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Sawmaster

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I wonder if the NWS office in Peachtree City can handle all these flash flood warnings across most of Georgia right now since the CWA covers almost all counties in Georgia.
My local NWS office is KGSP to their north, and the WWA texts from there appear here too. I haven't paid close attention but it seems to me they do well keeping up with things in the northern parts of their CWA. Their messages are clearer and laid out better; many of mine have locations halfway down and others near the top. Peachtree is more consistent. They're up to speed on convective events but I haven't followed hydro events with them. I'm soon to be moving further south so I'll be watching them more closely as I'll then be within 50 mi (maybe less) of their CWA then.

We didn't have anything locally except some minor street flooding in the usual places, but KGSP blasted several FF warnings out which seemed uncalled for IMHO. The potential was there but no rivers or streams seem to have overtopped their banks or even came close. I think the mou8ntains had some of that. KGSP ain't what it used to be for accuracy and they "cry wolf" over anything at the drop of a hat so lots of local folks don't pay them any mind anymore (Plainfield syndrome). To their credit they are getting better deciding when to forecast against the CAM's predictions lately which has increased their accuracy. Upstate SC is sometimes very hard to forecast for, and this areas best forecasters have always had long experience here. KGSP lost that through transfers and retirements.

Phil
 

Jacob

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Hello fellow Utahn! Yeah, I've heard the same questions about the location of the temperature recordings being moved at SLC, not sure as to how much it's impacted the numbers either, but I can say having lived my whole life here (49 y/o) the summers are noticeably hotter, even than 10-20 years ago, the last several have been particularly bad... I'll be curious what you find.

I just did a little looking through ASOS readings from Hill AFB and SLC Airport and there's not some obvious smoking gun (not that I expected one). I chose Hill AFB as a comparison because it is the closest station with a long temperature record.

There's a good bit more warming at SLC airport than there has been at Hill AFB, though the majority of the difference is in the nighttime readings. Much of that can be attributed to urban sprawl/urban heat island effect I would assume. Based on google earth historical images, I *think* the SLC ASOS was moved to its current location in 2010. Much of the nighttime difference has been observed since 2010, so perhaps that new location is partially causing that. It also appears that the area around the ASOS site was filled in with gravel in 2017. For reference, from 2001-2010, SLC airport nighttime lows increased by an average of +0.94°F, while Hill AFB increased +1.142°F. However when you look at 2011-Current, SLC airport has increased by +2.94°F, and Hill AFB has increased by +0.43°F.

Here's some of the data in charts. I'd like to spend a little more time digging through some of this data when I get some free time. That's tough to come by these days with two little ones.

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Notes on the data: All data are 10 year averages of July/August temperatures. Using yearly data makes it too noisy to present, so I used 10 year averages.
 

Jacob

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Hello fellow Utahn! Yeah, I've heard the same questions about the location of the temperature recordings being moved at SLC, not sure as to how much it's impacted the numbers either, but I can say having lived my whole life here (49 y/o) the summers are noticeably hotter, even than 10-20 years ago, the last several have been particularly bad... I'll be curious what you find.

Also after looking through the temp records summer temps are indeed up pretty much across the board for Utah over the last couple decades. I'm not sure if the 100°F days are inflated a small amount lately due to the airport readings, but I suspect even if so that this was the hottest summer on record here. Today was easily the hottest September day on record.

Perhaps in time I'll adjust to the lower humidity and the summer will feel hotter here, but based on this summer I'll take 100 with a dewpoint in the 35-45 range over upper 80s and a dewpoint in the mid 70s every day of the week.
 

bjdeming

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I agree, most of the time, but right now we could use some humidity here in Oregon, just not the "scuba suit in a sauna" type. I've been here eight years and haven't seen this level of concern (though I've heard about it occurring in California). Here's the current red flag warning.

Here at the edge of the Coastal Range, our state forest areas are closed, but at least for now, we're not in the high-risk zone. They are across the valley, though, on the Cascades side, and of course up north in the Gorge. Not sure what's happening in eastern areas.

So, starting overnight in some areas, I think, tens of thousands of Oregonians will have power blackouts, in 90 to almost 100° weather, strong winds with gusts in the mid-40s, at least in the Gorge area, and because winds are from the east, lots of smoke even if nothing ignites here -- through Saturday. Best case scenario.
 

wasatch

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Also after looking through the temp records summer temps are indeed up pretty much across the board for Utah over the last couple decades. I'm not sure if the 100°F days are inflated a small amount lately due to the airport readings, but I suspect even if so that this was the hottest summer on record here. Today was easily the hottest September day on record.

Perhaps in time I'll adjust to the lower humidity and the summer will feel hotter here, but based on this summer I'll take 100 with a dewpoint in the 35-45 range over upper 80s and a dewpoint in the mid 70s every day of the week.
Very cool data - thank you for sharing! Yeah, I've noticed over 30 years or so of following that SLC's temps don't drop at night like they do north/south 30 miles or so (Ogden/Provo)... I wonder too how much a shrinking Great Salt Lake impacts our warming temps and our lackluster snow numbers in most recent winters? Nice that our temps have returned to about normal as this is usually a really nice time of year weather-wise in Utah...
 

Jacob

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Very cool data - thank you for sharing! Yeah, I've noticed over 30 years or so of following that SLC's temps don't drop at night like they do north/south 30 miles or so (Ogden/Provo)... I wonder too how much a shrinking Great Salt Lake impacts our warming temps and our lackluster snow numbers in most recent winters? Nice that our temps have returned to about normal as this is usually a really nice time of year weather-wise in Utah...

I obviously don't know that much about the weather in general out here yet, I've only lived here a few months so I'm not sure how much the changing water levels in the lake might affect those things. It'll be interesting to see how the next few winters are here. There's been a noticable decline in snow over the last decade, but to levels only slightly lower than those during the last low "snow cycle" here in the 30's/40's. Looking at the historical data, here's the amount of snow per season vs. the amount of precip that fell. This number decreasing lately does indicate that with the warmer temps, more is falling as rain as opposed to snow. It'll be interesting to see if this trend continues or not.

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Here's the 5 year average snowfall

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bjdeming

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Just have to vent this.

<rant>I think the hype about fire conditions in Oregon this weekend was scary and overdone. The red-flag warning is certainly necessary, there are a few more fires today, and the northeast and southern parts of the state are definitely in bad shape, with evacuations underway, but what I'm seeing here is nowhere near 2020 levels of nightmare, no matter what the Salem paper reports.

It's just fire season, on a windy day. This is not to diminish what Oregonians are going through, but it's no different from the experiences others are having, without gloomy coverage, in Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and other western states.

This article from Montana, a few days ago, is a good example of the coverage I like because it informs but doesn't panic the public.

And no rolling power blackouts there, either, AFAIK.

When it comes to fire coverage in Oregon, I'll glance at it but will get my serious information for making decisions from sites like Inciweb from now on. Some journalistic choices here seem to be based more on panic buttons than common sense in a truly dangerous situation (as fire season always is, everywhere).</rant>
 

WesL

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Just have to vent this.

<rant>I think the hype about fire conditions in Oregon this weekend was scary and overdone. The red-flag warning is certainly necessary, there are a few more fires today, and the northeast and southern parts of the state are definitely in bad shape, with evacuations underway, but what I'm seeing here is nowhere near 2020 levels of nightmare, no matter what the Salem paper reports.

It's just fire season, on a windy day. This is not to diminish what Oregonians are going through, but it's no different from the experiences others are having, without gloomy coverage, in Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and other western states.

This article from Montana, a few days ago, is a good example of the coverage I like because it informs but doesn't panic the public.

And no rolling power blackouts there, either, AFAIK.

When it comes to fire coverage in Oregon, I'll glance at it but will get my serious information for making decisions from sites like Inciweb from now on. Some journalistic choices here seem to be based more on panic buttons than common sense in a truly dangerous situation (as fire season always is, everywhere).</rant>

We are experts on that when it comes to storms, snow, etc. Becoming a full-time job trying to figure out how much a forecast is ratings hype versus what is going to happen.
 

Jacob

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Had a brief snow shower at my house this afternoon/evening. October 26th is easily the earliest I've seen falling snow.

And first measurable snow of any kind now on Nov 2nd. Little more than a trace at the moment, but enough to make all the roofs white and grassy areas mostly white
 

WesL

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So here is a question I've often wondered about but never really thought to research. What is up with the format that NWS uses to issue products? No word wrapping; obviously, there are set column sizes. Does anyone have any idea why?

DISCUSSION AND OUTLOOK
----------------------
At 200 PM AST (1800 UTC), the center of Subtropical Storm Nicole was
located near latitude 26.4 North, longitude 70.1 West. The storm
is moving toward the northwest near 9 mph (15 km/h). A slower
northwestward motion is expected later this afternoon through
tonight. A turn toward the west or west-southwest is then forecast
to begin by Tuesday night and that motion should continue through
early Thursday. On the forecast track, the center of Nicole will
approach the northwestern Bahamas on Tuesday and Tuesday night,
move near or over those islands on Wednesday, and approach the east
coast of Florida Wednesday night.
 

maroonedinhsv

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So here is a question I've often wondered about but never really thought to research. What is up with the format that NWS uses to issue products? No word wrapping; obviously, there are set column sizes. Does anyone have any idea why?
My guess (and it's ONLY a guess) would be that the formatting is inherited from the old days of messages coming in via wire and being spit out on the printers in the newsrooms.
 

thundersnow

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Seems like there's not much winter weather talk on this forum anymore. General member interest is definitely more severe weather based... which is fine, I guess. I think most of the winter weather folks were lost after the forum crashed a few years back and had to be recreated and didn't come back. For what it's worth, there are some interesting patterns coming up for December. BAM Wx put out a good video about it this morning.
 

Sawmaster

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Seems like there's not much winter weather talk on this forum anymore. General member interest is definitely more severe weather based... which is fine, I guess. I think most of the winter weather folks were lost after the forum crashed a few years back and had to be recreated and didn't come back. For what it's worth, there are some interesting patterns coming up for December. BAM Wx put out a good video about it this morning.
I'm relatively new here, but I've noticed that a large part of the most active posters here aren't in the 'snow belt'. Sometimes you've got to kick the coals yourself to get the fire going again ;)
 

atrainguy

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I know there is a lot of snow coverage on the Americanwx site, perhaps that's where all the "winter people" went. From what I can tell, from lurking on both sites for the past couple years, Americanwx is great for thorough coverage of snow events, while Talkweather is great for thorough coverage of severe/tornado events. Obviously there are exceptions, but more often than not that seems to be the case.

That's good to hear December might be interesting. Hopefully Lower Michigan gets in on the fun and we can have a white Christmas!
 

Jacob

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I'm relatively new here, but I've noticed that a large part of the most active posters here aren't in the 'snow belt'. Sometimes you've got to kick the coals yourself to get the fire going again ;)

This board originated out of ABC 33/40 (Birmingham affiliate station), 20+ years ago. So the core of posters use to be pretty much 100% from central and north AL. This place use to go bonkers for snow threats to the south, but it hasn’t really been that way for a few years at least now.
 

thundersnow

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This board originated out of ABC 33/40 (Birmingham affiliate station), 20+ years ago. So the core of posters use to be pretty much 100% from central and north AL. This place use to go bonkers for snow threats to the south, but it hasn’t really been that way for a few years at least now.
What I noticed was that there was a caucus of "snow weenies" that primarily live in Georgia and the Carolinas. They got to be a tight group and would often focus on their back yard with winter weather anyway. They seemed to all herd together over to a separate forum that some of them started up while TW was down for several weeks or months after this forum crashed. They all got comfortable over there, I guess, and never came back over here. I think once they were all gone, it became obvious just how dominant they used to be here, thinking about how quiet it now is in comparison. The severe weather interested folks stayed here. It's kind of interesting how all that happened.

I read both forums, knowing good severe wx disco is here, while more winter wx talk is over there.
 

Jacob

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Had a winter storm overpeform here last night, and oddly underperform in the mountains. We picked up 5-6” here at my house, and about the same up in the mountains.

It is the biggest snow I’ve seen at the location I’m living since I guess the 93 blizzard.
 

TH2002

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As far as winter weather goes, we don't get too much of that here (Big Bear is an ENTIRELY different story, on the other hand) but we usually see flurries every winter, and perhaps a bigger snowstorm every few years or so. Closest thing to a White Christmas we've ever had was the December 26, 2019 snowstorm... so close, yet so far away.

Even severe weather is somewhat unheard of here, but does happen. On October 15 I filmed a line of SVR-warned thunderstorms as the bulk of the line passed 10 miles or so to my northwest, a landspout tornado touched down in Menifee on October 8 (oh, if only I had known!) and of course there are plenty of historical events in the book.

On another note, never got around to posting about it until now but on September 1 we had yet another brush fire pop up... this time on one of our neighbor's properties. Too close for comfort!
20220901_152746.jpg

In that regard, might not be a bad idea to get a dedicated thread going for wildfire events?
 
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