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Polar Vortex

Old 08-14-14, 05:07 PM
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Colorado Kid
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Polar Vortex

Tomorrow the weather is to get to the low 50s and maybe 40s in the countryside. The local weatherman is even mentioning about the polar vortex coming back this winter. Has anyone else had this strange weather lately?
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Old 08-14-14, 05:56 PM
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Weather has been strange. This year summer in my area has been much cooler then usual and that was after a very harsh winter of last year. I wonder what the winter will be like this year ??... All the global warming alarmists are wrong..I think the world is cooling off a heading towards a mini-ice age.
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Old 08-14-14, 06:48 PM
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Originally Posted by Colorado Kid
Tomorrow the weather is to get to the low 50s and maybe 40s in the countryside. The local weatherman is even mentioning about the polar vortex coming back this winter. Has anyone else had this strange weather lately?
The weather has fallen out of its predictable seasonal behavior about 10 years ago. In the 90's the series of superstorms (storm of the century for one) were definitely the precursor to all of this odd nonsense. Literally back in late january it went from 55 degrees in the morning to below zero in the evening. There were some shrubs that started to bud and even a few bds that were beginning to blossom before the chill came in that week. This whole past winter was VERY cold and VERY snowy aside from the temperature spikes on random days. I have a feeling this next winter is going to be warmer, or wetter, or both. I'm usually right about winter, last year i had a feeling we'd see some bitter cold AND lots of snow. I am concerned. Clearly things are way out of balance.

Originally Posted by wolfchild
Weather has been strange. This year summer in my area has been much cooler then usual and that was after a very harsh winter of last year. I wonder what the winter will be like this year ??... All the global warming alarmists are wrong..I think the world is cooling off a heading towards a mini-ice age.
Well to begin with, the whole planet cannot be going into an ice age unless the oceanic conveyor current system stops working. There has been more heating at the poles (especially the arctic) due to increased water area and decreased reflectivity due to dust storms, coal ash etc on glaciers and the like.

Before we dive into another ice age (which will definitely happen), the weather will grow ever more erratic with more severe and unpredictable cold spells & heat waves. Seeing the train coming down the track youre on & pointing it out isnt being alarmist, it's stating the obvious.

I've always had really good intuition, and i can say with some certainty that the human race numbering in the billions, wont last much longer unless we put everything we have into harmonizing with the natural cycles vs throwing them down a steep hill. In short we've built and are getting ready to lay in our own coffin.

- Andy
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Old 08-14-14, 07:33 PM
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Dust Bowl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Old 08-14-14, 08:14 PM
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The temps in Ohio have been terrific this summer. My window is open as I write this. The past few summers did not see much in the way of open windows.
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Old 08-14-14, 08:21 PM
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Last winter was mild, this summer has been mild (don't think we've hit triple digits yet)... I'm anticipating a really bad winter.
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Old 08-14-14, 10:02 PM
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And you thought Al Gore was nuts.
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Old 08-15-14, 04:18 AM
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Originally Posted by gregjones
And you thought Al Gore was nuts.
You ever see his movie?

- Andy
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Old 08-15-14, 07:38 AM
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Hey! Push some of that this way!
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Old 08-15-14, 07:50 AM
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Polar Vortex? That's nuthin... We have a Lokian Wall of Doom bearing down on us (my new name for a warm front).

I used to work with some people in Colorado and I can remember them complaining about snow around Labor Day. Labor Day isn't that far away, so maybe while lows in the 40's and 50's are below average, they're not exactly unheard of for this time of year.

Honestly, if you look at the weather over decades rather than just the last few years, I think you'll discover the biggest change has been in the names we have given weather phenomena.

If you live someplace in the middle of a big continent (like the Midwest or Plains states), "normal" weather is highly variable. Last winter seemed really long and cold but it wasn't much different than the winters I experienced in the late 70's and early 80's while I was in high school. The winters we had the last part of my college days seemed unusually mild. But that could have been because my frame of reference was the cold winters we had while I was in high school.

The average high temp starts to slide in August but it's still somewhere around 80 in Minneapolis. On a given day it might struggle to get to 60. It could also get to 100. Average doesn't mean much.

Last edited by tjspiel; 08-15-14 at 08:04 AM.
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Old 08-15-14, 07:58 AM
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Originally Posted by no1mad
Last winter was mild, this summer has been mild (don't think we've hit triple digits yet)... I'm anticipating a really bad winter.
Maybe in OK but last winter was pretty severe here, record-breaking nasty. Very mild summer though, and I also expect a bad winter.

The interesting thing about the "polar vortex" of last winter is that it wasn't weakened globally as is usually the case - just across North American and eastern Siberia. We didn't have a strongly negative "arctic oscillation" reading (low pressure in temperate zones, high pressure in arctic). That makes it difficult for me to predict, and it means that other (unusual) variables have come into play.
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Old 08-15-14, 10:16 AM
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It's been remarkably cool and dry most of the time this summer in NYC. Just this morning they reported on the news that it's in fact an average summer, with average temps a degree or two above the long term average. However, we haven't had any heat waves, and very few days that hit 90. This summer also seems cool in contrast, as we just went through four straight years of record breaking summer heat. Don't say, "so much for global warming," though, as people did last winter. Worldwide, this is another summer for record breaking heat. Global warming, as it's name implies, is global, not local. The northeast just got lucky.
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Old 08-15-14, 10:58 AM
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A couple years ago, we had snow at the end of August. This year, the temperature swings have not been so extreme, but it's been much wetter than normal. July is normally dry, but last month was the wettest month we've had in over 10 years (winters included). August hasn't been much better. I've been wearing my fall commuting clothes for the past 6 weeks.
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Old 08-15-14, 12:16 PM
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I thought this thread was going to be about a new GPS watch or bike model or something.
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Old 08-15-14, 12:22 PM
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Originally Posted by wolfchild
Weather has been strange. This year summer in my area has been much cooler then usual and that was after a very harsh winter of last year. I wonder what the winter will be like this year ??... All the global warming alarmists are wrong..I think the world is cooling off a heading towards a mini-ice age.
I live in Las Vegas and we were told that winter 2014 was one of the warmest ever, but this summer has not been bad at all. In the 6+ years I've lived here I'm used to nighttime lows of about 90, but summer 2014 nights dip below 80.

Here we are in August and we're barely cracking 100F.
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Old 08-15-14, 09:55 PM
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record breaking winter last winter here in indiana along with unusually cool summer this year. Went outside this morning for work around 7 and could see my breath...in august....
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Old 08-15-14, 10:42 PM
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It's not predicted to be unusually cool in my area next week, but I'm not looking forward to all the rain in the forecast.

BTW, anyone who still calls it "global warming" hasn't been keeping up. For years now, the experts have been describing the disruptions caused by excessive CO2 as "global climate change" instead.
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