JustinRP37

Just wondering... Has DT even NOT been bullish for December and January? I do not think I have ever read one of his outlooks for winter where he said it would be mild and miserable for snow lovers. I'm very worried about the Pac jet, so we will see.

The insecticide we were using in the nesting material was permethrin-laced cotton, so that it would not spread beyond the nesting site. The goal was to kill off the larval blacklegged ticks on the white-footed mice to help control Lyme disease spread, since the mice are the primary reservoir for the Lyme bacteria. There was limited success, but we would truly need way more than we could possibly put out in nature to truly make a difference. We try not to use any insecticides that can travel for the exact reasons you are wrong about below. Permethrin and insecticides that stay in fibers are safe while protecting the user. The number one most terrible thing being done today is things like Mosquito Joe, spraying backyards. Mosquitoes travel for well over a few miles, so treating a backyard does absolutely nothing for mosquitoes, while obliterating your local good insect population. The biodiversity crisis is honestly the most alarming thing to me, more so than climate change, and that is alarming as well. If we have to start paying people to pollinate all our major crops, we are screwed. We are going backwards. People are more focused on weird health trends versus actually trying to be healthy by having a healthy environment. Many do not like spending any appreciable time outside because it is "gross" or "buggy". I always tell my students that you can always eat well, exercise, not smoke, etc., but if you live in an area with impaired drinking water, your risks for a lot of health issues skyrocket. If you live near a coal mine, your risks for various cancers skyrocket through no fault of your own. It is wild out there.

Dude that isn't out of the box thinking. It is not scientifically accurate or even remotely a good idea. Just so we are clear I have earned a Masters in environmental remediation and PhD in vector-borne diseases and published in both these fields. So no, I am not an uncreative robot. As for conventional *ideas* you haven't the slightest clue as to what we scientists have actually done to fix these issues. Did you know we have tried rather unconventional ways of reducing tick burdens throughout Long Island and the Hudson Valley? We have tried to have mice build nesting material made with insecticide in the threads. We have tried treating deer in the fall to reduce adult tick mating. We are thinking outside the box using science. Humans LOVE living by water and water is vitally important, but complaining about the smell of a marsh that was literally there for hundreds of thousands of years is insane. The vast majority of marshlands exist in high human density areas. The US has lost over 50% of its wetlands to drainage and development since 1950. You make an awful lot of assumptions about people yourself. I literally live in The Great Swamp of NY. The used to call children from Patterson swamp creatures. I grew up spending summers with my grandparents in East Lyme, CT, in a marsh. Also the town where Lyme disease was officially discovered and why it is Lyme disease and not Lime disease. Did you know that marshes and swamps rival tropical rainforests for biological productivity? Swamps reduce pollution and reduce disease burden. Drained wetlands turn into some of our least productive, most disease burdened areas. These are what science tells us. Just take a look at how many chemicals it takes to run a golf course and also why they require more pest control. As for people expressing their opinions, I am all for it, but I require students and people to back up their "opinions" with references and actual science. People in the field do call out bad ideas when we see them. I have had to take a lot of criticism in science, we all do, that is what makes us better scientists. Draining wetlands and exterminating mosquitos just isn't thinking outside the box, it is literally potentially sending us on a death spiral. We are likely already in another mass extinction event, only this time we are causing it through habitat fragmentation and way over using pesticides. Pardon me for being upset that we are literally gutting environmental protections. I am not trying to be mean, but I am curious, what are the conventional ideas I have had? Because I'm pretty intense when I discuss that we really need to change the way we live if we are going to persist into the future. The fact that microplastics are found in literally everything is enough to cause concern.

If you exterminated mosquitos you’d lose a lot of aquatic life that feed in their larvae. You’d also lose quite a few other species. Bats need mosquitos too. Draining wetlands leads to increased disease spread. Most of the aggressive mosquitos are NOT from swamps and marshes. But they are from stagnant standing water like clogged gutters, untreated pool covers, used tires filled with water inside (hence it is illegal to store tires outside with the inside exposed within nyc).

This literally might be the dumbest f**king thing you have ever said on here and you say a lot of dumb $hit. Our wetlands provide flood control, pollution management, and yes disease regulation. They are some of our most productive systems. I’m sorry but you really need to be 5-posted with posts like this. Hell much of the reason we have awful flooding in the USA is because of how we got rid of so many wetlands…

We ran out of coffee this morning. Imagine my surprise at 5:30. Talk about spooky season. There will be a Costco run this evening to make sure this never happens again. Then stepping outside to a humid tropical feel was my true wake up this morning!

My father in-law teaches in Ohio and literally got a day off today for.... FOG! And we wonder why our workers now want to call out when it is anything other than sunny and calm?

Our morning buses are routinely running in the dark in the morning. The high school bus picks up at the end of my street at 6:18AM, well before sunrise currently. Hasn't harmed anyone.

Just using your logic here... Those more northern latitudes also have a sunset before 4:20PM, hell in some parts the sun never comes up for weeks at a time and people don't die...

Yeah, he wasn’t old enough to remember it, but I do. That was the only time we had a few days to play in the snow without it melting. But even that year was only something like 2-3 inches above normal. Even in our warmer, more snowless winters of the past, you could always count on at least a few sustained cold weeks with snow, except maybe on the island. I’m hoping this year might be decent but I won’t be shocked if it hardly snows either.

Your temperature charts were really eye opening to me. It is really shocking just to see how short our “winters” have become.

What Don said. A big part of the decline in winter is the shoulder seasons are no longer cool. Hell you just had Liberty saying September was fallish. Our AC worked just as much according to our smart system as it did in August. I like 80s and blue sky just as much as the next person but I really do love winter. I know you are happy with just big snows a few times a year but I enjoy winters that have some staying power. My son is 7 and has never seen an above average winter. Also, to add, southern NY now sees year round tick activity as the norm. We alway tend to have lows above 40 now for at least part of each winter month (and not just a stray warm night). This is stuff that historically did not happen.

I guess since it is not 90 we can't call it summer-like. Really worries me how we normalize the disappearance of our cold seasons. It is honestly why I cherish every single snow day. They are becoming so few and far between.

Big question is if this hurricane seasons stays this quiet. If so, then many tropical forecasts will bust. This is one of the slower starts in recent years and it still is quiet. That may change, but development looks to keep the fish busy. We will see, but so far a pleasant fall.

What a very odd end to the summer. It really went out with a whimper. No big thunderstorms, no big heat after mid July, very quiet tropics so far, and things looking status quo for some time. Tick season also decreased substantially with the dry weather we have been experiencing.