mattie g

That's crazy. They're only just poking through around here. I realize that downtown is a different beast when it comes to weather, but wow. Is this earlier than normal for you?

End of the run on the 12z GFS has that confluent Bob Chill bowl-ish look. Would be typical if we got that as we hit the middle of March...

It would probably be easier to answer questions, if I'm honest. There's a ton to unpack and it's really tough to get my head around it all*. Feel free to throw them my way and I'll do my best. I'll also be honest and will tell you if I don't have the expertise / knowledge to weigh in. I'm not actively involved in foreign or security policy or anything like that now, but I do think my experiences give me a decent perspective on what's going on and some of the language being used by Putin to justify the invasion. * It's INSANE that we're even talking about a Russian invasion of Ukraine right now. Not that an invasion of a smaller country should be any different, but the unfortunately political reality is that it is. I recently saw some short clips of some of what's happening (nothing graphic), and it got me really unnerved.

35 and a mix of very light rain and some drizzle here in Burke. Maybe some mist, as well. Among the worst of weather.

It would be WW3, but it won't happen. I actually got my Master's in History by studying Eastern and Central European history of the interwar period, so I'm both fascinated and troubled by what's going on. It's way too much to go into in a post on a weather board (), but I'll just say that it's all intertwined, though it may not necessarily all be parallels.

Are you eagerly awaiting your icing event?

So...well over an inch of precip over 15 days as winter is ending = "devoid of precip?"

Wait...which "threat window" is this about? Is it the weekend of the 26th-27th?

I picked up a pretty standard feeder last year and put it near our landscaped pond area. Plenty of hummingbirds showed up within a few weeks of putting it up, even with having done so relatively late in the spring. The funny thing to watch was when we would get 3, 4, 5 hummingbirds at once. At first, I thought it was awesome that I'd get to to see multiple of them at once on a regular basis, but I never realized how territorial they are until I saw the scraps that took place over that feeder.

Not looking good, I assume.

Sowed my first seeds of the season today. Four varieties of tomatoes, one of jalapeños, and two of basil. All are under grow lights and on heat mats in the basement, and should be sitting at 75-80F or so on those mats. I debated some other herbs - particularly parsley and cilantro - but held off for now. Cilantro is odd to grow (but I LOVE it), so I might just sprinkle some throughout the garden during the season, but I have found that parsley can rally thrive if you transplant it correctly.

I was about to suggest Lira, but you beat me to it.

One of my best friends had Stage 3 colon cancer at 26. He had been slightly symptomatic since college, and it was only his wife's intervention (newly married) that forced him to get checked out. He ended up having a colectomy, and <knock on wood> he's luckily been free of cancer since. Crazy...a 26-year-old having colon cancer. I remember hearing that his doctor had recently (at that time) been seeing quite an uptick in colon cancer diagnoses among younger men. Not cool at all.

Cool stuff. That EPO ridge is kind of sneaking into the western NAO domain, as well, and the Scandinavian Ridge and EPO ridge are threatening to pinch off the TPV altogether. It's certainly a +NAO on the matrix, but that's just semantics because it absolutely works for us.

I haven't been paying attention to the forecasts recently other than that it was supposed to get mild late this week, so I was shocked at how mild it was when I took the elder daughter to the bus stop this morning!

Urgh. That sucks. Hopefully it just stays mild and that all are on the mend soon. We know quite a few fully vaccinated and boosted folks who have gotten it, but each one of them had pretty mild symptoms, the worst of which was a bad cold for a couple days. Obviously that's not how it goes for everyone, but my anecdotal evidence is that that's very much how it's been going in general.

So you're saying it's not going to snow?

I'm no expert, but that EPO ridge is delivering cold directly from the Arctic, and that TPV near Greenland is serving as a kind of confluential [made up word] block. Looks like there might be a hint of split flow, too, so there would be good moisture coming in from the southwest up into that cold, and since we have the confluence over the Northeast, disturbances would be unlikely to cut.

Here's my issue...you're exhausting. That's my brutally honest take, so I do kind of apologize if it comes off as dick-ish. It honestly doesn't feel like you actually listen to and process what people tell you. You bring up the same things over and over again, and in much the same fashion (e.g., "Nina! Oh...woe is me! All no-snow problems are because of the Nina!"), and no matter how many people try to answer your questions, give you good info, or talk you down from the ledge, you still come back to the same things time and time again.

It rains or freezing rains in far NW South Carolina from hours 246 to 348. Makes sense.

I think DC itself struggled, but plenty of us just north and west had a decent month. Edit: What WxUSAF said.

I'm honestly surprised there haven't been any "confused" reactions to this yet since the map has yellow/orange over us. That said...those two H5 anomaly maps are astonishingly carbon copy-ish looks.

Weather Will said that we were done for the season though.

11/30: T 12/8: T 1/3: 9.25" 1/7: 2.75" 1/16: 3.00" 1/20: T 1/28: 1.00" 2/13: 0.25" Total as of 2/14: 16.25"

I haven't seen Wheel of Time, but I can't imagine they wouldn't be laser focused on making this right. Not only are they sinking a ton of money into it, but they're also taking on the rich tapestry of Tolkien's world, with the legions of fans - anything from true Tolkien geeks to relative fans of the movies only - that will be watching with extreme caution. If WingNut, et al hadn't screwed up The Hobbit so badly (though the first movie was quite good), then I think the scrutiny might be slightly less than it otherwise would have been. LOTR is just so much to live up to, so I hope they can give this the justice it deserves. I'm going to go into it with tempered enthusiasm, but if they can figure out how to truly transmit to the screen what was in some of Tolkien's books and notes on the Second Age, then it's going to be incredible.