, heavy raindrops began to fall. Within minutes, rivulets ran along the curbsides. Water ponded in opportunistic spots. The wind freshened. It would be another wild, mild, and wet night.

 

By midnight, most of the village’s residents had fallen asleep as the soaking rain beat against their windows. A few college students labored on into the night: writing, cutting, pasting, and re-writing. The tedious sound of the falling rain added to their exhaustion. Caffeinated drinks had lost their power to stave off sleep.

 

Ella, a tall platinum blond international student from Paris, tried to push on. Although fluent in English, her thoughts increasingly began to flow in French. The paper required English. Fatigue had broken down her fluency. Now, she had to work to translate her French-language thoughts into English-language text.

 

“I need another cappuccino,” she thought to herself. She walked quickly into the small kitchen in the 19^th century home that had been converted into dorms for the college students. Through muscle memory, she quickly whipped up a giant mug of steaming cappuccino. She placed the ceramic mug, which featured Claude Monet’s “Snow at Argenteuil,” next to her laptop.

 

She glanced at the screen. She read through the last paragraph she had written. She prepared to write with renewed vigor. And then there was darkness.

 

Sometime late at night, the unusually intense storm tapped into a distant air mass that was just cold enough to support snow. In almost a flash, the driving rain gave way to wet snow. The swirling snowflakes fell thick and fast, shrouding the quaint village as if it were cloaked in fog. The wet snow plastered everything it encountered. Snowtown’s charming residential streets were quickly covered in a thickening blanket of white.

 

Ella suddenly awakened. The sound of the furious raindrops that had been lashing her dorm’s windows had fallen silent. Not completely silent. It seemed as if gusts of wind rose time and again to hurl bursts of countless tiny pellets against the glass that separated Ella from the raging elements outside. The wind had taken on a different, less mournful, tone, too.

 

Ella opened her eyes. The room seemed brighter. Her faithful lamp that illuminated her small desk shone on. Her laptop’s screen saver glowed from the light of the Monet that had supplanted her Word document. But the lighting really was different.

 

“What time is it…?” she asked herself. Ella realized that despite her frantic last-second effort to arm herself with caffeine to work through the night, she had succumbed to sleep.

 

The gusts of wind flung the heavily falling snow against the windows. Now awake, Ella sought to resume her writing. She hit “Enter” and the screen saver was gone in an instant. Ella’s document was again on the screen. Twelve-point Times New Roman text had replaced the Impressionist masterpiece. Now she would write.

 

But she did not start. Her growing curiosity  about what was happening outside had become an unstoppable force that drew her away from her laptop to the window. She had to see whatever it was that pulled her away from her assignment.

 

She opened the Venetian blinds. The old, dreary wet world was gone. A new magical one had come into existence.

 

Having lived through the brutal heat of Parisian summers marked by intense heatwaves with temperatures of 40°C (104°F or above) and having never seen snow before, she hurriedly put on her overcoat, scarf and boots. Concluding that there would be no class in the coming day, she stepped outside to explore the new world that was before her.

 

 

Note: All images were generated using multiple AI platforms. The first image was also processed in Sepia. No text was generated by AI.

 

 

 

Magnificent Don. If this is your work and you haven’t published, my question is … Why haven’t you? As always …

Afternoon everyone. Would it help if the weenie emoji was changed to something like this? I used it in a reply to a forky post. Stay well all, as always ….

2 hours ago, Will - Rutgers said:

IMO no matter the pattern we’re always a week away from some unexpected evolution and a potential storm.  not that that means there’s some great potential on the horizon but that people who pout about things being snowless forever are annoying dorks

1 hour ago, forkyfork said:

getting more than 5 weenies on a post should kill you

I think just one of these would do the deed. As always ….

1 hour ago, Typhoon Tip said:

Yeah .. okay, I see what you mean.  

I was getting at more of a 'primal fear' mechanism for/to elicit change. 

You know, big gray abyssal wall of sea water coming over the horizon. The 2nd sunset glow from an asteroid impact while the Earth begins to crack and tremble type stuff.   Four Horseman.   I'm not a religious person in any organized sense of it but ...there's a reason why 'fire and brimstone' works in those passages. That is what is required.  Digression ( haha) but you know what the bible really is? It's a historic framework for failing human virtuosity because they are incapable without being directly stimulated to do so.  That's all it was, really.  Do this or fear God casting you to hell ( so to speak).  Well ?  Stop profligate consumption of fossil fuels for the purpose of powering the industrial convenience engine, or you'll all burn in hell.   Sound familiar.  It's not even a metaphor.  The principle is identical.    

Anyway, humans need more than videos of famine, or media coverage of heat waves in Asia - in other words, it's always 'somewhere else' 

In fact, I'm beginning to suspect there's a "warming" (puns are free ) to inaction, because CC doesn't hurt enough, right now. The warnings are getting comfortable to live with in other words. 

It reminds me a little bit of that passage in the historical account of the great Galveston hurricane disaster that took place in the early years of last century. In "Isaac's Storm"  Larson described the sea as rising with successively increasing wave heights. Warm gulf waters were up an over the causeways. But the sun was shining - false state of euphoria supplanted the ominous portents of the tumultuous ocean, because the warm autumn sun and light NE trade breezes were too pleasantly immersive. Despite the initial observation of the rising sea, the mood turned to a period of gaiety; the masses wasting precious time that should have been used to leave the barrier islands.  

Are we in such an interlude?

What you describe with 'fear of having to change' is certainly a valid psychology, too. And it absolutely will retard effective action from being implemented with any sense of rapidity..  But, it's a softer variety. It's a part of our interlude.  

 

My moms “Wait till your father comes home” warning kept me in check. Whether Mother Natures is not effective, unheard or ignored …. something is coming home, be it father or far worse. Stay well, as always ….

2 hours ago, gravitylover said:

Yup. It's a 10-25 foot high wall of tangled, overgrown, unkempt ugliness. I trim our side smooth all the way up a few times a year and end up with piles of crap that just sits until it dries out. When it's leafed out it sux getting out of the driveway. Suburban problems you've never known

It cost me quite a bit to remove a diseased oak and trim the healthy one on my postage stamp. My good neighbor wanted to share the cost as the remaining oak branches were over his postage stamp. I told him as of now it’s my responsibility. In 40 or 50 years the trunk will probably have grown through his wood fence and fate willing, his grandkids can discuss it again with mine. Stay well, as always ….

36 minutes ago, gravitylover said:

It's a good thing we have some warmth incoming or this would be there all winter. For the nearly 30 years I've been here the neighbors refuse to trim the growth between us and won't let me do it either so the driveway is in deep shade from mid November until mid February. Usually once the ice forms that's it for a few months, it makes its own little freezer where the temp will be 10° colder than it is 50 feet away. Last year I went through 150 pounds of salt and 300 pounds of sand 

Good morning gravity. It doesn’t make for neighbor peace but are you permitted to trim anything extending over your property line? Stay well, as always …

3 hours ago, Volcanic Winter said:

Refreshing indeed. Nothing like waking up in the morning to crisp air that’ll make your nipples cut glass. 

Good morning V W. I’m not sure why but after reading your post, I started humming that old 50 year ago Pattie Page tune, How Much Is That Doggie In The Window. Stay well, warm and uncut. As always ….

1 hour ago, Will - Rutgers said:

wow just checked the 3km Grandma and it’s telling me i’m going to be a very handsome young man all next week

Someone better warn the southeast ridge. As always ….

29 minutes ago, weatherpruf said:

You are not going to last around here if you have no idea what you're talking about but pretend that you do. I'm not a climatologist, but I am educated and I can read, and the experts are clear about what is going on. It's settled science. If you can't accept it you won't find a welcome audience here. Remember, science does not care if you have a grudge with Al Gore or not. There are plenty of published papers on this topic you can read; hell, you can just read the abstracts and that will convince you. 

Good afternoon w p. For some the tale is ‘Once upon a time …. they lived happily ever after.’ Without a thought of what’s happening, what it takes and/or how to get, from one point to the other. The photos below were second week of December NYC 40 N L, 2023.
 

.

57 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

I wonder how much our political leaders are actually reflecting the will of the people-- specifically the older people.

Having talked to so many people the last few months, it's surprising how many I find who believe in climate change but don't think it's a big problem.  They actually think the planet will be better off being warmer because it will support more biodiversity specifically more plant life.  These are some very intelligent people with some misguided views-- and they use Hawaii as the ideal for climate, saying it is the most biodiverse place on the planet and imagine if the rest of the planet had a climate like Hawaii.  They dont care so much about sea level rise, saying that people should move away from the oceans-- they call us "coastal elitists."  I've taken to using health as a bigger argument, because fossil fuels do adversely affect our health and that is a bigger concern to these people than the weather becoming warmer, which they actually seem to want.  They even use ridiculous arguments like growing produce in Greenland, Siberia and Antarctica as reasons to want the weather to get warmer (and supporting a growing population-- which we need to stabilize anyway.)

Good morning Liberty. Isn’t there a significant percentage of flora that relies on a cold cycle for survival? Unless their looking at the present cold desert like climate of Siberia/Canada as the future new bread and fruit basket. I’m closing in on 77 and to your credit misguided is a kinder word Than I  would have used. Stay well, as always ….

1 hour ago, MJO812 said:

Weeklies are gorgeous 

48 minutes ago, MJO812 said:

Beautiful gfs run

33 minutes ago, Blue Dream said:

Snowman19 is obsessed with you bro

“Sigh”. As always ……

51 minutes ago, codfishsnowman said:

Dear Mother Nature

Please blanket the entire region with a few inches of snow so most folks will be happier. Please stop these SE Screamers.

Thanks for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely 

Codfishsnowman 

Well done cfs. From your lips to ……. Stay well, as always ….

8 minutes ago, LibertyBell said:

why dont fossil fuel companies get banned from these COP fiascos? why should these companies have any rights to have a say in anything? Like the tobacco companies, you wont see any progress until you eliminate their voices in making any decisions.

 

Good morning Liberty, happy to see your post. Perhaps keeping them close to the problem solving is a good strategy. Their interest will be governed more by a formula containing profit/$$$ rather than altruism. When alternative energy generation becomes profitable they will wave the flag strenuously. Otherwise Gaia is left crying out to the universe “ forgive them; for they know not w hat they do.” Stay well, as always …

8 hours ago, RUNNAWAYICEBERG said:

Might as well break the spell and end a shitty year with something fun and borderline anomalous. 

8 hours ago, TauntonBlizzard2013 said:

Yeah, it just kind of sits and rots, everyone gets in on the game by the end.

7 hours ago, mreaves said:

There have been so many anomalous events why not have one that we actually want?  Please Santa?

16 minutes ago, Brian5671 said:

Everyone is throwing darts like a blindfolded monkey right now...

12 minutes ago, Allsnow said:

Looks like another good rain event for us 

12 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

And if / when that fails .. you can pull on this

Good morning everyone. Rather than DIT’s explicit suggestion, perhaps, another suggestion……stay well and hopeful, as always …..

25 minutes ago, weathermedic said:

Up to 2.11 inches for the storm so far. Lowest barometer reading was 29.04. Highest wind gust was 27 mph, but my Davis is kind of sheltered from more accurate wind readings.

 

Good afternoon WM. My, over 50 years ago, store bought barometer is showing a little over 28.80. At least the needle is also pointing to rain which is what is currently occurring. Stay well, as always …