fluoronium

The funny thing is that modern chaos theory arose as a direct result of trying to predict the weather. The person who is widely considered to be the founder of chaos theory was a meteorologist, and his groundbreaking paper was published in a meteorology journal. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0469(1963)020<0130:DNF>2.0.CO;2

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine isn't traditional by any means. It's a recombinant adenovirus that works quite similarly to the mRNA vaccines but with extra steps.

Why is it a mystery that the same measures to limit spread of coronavirus wouldn't work for a virus that spreads via the same ways, but is MUCH less contagious, has a shorter period of pre-symptomatic spread, and is partially stopped due to herd immunity via flu shots and previous exposure? If that is too much to comprehend...you're probably the same type of person to share a brainless facebook copypasta. For the record it's not just flu that's down either, RSV and enteroviruses are way down as well.

Even though it's unlikely I'll be receiving big accumulations out of this, I certainly like the convective look of the snow showers being modeled. Maybe if I'm lucky I could experience my first snow squall warning

Every day since the 1st has brought vastly different scenery. Air temps hovered around freezing today, with dense fog setting in by early afternoon. Some melting of ice on the trees, but lots of it refreezing into longer icicles. Hoarfrost blends in with the ice and snow. Branches are still falling!!

This has been such an amazing week of winter weather here. First the ice and snow on the 1st, then the surprise snow storm early yesterday morning and then the hoarfrost today. What a way to end a loooong stretch of boring winter weather in central IL! I hope those in central IN cash in sometime soon as well. It has yet to get above freezing here, and trees and branches are still falling!!

WHAT THE $%÷@$!?!? I was not expecting to wake up to everything buried. I got roughly 5" here which is more than what I've gotten in the past two blizzard warnings and last winter storm warning combined . Finally broke the curse of Halloween 2019. The heavy snow on top of the already weighted down trees from the previous ice/concrete snow has made the scenes outside UNREAL. I've never seen anything like it.

I got roughly a third of an inch of ice with the freezing rain, but it was the backside snow that pushed many of the trees here to their breaking point. I only got ~1.5" of snow but it was super wet and stuck so well to the trees that the forest floor is nearly barren of snow. Walking outside last night during the snow sounded like a thunderstorm from all the falling trees and limbs. Raw totals from the storm aren't very impressive but this will certainly be a storm to remember.

Lights are beginning to flicker here. I don't think I'm going to have power much longer. Birch trees in the area are bent over to the ground from the weight of the ice.

Briefly started as sleet here before switching to rain. Roads are a nightmare and trees have a solid glaze of ice already. High precip rates are preventing all of the liquid from freezing on contact though. A huge area is going to get ice today which is going to make it difficult to quickly restore power to places that lose it. I wonder how far north that freezing line is going to make it.

Yeah I've noticed this too. It can't just be selective memory either since it's been over a decade since the last big ice storm in central IL. Any decent ice threat seems to get killed off by warm air creeping in further than expected. This time the model support is pretty strong though, and even the NAM is on board now. So if I get 33 and rain most of the day tomorrow, I'm going to be irritated

That's the first ice storm warning in likely over a decade for many of those ILX counties, mine included. I'm going to try getting some time lapses of the accumulating ice. I know the NAM seems to be the outlier with the northward extent of the warm air, but every recent shot at ice IMBY has always been killed by warmer than modeled temps. Even so, at least a few hours of freezing rain looks to be nearly certain here, so it should be enough to make the trees sparkly.

I'm confused by the statement on the warm layer here in regards to hindered ice accumulations as it seems that this would favor more freezing rain over sleet. I have trouble believing that warm raindrops at the surface make that much of a difference regarding ice accretion, but I'm also just an arm chair . It's just that the amount of energy released by turning liquid water to ice is just SO much higher than cooling the liquid by a few degrees. Even if the rain drops are a toasty 9°C, the energy that's released by cooling the rain drops to 0°C is only ~10% of the energy released from freezing the liquid at 0°C to solid at 0°C. I've definitely seen the high precip rates hinder accumulations though. I remember witnessing nearly an inch of rain fall in 3 hours with surface temps of 28°F~29°F and only receiving a light glaze.

I'm not sure if "irrelevant" is the right word considering the higher infectivity and at least some ability to evade antibody neutralization. It's certainly not the biggest issue in the near term though, considering the virus (regardless of strain) is looking like it's going to run through most people before they have a chance at getting a vaccine.

Maybe they report it as freezing rain if the wet bulb temperature is below freezing. 34F and rain again here. Futility records in play

I'm liking the stormy pattern, but man, central IL (and IN) have not been the place to be recently. Persistent storm track means I'm always too far south for the good snows and too far north for the winter severe. Over, and over, and over. I hope I don't have to wait till March/April for a shot at a 4"+ snowfall. Halloween 2019 is still the biggest snowfall IMBY for the past two seasons.

Unfortunately we have pretty much all of our eggs in one basket when it comes to vaccines. All but maybe 2 or 3 of the vaccine trials target the spike protein, so if there is a mutation that changes the spike protein enough to bypass immunity from the vaccines, we're in trouble. On the flip side, we are now very well equipped to make vaccines to target a new mutation. New mRNA vaccines could be developed basically overnight. I don't know how vaccine trials would work for a modified vaccine though. Either way, the mutations that have been identified so far don't seem to suggest they will be able to get around immunity from vaccines. This is not the first time this virus has evolved into a more contagious form. It's obviously something to watch out for though, as well as the possibility of a recombination of this virus with another animal coronavirus.

Weekly coronavirus deaths in IL are on the order of some entire YEARS for the flu here now, going off estimates of the national flu death toll in previous years. As expected, the virus has begun tearing through my relatives, and a couple of them are in bad shape.

lol this is just Musk's way of announcing he has the virus. He couldn't do it without first undermining pandemic mitigation efforts. Anything short of him going on a ventilator he'll claim as "cold like symptoms". It's no secret that rapid tests aren't super accurate. However they do have their use, especially for preventing outbreaks at long term care facilities. Rapid tests have identified infected staff at the facility my mom works as a nurse in, and this likely prevented big outbreaks there.

Unchecked exponential growth going on for weeks now. I don't know why I am shocked at this point. It's crazy knowing that this virus is going to burn through most people I know and there's nothing I can do about it. I was on a walk a few nights ago when it was still warm out and I saw my neighbor get carried away in a stretcher. He's dead now. I have yet to hear whether it was coronavirus related or not, but I would be surprised if it wasn't at this point. I had just seen him walking dogs a few weeks ago. These next few months are going to be a dark time.

The squall line yesterday was a great way to end an amazing stretch of November warmth!! I'm curious to see if the NWS will classify it as a derecho, because it seems to fit the criteria of the serial type. I drove out to near Galesburg, IL with the hope of catching some semi-discrete stuff but ended up just enjoying the squall. Here's my video of the storm. The wind gust at 2:39 was ridiculous!! I'm curious what that would have clocked in as. Tree damage was fairly minimal in the area due to the lack of leaves.

I'm astonished how nice the weather has been! A well needed slice of heaven in an otherwise terrible year. Haven't broken any daily records here yet but the duration of this warmth is impressive to say the least. That topped with bright sunshine is hard to beat. The only thing that would make it better would be finishing off this warm spell with a nice fall severe setup.

This worries me: https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-denmark-mink/denmark-to-cull-entire-mink-herd-amid-mutation-fears-for-coronavirus-vaccine-idINKBN27K1YV The virus has been tearing through mink farms for several months now, and mutations have been cooking up during this time. It's jumped back to humans on more than one occasion as well. According to the article, there is a mink strain that is back circulating in humans that may be resistant to antibodies from the human strains of the virus. This would be a major issue for vaccine prospects as well. I can't find any literature on the new claims, so hopefully this will just be a scare. Even so, we need to be vigilant at monitoring the strains circulating in animals so we don't end up back at square 1.

The weather today was eerily pleasant considering the circumstances. https://twitter.com/spann/status/1323737823032320006?s=20

It took ~30 years for heard immunity to finally beat out the H1N1 virus that caused the Spanish flu, and of course there were many millions of deaths in that time span. If the theory about Russian flu being caused by the coronavirus OC43 is true, then herd immunity never killed it off as it still circulates today. Don't get me wrong, the new coronavirus is never going away either, but many of the deaths and severe illness can be mitigated if it follows the pattern of other pandemics. A vaccine won't make it all go away, but there's a lot of reason to believe it will significantly reduce mortality. The H1N1 vaccine developed for 2010 would have actually prevented many of the deaths associated with the Spanish flu, even though it wasn't specifically targeted for it. A SARS2 coronavirus vaccine may not give complete immunity for a long time, but there's good reason to believe the partial immunity it may provide down the road will be enough to beat down the virus into something much less severe in most people. Remember that this coronavirus often directly interferes with immune function, so a vaccine designed to produce an optimal antibody response has a lot more hope for inducing immunity than from direct infection.