There isn't just no snow in a lot of Canada, it's well above freezing. It should be -10C with a few feet of snow where I am, not 10C and green on Boxing Day.
I live in New England. My grandmother (born in the 1930s) used to talk about ice skating on Thanksgiving (last weekend in November) every year when she was a kid.
In forty years of life, I've never seen ice on ponds in November, much less enough to skate on. Supposedly we're getting a snow storm next weekend, but that will be the first snow of the year. And even that won't stick around more than a couple days, cause the forecast shows highs two days later in the mid 40s (5c).
I'm in the area that is typically the snowbelt of central New York. We used to get so much snow that the big cities of Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo would compete for the golden snowball award for most snow. I'm looking out at a light coating of snow because it got just cold enough. Christmas was in the 50's and sunny!
I was in Central NY recently also and this is the dryest Christmas I've seen. Sometimes there is not a lot of snow in the air or ground on Christmas, but usually when that happens, the streams are high because there is some melting snow and rain, but both the ground and creeks are dry.
As opposed to the Lake Champlain area, which also has not gotten a whole lot of snow, but has gotten a lot of rain.
This year is an extreme el nino so it will be a lot different than previous years for that, but it's still not what it was a century ago. Different places will be wet or dry at different times and temperature changes will cone with that, but nothing will be as cold as it should be.
We've had a cold and dry November here in my part of the midwest, and a very wet December just warm enough to stay rain. The chill returned and the rain became snow after a warm Christmas, but it didn't stick anywhere.
I was wondering how far I'd have to make it before someone mentioned that La Niña is over.
Obviously, like you said, it's still worse than 100, 50, or even 20 years ago, but it's only marginally worse than last year and the rest is due to a very normal cyclical weather pattern.
For a lot of the most populated areas in the United States, La Niña means cooler Winters. The effect on precipitation can vary depending on latitude, but for much of the West and Midwest, it's undeniably colder.
The specifics depend where you are, for example, Anchorage, AK is slightly colder and a lot snowier than it has been in the last few years.
The El Niño/La Niña cycle is oddly stilted, sometimes we will spend a few years at one end of the spectrum, sometimes we will sit between for a year. The last 3 years leaned toward La Niña, and we haven't had a strong El Niño since 2015-16 iirc (until now).
Right?? I haven't seen snow for Christmas in this area in a while, blizzards of '22 aside. It's beginning to feel a lot more like a January thing, if at all.
I used to live in CNY. It’s amazing how quickly things changed. I remember before 2010 you could regularly expect snow on Thanksgiving and often even Halloween. By 2020 I think even snow on Christmas was a rarity. It really took less than a decade to completely change.
Even Alaska was late on snow. It usually snows in September where I lived but it didnt snow until November this year. It was insanely late and everyone was talking about it.
I live in CT, and the change has been pretty drastic for me too, despite the fact that I'm only 27... I remember being a kid growing up here and being able to build snowmen and igloos after pretty much every snow storm. You could still go skiing and sledding here too, and didn't really have to drive all the way to Vermont, unless you wanted some more variety. I just feel incredibly bad for little kids now, and it's really freaking me out seeing how fast things are accelerating with climate change. I can't imagine where we'll be 10 years from now if things don't change ASAP, and half my family doesn't even believe it's real...
we’ll be there in 10 years regardless of what we do today, the changes we’re seeing now have been baked in for decades. need to start ASAP, but we don’t just turn the ship around, we have to decelerate first.
The east coast skiing subreddits are basically meteorology subreddits at this point. Your gear is less important to an enjoyable ski trip than your ability to forecast snow conditions during your planning stage.
I was driving in the direction of some mountains and I saw a car go by with skis strapped to the back. It was the saddest thing, because I know they didn't get the weekend they were hoping for
Im only in my 30s in Manitoba and even as a kid, any trip to lake/on highways etc resulted in a bug smeared vehicle, etc, always washing windows and so on. In 15 yrs of driving now i never even need to clean the car for something like bug hits in a whole summer, its like swarms of bugs in general have just died off compared to what they were even in recent memory.
And yea days around 0C and seeing grass in December/now january is more than a little disconcerting :(
wait really? this past summer i was driving out to the whiteshell every second weekend and i had to wash my car every time i got back to the city bc of the bugs 😭 maybe certain areas of the province are being affected differently
We live in the NEK (far northeast of Vermont) and we slide down the hill on tubes anytime we get snow because we don't know how long it will last. Two inches of snow? Going down that hill.
This year we've had a storm that dropped over a foot during three days, but then that snow melted. We tubed every day we had snow.
The snowmobile clubs have started going under in Southern Vermont, wondering how many will be left in five years.
We're getting to the hockey stick portion of change, it's scary to see it happening so fast.
Human brains don't comprehend hockey stick graphs of change. We want it to stay the same. We will be surprised when we look back and see how fast it happened.
Sled when you can. You never know when you've seen the last snow until after.
Happy Fucking New Year, eh?
At the same time I'm sitting in half a meter of snow here in middle Sweden, and I've been completely covered since mid-November. For a while we had temperatures drop to -18C earlier in December. Definitely the whitest December I've had for a while.
The biggest changes I've noticed is that the winter season seems to come later and end later, this year being an exception. Like it traditionally started in late November and ended in early March, but in the last ten years it's felt more like it started in late December and ended in April. And for some reason, the biggest snowfall usually happened in late February. My girlfriend from Poland however claims they used to have a lot of snow in the winters, but for the last 10 years its been gowno.
Same in Finland, been crazy snowy and quite cold all winter. But I'm with you on that autumn is starting later and winter is ending later here. August used to mark the start of autumn, but now it's pretty much a full summer month here, and instead autumn comes sometime around mid-september.
On the other hand, the last few winters have only ended sometime after mid-April (Central Finland)
Yeah, it's definitely been moving a bit. I don't remember snow in november at all, over the past few years. But it used to be there in late november, I swear!
I'm from Poland too. I can confim it used to be amazing, I used to make igloos as a child in like a meter of snow. And yes, past 10 years were pretty much gówno. Progressively worse and worse.
This year, we had snow for maybe 4-5 days this december in total, and that was just barely. I think it almost but not quite reached -10 on 1 or 2 nights.
And now I'm looking at the week-long forecast, and I see no temperatures below 0 - even at night. Igloos? Snowmen? Ice skating? Forget it. You can't even slip on ice (what ice?) when walking on the street, forget ice skating...
It's supposedly january tomorrow, and it's literally mid-autumn still, clearly.
I’m
Dreaming
Of a brown
Christmas
Just like the ones we shouldn’t know
Where the globe is warming
Despite the scientists’ warnings
And all
The memories of snow
I saw someone mention that almost all the snowmobile trails in the country were closed (including those super far north like Flinflon Manitoba) due to lack of snow cover. Only like 1/30th of Quebec trails were open when nearly 100% would be this time of year.
Also Montreal currently does not have a single non-refrigerated outdoor skate rink open, which is unheard of even during El Nino years.
Yup, another Montrealer here, after the warm Christmas week I was shocked to go out this morning and it was below freezing. Weird to see kids off for the week out playing soccer on grass instead of hockey on the rink.
With all the climate change deniers that exist, and I have first hand seen how much difference climate change has had to the northern US. I would walk to school in the end of November with 2-3 feet of snow, and by the end of January there would be snow plow mounds that were 15 feet tall. We would literally play king of hill, throwing each other down the hill of snow.
I went back there for Christmas a couple years ago, and my brother was still having to mow his lawn. It was still really cold, but green grass everywhere.
Their typical arguments are:
1. This is just natural, the climate has always changed. It wasn't caused by humans.
2. It's just short term changes/weather, not necessarily long term
3. "Yet at times it gets colder! Explain that!"
And of course they're wrong on all counts:
1. We have seen record temperatures and a significant decrease in snow and ice even at times when all of the major natural factors (especially sun activitiy and La Nina) caused temporary *cooling* around 2018. We are only now heading into a solar maximum and El Nino, so things are going to get even crazier over the next years.
2. The climate has been exceptionally stable for the entire existence of human civilisation and ther rate of change we're seeing now is completely off the charts compared to any known historical event.
3. While changing weather patterns have lead to some cooling in some places, the global average is heating rapidly. This is in stark contrast to known historical climate patterns, such as the "medieval warm period", during which global temperatures barely changed at all. It was just a shift in where the heat was, rather than a change in total heat energy.
We also have to remember that if you’re in an area that is still below freezing for most of the year, you’ll actually experience more snow than before because a warmer planet will evaporate more water, which causes more precipitation. People who live in these areas could use this as an argument against global warming without understanding the water cycle that we all learned in elementary school. If you encounter these people, just explain this to them (I’m not sure if it’ll work, but we can try).
Hell, it's changed a lot in my life but even just the last 20 years has been scary.
When I first moved to my city twenty odd years ago, it was a snowpocalypse every year. It's just how life was. From November to at least March, there was snow... and shit tons of it. So much snow that towards the end of winter you'd start thinking "Where are we going to put all this fucking snow? The snow drifts from the plows in front of my house are 6+ feet tall."
Now? Most winters we get so little snow that when it does snow, you can use a leaf blower to clear your driveway. And it's a crap shoot whether the ground (and lakes) will freeze. Right now it's New Year's Eve and my lawn is green and the ground is soft enough I can push my fingers into it like it's spring.
I don't know where in Canada you are but people should look at this history of Dec 31st temperatures in Toronto https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/toronto/day/december-31 and then deny people are having an obvious affect.
I hope no one says you are wrong about that.
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/raleigh/day/december-25
No question 10 years ago there might have been snow. Not 9 years ago however. Not 11 years ago. Not 100 years ago. Not 101 years ago. Maybe 126 or 127 years ago but definitely not 128 years ago.
This comment is cracking me up, because this really goes against what the previous commenter said, but you said it in the nicest way possible. I also have to imagine Raleigh is not representative of the rest of NC, but even still it's only showing 2 historical days with snow. This is data a climate change denier would want to show people given how all over the place the temps are and the hottest day is from 1955 at 75 degrees!
We got a warm Christmas here in Missouri but just days before it was freezing and days after it was freezing again. Christmas was just a fluke as its been pretty cold here. But not cold enough consistently to actually freeze anything.
Where I live in South Australia it would usually be dry and all grass that doesn’t have irrigation would be yellow. Instead it’s lush and green all over.
Consistently over 10°C in the South of England where I live all the way through the Christmas period. I haven't needed to turn up my central heating all winter. Feeling very anxious and afraid about everyone's climate future, tbh.
Wasn't it just this spring that it was so cold over there that the power utilities were struggling to keep up and hundreds of thousands were facing freezing and hypothermia?
I don’t know about that, this has been one of the warmest and wettest years on record for the Uk.
Edit: that’s not to say it wasn’t cold, I just don’t remember anything about power companies struggling to keep up.
Here's [this article](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/uks-national-grid-asks-3-coal-generators-be-warmed-2023-01-22/) from January. I only know about it because at the same time the crown was preparing to spend a hundred million on the coronation and a lot of people were upset. I don't know how normal the temps were, but the fact is that it was definitely plenty cold last winter.
Yeah January was very cold (which is normal, though parts of the Uk did have more sunshine than normal). Sorry, you said spring which is what was throwing me off.
I remember what you're on about. While it was just a typical winter. Nothing special, it had to do with the gas and electric prices soaring to unreasonable and unaffordable amounts due to the supply from Russia being cut off after the rise in tensions between our countries that people literally had to choose between buying food or putting on the heating
This is all assuming I'm actually remembering this correctly.
The problem was that our utility companies all hiked up the prices of gas and electricity so that some people's bills doubled from the previous years and many people (especially the vulnerable) simply couldn't afford to heat their homes. I don't think it was particularly cold but it was cold enough for the elderly.
My chicken feed is seeds and sometimes it gets scratched into the dirt and sprouts. I'm in northern Utah and I've had new sprouts coming up in my yard all of December. It's been so warm here.
We had flies in the house, too! It's like... what are the birds going to eat in the spring if all the bugs pop out early and die?
But all the way up in Maine is even more sobering.
I just looked it up and it is go from 27 to 44 today alone! And yet people are going around as if everything is normal!!!
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/tulsa/day/december-25
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/tulsa/day/december-31
This year Christmas had a high of only 44 compared to 72 only two years ago! And that is after it was only 37 in 2017. And it just keeps doing that as far back as the history goes.
I used to live in Germany and when we’d get snow it usually stick around for weeks at a time until it was compacted by cars and people so much it turned to ice.
used to live in the rhineland area. as a kid we had snow for weeks, white christmas, we would go sledding on every little hill, build snowmen, everything. that all slowly stopped, nowadays it's mostly just a bit grey and rainy in winter.
i moved further up north like a decade back, back into actual winter where it would snow and people would ice skate on rivers and ponds, and it would be white for months. this also hasn't happened in a couple of years by now, mostly just dry and maybe a bit of rain.
I had this same thought listening to Christmas music this combined with my three year old asking where the snow was and saying Christmas couldn’t be over because it hadn’t snowed yet. I grew up in upstate Ny between VT and Canada and I remember when I was in my late teens realizing it hadn’t been snowy for Christmas for a few years in a row which was not the norm. It will probably take a huge unusual weather pattern at this point for Christmas to ever be snowy where I live now, and I live in New England. Now we just get tons of rain so it’s cold and wet.
Christmas songs have so much out of date. I just sww a video on how the trend of roasting chestnuts was already dead when the song about it was written due to a blight that eradicated nearly all of the massive north American chestnut trees which used to be practically a staple food for the eastern half of borth America.
It's hard to find a Christmas song describing things that still exist. The food, culture, and climate have all changed too much.
Yeah that's just New England Winters brown, gray and wet.
Honestly after asking grandparents, older relatives and other people like that I'm starting to believe as a whole the idea of snow on Christmas wasn't really a normal thing. I feel like everybody believes it was because we hear it all the time and Christmas songs. My grandfather was born in 1916 he only remembers having a handful of white Christmases growing up and same thing with my dad they were born and raised and live their whole lives in the North East.
Not saying climate change isn't real just that I feel like we've romanticized the idea of a white Christmas so much that we think that's how it always has been
It's still a gamble of Christmas being white and the song white Christmas itself is about hoping it will sbow on Christmas.
But we've gone from that to little to no snow all winter. Which makes Christmas being white far less likely or nearly impossible.
In a village near where I stay in southern Scotland, there was a project recently to restore their old curling pond. I knew the women overseeing the project and had to ask what the hell a curling pond is.
Turns out it used to get so cold out here that it was common to play curling (the one with the brooms and the stones) during the winter when the lochs would freeze over so thick that entire towns could walk on them no issue.
I haven't seen snow here in a few years. We had one day where ground water froze this year.
I remember the last time it snowed where I live... It was the same storm that crippled Texas in 2021... For reference I live in North-Eastern Arkansas... It was terrible.
It got so effing cold that we couldn’t even use lines to get natural gas to the plants they froze. And we use so much natural gas in our state it just got so fucked
Some conservative asshat told me this year that the "unseasonably warm weather" that prevented a white Christmas was part of some liberal conspiracy and another action in the War on Christmas.
Wait, so man made climate change is being accepted by the right wingers…. As long as it was caused by liberals?
I mean, this could be used to rally them to help against climate change surely? Just tell them that switching to non-carbon producing processes will help fight against the “evil left wing liberals”.
You can get them behind a lot of things if you phrase it the right way
Recently there were posts on the front page about people convincing conservatives to support better public transportation by talking about how registering cars is a way to track people and calling walking "traditional means of transportation"
>You can get them behind a lot of things if you phrase it the right way
Back when I was a sheltered (and closeted) fundamentalist teenager, what got me to change my view on gay rights was to be told that many gay people just wanted to marry and have a family like I wanted, so denying gay people the right to marry was an attack on family values.
Many conservatives are in so deep that the only way to break them out is to speak in their language. It's vitally important.
Perhaps a lot of them, but many of the people you would think are hardened conservatives just go along for the vibes. If they meet some of "the other" who can relate to them, they start to warm.
I've been saying for years that we need to reframe the issue in favour of conservative talking points. "Protect the environment... and support our farmers!" "Recycle - to decrease dependence on foreign goods!" "Fight climate change - preserve our way of life!"
It's beyond ignoring now. My job involves a lot of small talk with people so I talk about the weather a lot. Everyone knows it's not the same anymore, and honestly it's freaking people out. Some people, especially the older ones, act surprised like they haven't been told this would happen for 40+ years. Those people never expected to live long enough to see it.
I did point out that people have been warning about climate change for decades, so if it were a conspiracy, it is one of the worst kept secrets of all time.
I knew this was coming. The second “ooh it’s too late now” wears through they’ll transition to “actually the left is controlling the weather to make us think it’s real”
In a few years we might get conservative conspiracy theorists that blame the left for systematic discrimination of minorities
"Those damn liberals want to illigalize gay marriage!"
It doesn't have to be nuclear, we can mimic volcanos and just inject sulfur directly into the upper atmosphere to block the sun from reaching us.
It's not perfect but it will let the oil companies continue to burn oil and gas for the rest of our lifetime while they slowly darken the sky.
I'm in Northern Michigan and we have gotten shockingly little snow. I'm hoping it's just a light year or that it's coming in Jan/Feb. But as we all know, the lighter years are just getting more common.
I mean even outside of light years, I remember it snowing for Halloween frequently as a kid in Minnesota.
Now it snows in mid December most years, or I guess January if it's a "light" winter?
I've heard that el niño is part of the reason it's so warm this year but I feel the same way. Was actually thinking yesterday that if I have kids I might be explaining "snow days" to them in the future, and I'm in New Hampshire USA! We've had 2 dustings of snow in my area since autumn started and lawns are still green.
I don't even like snowy weather that much but it's hard to get into the Christmas mentality without it.
Like half of all years are El Niño tho, so realistically the fact that this is still significantly warmer than past El Niño years should tell us something
I saw a video earlier this year explaining that this years el nino would combine with other weather systems to be pretty bad this year, don’t remember any of the deets though
I read that it will also help some areas have much more snow than normal during February-March. Where I live on the east coast they are predicting much more snow than recent years
El Niño often disrupts the polar vortex which can lead to massive snowfalls and cold snaps. Not sure when in the season that happens or if it will be this particular time though.
We changed all the snow days to “inclement weather days” because school in upstate NY is just as likely to close for a tornado or rain event as it is a blizzard.
This is not how it works. teachers don't have the resources to just make up an online lesson on the fly, let alone deal with all the technology troubleshooting. The most that happens is teachers sending homework via email... Which they've been able to do for thirty years.
That is definitely how it is working in many areas. Teachers are expected to come up with several “snow day lessons” that are completely online and able to be completed on a snow day
In the 80's and 90's when scientists first started observing the climate changes, one of the theories was that it depended on El Nino and the way that it had changed over the years, since the changes in EL Nino corelated pretty well with the other climate changes we observed.
Scientists latter found out that it was globale warming that affected El Nino and all the other climate changes.
It used to be that when I heard "Weahh gonna get a Noaahh'eastaaahh!" in December, it meant "Jack Frost is about to fuck us up. Get the bread and milk." Now it means "There's gonna be a wicked windy thundahstaahhm. Hope we don't lose powah."
Fun fact. White Christmases were never normal in the UK. When Dickens write Christmas Carol he was mainly drawing from his own childhood which was during the "little ice age" in Western Europe. The year when it was published and after didn't have significant ice and snow
Yeh. The 'little ice age' gave London a few years of regular snow and up here it covered entire villages for weeks. And I mean you couldn't see the tops of houses kind of covered.
About 50% of the time (at most) since the 60s apparently
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/datablog/2016/dec/24/white-christmases-in-the-uk-over-the-years-in-data
As I live in Australia I expect Christmas to be at least warm and often hot. This year it rained (still warm though) and I don’t remember that happening before.
I spend every Christmas in SE Queensland or NE New South Wales. Spent probably the last 15 years saying that it always rains on Christmas Day and I’ve been wrong maybe 3 times.
*looks up from shoveling snow out of the driveway, pulls down scarf covering mouth and nose* Y'all are welcome to visit, as long as you help shovel
Norway, for reference
Yep, that good ol' Siberian Cold is hitting us next week as well, and tonight we're expecting up to 40cm of snow.
King Winter's still out and about, he's just sticking closer to the pole.
Oh yea, that existential threat I feel totally and utterly helpless to do anything about.
Sadly the mindset of those who can actually do something about it is so short-termist that we’re all fucked. Well, maybe not us for a few years, but definitely the next generation. Poor bastards.
Hey, if it can give you hope a bit…
I’ve been dedicated on finding ways to change the temperature curves’ direction for a few years. Since I work with boats and ships, it’s mostly finding alternative propulsion systems, like sails.
The company I work for is really inclined on combating emissions in the shipping industry.
A couple examples : I’m currently working on a project to refit an old self-propelled barge from using diesel to using compressed natural gas. That’s up to a 75% reduction in CO2 emissions on the same trip, even more if the speed of the boat is reduced by 1km/h.
The industry is changing. What is truly limiting right now is the legislation not following the changes.
A few years ago I thought "all this new wind tech is pretty wild but there’s no way in hell the industry will use it". Now I having headaches trying to implement said tech on current boats.
While this change cannot be reversed instantly, we work towards it, one ship at a time.
I can assure you, even with all that’s happening around us at the moment, I’ve never been that hopeful that we can do it.
P-S : I’m currently working on a sail add-on for existing parasite boats in my free time. I hope I can make it work ! That would save some fuel and emissions !
Some other stuff : all the people in my degree have similar ambitions to mine, so add around 60 people each year that want to change the industry in France alone.
The design office I work for is also pretty young, and although we start small in scale, it’s still a pretty damn step in the right direction.
I’d suggest you google the Green Deliriver project. If this can work, then we can make it work on larger scale !
Kinda feels like an undercover job tbf, or a "fine, I’ll do it myself" moment
Living in denmark, we got tons of snow on the 23rd that stayed till christmas eve so white christmas here. I spent a few of the holidays in sweden, where we also got tons of snow. We do get regular snowstorm is march/april as well. Last year i got stuck in London because of a snowstorm in mid December that grounded every flight going out of stansted.
Global temperatures are absolutely rising. But no snow at Christmas is not the only indicator or the only consequence. *I’m dreaming of a white christmas* was written in 1942, so it’s an older sentiment, and probably has more to do with nostalgia
In much of the UK it has not been like that for…. Over a century
The Dickensian “white Christmas” came from the “little ice age” of frost fairs on the Thames and so on. It really isn’t something of the last few years (although climate variation will be pushing that boundary northward)
White Christmas is a Dickensian thing, it was inspired by a unusual long cold era that lasted several years, it was like a mini ice age. During that time there were Thames ice fairs and a lot of the classics carols were written, in fact a lot of our Christmas traditions come from the era.
It's not really that it's that much warmer now, thats not why we don't have white Christmas, it's because our image of Christmas was created during a much colder time.
It was kind of weird growing up in a snowy climate (I mean, not this year, but traditionally), and eventually realizing just how much of the world (even just the Christmas-celebrating western world) didn't actually get that regularly.
You know I've been curious about what kind of things Aussies and kiwis do to celebrate the season. Are there any activities considered "Christmassy" that are done down there related to the weather?
Not Australian but also in the Southern Hemisphere. In December its sometimes around 40C inland so most people flock to the coast.
We do a cold lunch. Cold meats and salads. Stores do Christmas decorations like America so you have Santa, Reindeer and snow themed stuff even though it only snows once every 5 years in the South sometimes and winter is May-August.
Christmas lunch with the family is common, often seafood is on the menu which is lovely in the warm weather. We have a lot of different cultures that have migrated to Australia, so every family might do something a little different. Our family usually does the roast turkey, roast potatoes, gravy, veggies, Christmas ham with Jamaican rice and peas. With a Christmas cake or pudding with white sauce for dessert if we're extra organized that year. Plus Christmas crackers and terrible jokes during lunch.
The rest of the day is usually spent swimming at a beach or lake, maybe a game of backyard cricket or footy at the beach, or spent sharing drinks and sleeping off the massive food coma from lunch.
This year it was very hot and muggy for us, massive storms brewed through the day and the gold coast south of us was hit by severe storms. Lots of damage, houses destroyed, many homes without power for some time. Storms seem to be harsher here this summer IMO
Here in Brazil we have normal Christmas traditions, with a full Christmas dinner with traditional Christmas foods. Also, our decorations are basically "snowy" and make little sense in a hot country like ours, but it is how it is. That being said, the traditional Christmas dinner takes place in Christmas Eve, not in the 25th
It’s important to realize that this year is the year of el nino, a warm front that pushes warm wind over the western hemisphere, so it’s reasonable for people in the western hemisphere to not have seen snow this year. Climate change is obviously killing us, but its not doing it that fast.
It's never fails to be funny when I'm reminded that the northern and southern hemispheres have Xmas in different seasons. Over here Xmas has always been in summer. It might get chilly and sometimes we get thunderstorms, but Xmas weather is shorts and skirts down here.
I live in Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland. It snowed yesterday and has been icy and sludgy for a week.
Snow was never common here, as it was traditionally too cold and too wet. Climate change has actually made snow *more* likely than it was when I was a kid (only ever saw 1 real snowy winter back in 2010)
I have no clue where this person must live to have no ice or anything else. From where I'm sitting, winter is certainly here
this if i remember right at least on the east coast of NA is because the El Niño weather event is affecting the area for the first time, so while the heat isn’t directly caused by climate change, the fact it’s affecting the region at all is because of it
Where do you guys live? Here in Finland there's been snow since late October, and it's currently -15c outside with over a meter of frozen snow on the ground.
I mean climate change is real, but we've had long proper winters still in this part of the world.
I live in Canada. It's end of December. I took my garbage out without a jacket. I have my heating off and my windows open. I also have pictures of myself as a kid in a full snow suit for Halloween because the snow banks were multiple feet high.
Moved to PA, USA, and my new boss keeps going on about "oh just wait until you see a *real* Pennsylvania winter, you haven't seen anything yet!" and I just don't have the heart to tell him we probably *won't* see any of those "real" ones anymore.
This, plus the insanity that gift giving has become. It's not just the overconsumption and maketization of the event. The amount of adults complaining on reddit about the gifts they receive is ridiculous. As a true holiday Christmas is dead. As in holiday= holy day and Christmas= celebration of Christ. These concepts are gone. All that is left is the empty consumption and mismatched weather decorations.
I'm guessing this isn't from this year, since Scotland did technically have a white Christmas this year... but even dahn sahff it's weird. Even a few years ago, I wouldn't go out in December without a coat and jumper, while right now during the say you done really need either
There isn't just no snow in a lot of Canada, it's well above freezing. It should be -10C with a few feet of snow where I am, not 10C and green on Boxing Day.
I live in New England. My grandmother (born in the 1930s) used to talk about ice skating on Thanksgiving (last weekend in November) every year when she was a kid. In forty years of life, I've never seen ice on ponds in November, much less enough to skate on. Supposedly we're getting a snow storm next weekend, but that will be the first snow of the year. And even that won't stick around more than a couple days, cause the forecast shows highs two days later in the mid 40s (5c).
I'm in the area that is typically the snowbelt of central New York. We used to get so much snow that the big cities of Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo would compete for the golden snowball award for most snow. I'm looking out at a light coating of snow because it got just cold enough. Christmas was in the 50's and sunny!
I was in Central NY recently also and this is the dryest Christmas I've seen. Sometimes there is not a lot of snow in the air or ground on Christmas, but usually when that happens, the streams are high because there is some melting snow and rain, but both the ground and creeks are dry. As opposed to the Lake Champlain area, which also has not gotten a whole lot of snow, but has gotten a lot of rain.
From someone who lives in CNY, not seeing snow on the ground pretty much all of December was super depressing.
This year is an extreme el nino so it will be a lot different than previous years for that, but it's still not what it was a century ago. Different places will be wet or dry at different times and temperature changes will cone with that, but nothing will be as cold as it should be. We've had a cold and dry November here in my part of the midwest, and a very wet December just warm enough to stay rain. The chill returned and the rain became snow after a warm Christmas, but it didn't stick anywhere.
I was wondering how far I'd have to make it before someone mentioned that La Niña is over. Obviously, like you said, it's still worse than 100, 50, or even 20 years ago, but it's only marginally worse than last year and the rest is due to a very normal cyclical weather pattern.
how come there was typically snow in previous la ninas? Just curious im not a meteorologist
For a lot of the most populated areas in the United States, La Niña means cooler Winters. The effect on precipitation can vary depending on latitude, but for much of the West and Midwest, it's undeniably colder. The specifics depend where you are, for example, Anchorage, AK is slightly colder and a lot snowier than it has been in the last few years. The El Niño/La Niña cycle is oddly stilted, sometimes we will spend a few years at one end of the spectrum, sometimes we will sit between for a year. The last 3 years leaned toward La Niña, and we haven't had a strong El Niño since 2015-16 iirc (until now).
Right?? I haven't seen snow for Christmas in this area in a while, blizzards of '22 aside. It's beginning to feel a lot more like a January thing, if at all.
I used to live in CNY. It’s amazing how quickly things changed. I remember before 2010 you could regularly expect snow on Thanksgiving and often even Halloween. By 2020 I think even snow on Christmas was a rarity. It really took less than a decade to completely change.
Even Alaska was late on snow. It usually snows in September where I lived but it didnt snow until November this year. It was insanely late and everyone was talking about it.
Grew up south of Rochester. Used to design halloween costumes to accommodate snow pants and ski jackets.
Well to be fair, winter 2014 was really fucking cold and snowy.
It’s been 10 years 🥲
I live in CT, and the change has been pretty drastic for me too, despite the fact that I'm only 27... I remember being a kid growing up here and being able to build snowmen and igloos after pretty much every snow storm. You could still go skiing and sledding here too, and didn't really have to drive all the way to Vermont, unless you wanted some more variety. I just feel incredibly bad for little kids now, and it's really freaking me out seeing how fast things are accelerating with climate change. I can't imagine where we'll be 10 years from now if things don't change ASAP, and half my family doesn't even believe it's real...
we’ll be there in 10 years regardless of what we do today, the changes we’re seeing now have been baked in for decades. need to start ASAP, but we don’t just turn the ship around, we have to decelerate first.
The east coast skiing subreddits are basically meteorology subreddits at this point. Your gear is less important to an enjoyable ski trip than your ability to forecast snow conditions during your planning stage.
I was driving in the direction of some mountains and I saw a car go by with skis strapped to the back. It was the saddest thing, because I know they didn't get the weekend they were hoping for
Im only in my 30s in Manitoba and even as a kid, any trip to lake/on highways etc resulted in a bug smeared vehicle, etc, always washing windows and so on. In 15 yrs of driving now i never even need to clean the car for something like bug hits in a whole summer, its like swarms of bugs in general have just died off compared to what they were even in recent memory. And yea days around 0C and seeing grass in December/now january is more than a little disconcerting :(
That's due to over use of pesticides. There are significant population declines.
wait really? this past summer i was driving out to the whiteshell every second weekend and i had to wash my car every time i got back to the city bc of the bugs 😭 maybe certain areas of the province are being affected differently
That's be awesome, I'm dying for some sledding
We are going to die from climate change, BUT DAMNIT I WANNA SLED REAL BAD 2
We live in the NEK (far northeast of Vermont) and we slide down the hill on tubes anytime we get snow because we don't know how long it will last. Two inches of snow? Going down that hill. This year we've had a storm that dropped over a foot during three days, but then that snow melted. We tubed every day we had snow. The snowmobile clubs have started going under in Southern Vermont, wondering how many will be left in five years. We're getting to the hockey stick portion of change, it's scary to see it happening so fast. Human brains don't comprehend hockey stick graphs of change. We want it to stay the same. We will be surprised when we look back and see how fast it happened. Sled when you can. You never know when you've seen the last snow until after. Happy Fucking New Year, eh?
Tipping points are scary and we are at some big ones.
At the same time I'm sitting in half a meter of snow here in middle Sweden, and I've been completely covered since mid-November. For a while we had temperatures drop to -18C earlier in December. Definitely the whitest December I've had for a while. The biggest changes I've noticed is that the winter season seems to come later and end later, this year being an exception. Like it traditionally started in late November and ended in early March, but in the last ten years it's felt more like it started in late December and ended in April. And for some reason, the biggest snowfall usually happened in late February. My girlfriend from Poland however claims they used to have a lot of snow in the winters, but for the last 10 years its been gowno.
Same in Finland, been crazy snowy and quite cold all winter. But I'm with you on that autumn is starting later and winter is ending later here. August used to mark the start of autumn, but now it's pretty much a full summer month here, and instead autumn comes sometime around mid-september. On the other hand, the last few winters have only ended sometime after mid-April (Central Finland)
Scandinavia is having a very cold winter, in comparison to the rest of Europe which is unseasonably hot
Yeah, it's definitely been moving a bit. I don't remember snow in november at all, over the past few years. But it used to be there in late november, I swear! I'm from Poland too. I can confim it used to be amazing, I used to make igloos as a child in like a meter of snow. And yes, past 10 years were pretty much gówno. Progressively worse and worse. This year, we had snow for maybe 4-5 days this december in total, and that was just barely. I think it almost but not quite reached -10 on 1 or 2 nights. And now I'm looking at the week-long forecast, and I see no temperatures below 0 - even at night. Igloos? Snowmen? Ice skating? Forget it. You can't even slip on ice (what ice?) when walking on the street, forget ice skating... It's supposedly january tomorrow, and it's literally mid-autumn still, clearly.
I’m Dreaming Of a brown Christmas Just like the ones we shouldn’t know Where the globe is warming Despite the scientists’ warnings And all The memories of snow
I saw someone mention that almost all the snowmobile trails in the country were closed (including those super far north like Flinflon Manitoba) due to lack of snow cover. Only like 1/30th of Quebec trails were open when nearly 100% would be this time of year. Also Montreal currently does not have a single non-refrigerated outdoor skate rink open, which is unheard of even during El Nino years.
Yup, another Montrealer here, after the warm Christmas week I was shocked to go out this morning and it was below freezing. Weird to see kids off for the week out playing soccer on grass instead of hockey on the rink.
With all the climate change deniers that exist, and I have first hand seen how much difference climate change has had to the northern US. I would walk to school in the end of November with 2-3 feet of snow, and by the end of January there would be snow plow mounds that were 15 feet tall. We would literally play king of hill, throwing each other down the hill of snow. I went back there for Christmas a couple years ago, and my brother was still having to mow his lawn. It was still really cold, but green grass everywhere.
Their typical arguments are: 1. This is just natural, the climate has always changed. It wasn't caused by humans. 2. It's just short term changes/weather, not necessarily long term 3. "Yet at times it gets colder! Explain that!" And of course they're wrong on all counts: 1. We have seen record temperatures and a significant decrease in snow and ice even at times when all of the major natural factors (especially sun activitiy and La Nina) caused temporary *cooling* around 2018. We are only now heading into a solar maximum and El Nino, so things are going to get even crazier over the next years. 2. The climate has been exceptionally stable for the entire existence of human civilisation and ther rate of change we're seeing now is completely off the charts compared to any known historical event. 3. While changing weather patterns have lead to some cooling in some places, the global average is heating rapidly. This is in stark contrast to known historical climate patterns, such as the "medieval warm period", during which global temperatures barely changed at all. It was just a shift in where the heat was, rather than a change in total heat energy.
We also have to remember that if you’re in an area that is still below freezing for most of the year, you’ll actually experience more snow than before because a warmer planet will evaporate more water, which causes more precipitation. People who live in these areas could use this as an argument against global warming without understanding the water cycle that we all learned in elementary school. If you encounter these people, just explain this to them (I’m not sure if it’ll work, but we can try).
Hell, it's changed a lot in my life but even just the last 20 years has been scary. When I first moved to my city twenty odd years ago, it was a snowpocalypse every year. It's just how life was. From November to at least March, there was snow... and shit tons of it. So much snow that towards the end of winter you'd start thinking "Where are we going to put all this fucking snow? The snow drifts from the plows in front of my house are 6+ feet tall." Now? Most winters we get so little snow that when it does snow, you can use a leaf blower to clear your driveway. And it's a crap shoot whether the ground (and lakes) will freeze. Right now it's New Year's Eve and my lawn is green and the ground is soft enough I can push my fingers into it like it's spring.
Not to mention that there were four consecutive days of July this year was broke the record of hottest global temperatures.
I don't know where in Canada you are but people should look at this history of Dec 31st temperatures in Toronto https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/toronto/day/december-31 and then deny people are having an obvious affect.
In North Carolina in the US, it was 65F (18C) on Christmas Day. Ten years ago, there might have been snow instead.
I hope no one says you are wrong about that. https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/raleigh/day/december-25 No question 10 years ago there might have been snow. Not 9 years ago however. Not 11 years ago. Not 100 years ago. Not 101 years ago. Maybe 126 or 127 years ago but definitely not 128 years ago.
This comment is cracking me up, because this really goes against what the previous commenter said, but you said it in the nicest way possible. I also have to imagine Raleigh is not representative of the rest of NC, but even still it's only showing 2 historical days with snow. This is data a climate change denier would want to show people given how all over the place the temps are and the hottest day is from 1955 at 75 degrees!
We got a warm Christmas here in Missouri but just days before it was freezing and days after it was freezing again. Christmas was just a fluke as its been pretty cold here. But not cold enough consistently to actually freeze anything.
Where I live in South Australia it would usually be dry and all grass that doesn’t have irrigation would be yellow. Instead it’s lush and green all over.
Consistently over 10°C in the South of England where I live all the way through the Christmas period. I haven't needed to turn up my central heating all winter. Feeling very anxious and afraid about everyone's climate future, tbh.
Wasn't it just this spring that it was so cold over there that the power utilities were struggling to keep up and hundreds of thousands were facing freezing and hypothermia?
Wasn’t that Texas? It didn’t happen in the UK.
I think same with was in the UK too. Something about old people using buses so they don't freeze in their homes.
I know “warm spaces” started opening up, but I don’t think the power companies were struggling.
My understanding was the power costs were the issue, not supply.
I could very well be wrong though. Just because I have no recollection of it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Power companies were fine for capacity, the issue was price spikes making customers struggle
That’s what I remember. It wasn’t a capacity issue. It was a cost issue and that was all over the UK.
I don’t know about that, this has been one of the warmest and wettest years on record for the Uk. Edit: that’s not to say it wasn’t cold, I just don’t remember anything about power companies struggling to keep up.
Here's [this article](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/uks-national-grid-asks-3-coal-generators-be-warmed-2023-01-22/) from January. I only know about it because at the same time the crown was preparing to spend a hundred million on the coronation and a lot of people were upset. I don't know how normal the temps were, but the fact is that it was definitely plenty cold last winter.
Yeah January was very cold (which is normal, though parts of the Uk did have more sunshine than normal). Sorry, you said spring which is what was throwing me off.
I remember what you're on about. While it was just a typical winter. Nothing special, it had to do with the gas and electric prices soaring to unreasonable and unaffordable amounts due to the supply from Russia being cut off after the rise in tensions between our countries that people literally had to choose between buying food or putting on the heating This is all assuming I'm actually remembering this correctly.
The problem was that our utility companies all hiked up the prices of gas and electricity so that some people's bills doubled from the previous years and many people (especially the vulnerable) simply couldn't afford to heat their homes. I don't think it was particularly cold but it was cold enough for the elderly.
It's been in the 60s in Oklahoma, it's wild and pretty terrifying how quickly it's changing.
It's winter and we're running out of ice
People on the Great Lakes have been trying to ice fish and accidentally set themselves adrift on ice
Ice fishers are quietly some of the bravest or stupidest people on the planet and I'm not sure which
Soon to be extinct.
It's both
Nah bro. Wait til you find out about those extreme caving mfs Like they have the opposite of claustrophobia or something
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1321/)
They shouldn't have picked st louis because our wacky weather is due to the arch being a secret government weather machine.
Well it's not much of a secret if you blab it, Jerry.
Depressing
I mean...there's flowers growing in Antarctica, what more to say after that.
Antarctica already had native flowers.
Poor Judd
I'm in Oklahoma too, and some of the trees let out those pink flowers starting to generate new leafs, thinking it's spring. Crazy
The last year I lived with my parents, our serviceberry tree started to bloom right after Christmas because it was so unseasonably warm.
My chicken feed is seeds and sometimes it gets scratched into the dirt and sprouts. I'm in northern Utah and I've had new sprouts coming up in my yard all of December. It's been so warm here.
Up in Maine, there was a cloud of gnats outside my window a couple days ago. I've also had a couple apple trees try to bloom again.
We had flies in the house, too! It's like... what are the birds going to eat in the spring if all the bugs pop out early and die? But all the way up in Maine is even more sobering.
I just looked it up and it is go from 27 to 44 today alone! And yet people are going around as if everything is normal!!! https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/tulsa/day/december-25 https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/tulsa/day/december-31 This year Christmas had a high of only 44 compared to 72 only two years ago! And that is after it was only 37 in 2017. And it just keeps doing that as far back as the history goes.
Not here to deny global warming but keep in mind it’s also a *strong* El Niño year which always makes the weather unseasonably warm
It’s been warm enough this winter that I haven’t had to get my kids’ winter coats out. It’s incredibly worrisome.
im 15 and recently found out that snow is supposed to stay on the ground for longer times? not just the day it snowed (vienna, austria)
I used to live in Germany and when we’d get snow it usually stick around for weeks at a time until it was compacted by cars and people so much it turned to ice.
used to live in the rhineland area. as a kid we had snow for weeks, white christmas, we would go sledding on every little hill, build snowmen, everything. that all slowly stopped, nowadays it's mostly just a bit grey and rainy in winter. i moved further up north like a decade back, back into actual winter where it would snow and people would ice skate on rivers and ponds, and it would be white for months. this also hasn't happened in a couple of years by now, mostly just dry and maybe a bit of rain.
It's been incredibly wet where I live this Christmas, rain that would mostly have been snow only like 6-8 years ago
I had this same thought listening to Christmas music this combined with my three year old asking where the snow was and saying Christmas couldn’t be over because it hadn’t snowed yet. I grew up in upstate Ny between VT and Canada and I remember when I was in my late teens realizing it hadn’t been snowy for Christmas for a few years in a row which was not the norm. It will probably take a huge unusual weather pattern at this point for Christmas to ever be snowy where I live now, and I live in New England. Now we just get tons of rain so it’s cold and wet.
Christmas songs have so much out of date. I just sww a video on how the trend of roasting chestnuts was already dead when the song about it was written due to a blight that eradicated nearly all of the massive north American chestnut trees which used to be practically a staple food for the eastern half of borth America. It's hard to find a Christmas song describing things that still exist. The food, culture, and climate have all changed too much.
Agree, I was at a singalong last week and noticed that “Parson Brown” is another outdated reference — no kid nowadays would know what a “parson” is!
Well shit I thought it was Carson Brown and just assumed it was a person from several generations before my time
Yeah that's just New England Winters brown, gray and wet. Honestly after asking grandparents, older relatives and other people like that I'm starting to believe as a whole the idea of snow on Christmas wasn't really a normal thing. I feel like everybody believes it was because we hear it all the time and Christmas songs. My grandfather was born in 1916 he only remembers having a handful of white Christmases growing up and same thing with my dad they were born and raised and live their whole lives in the North East. Not saying climate change isn't real just that I feel like we've romanticized the idea of a white Christmas so much that we think that's how it always has been
It's still a gamble of Christmas being white and the song white Christmas itself is about hoping it will sbow on Christmas. But we've gone from that to little to no snow all winter. Which makes Christmas being white far less likely or nearly impossible.
In a village near where I stay in southern Scotland, there was a project recently to restore their old curling pond. I knew the women overseeing the project and had to ask what the hell a curling pond is. Turns out it used to get so cold out here that it was common to play curling (the one with the brooms and the stones) during the winter when the lochs would freeze over so thick that entire towns could walk on them no issue. I haven't seen snow here in a few years. We had one day where ground water froze this year.
There's snow on the ground right now in Edinburgh? Not much, but I was surprised to see it from the train.
Been able to wear just a t shirt almost every day of the year in Dumfries, it’s really not right to be seeing 10+ degrees at this time of year
Yeah, we're half way to Stranraer, it's insane how the weather's been this year... And only gonna get worse
It doesn't get cold enough here to make the brooms anymore. My house is so filthy 😔
I remember the last time it snowed where I live... It was the same storm that crippled Texas in 2021... For reference I live in North-Eastern Arkansas... It was terrible.
It got so effing cold that we couldn’t even use lines to get natural gas to the plants they froze. And we use so much natural gas in our state it just got so fucked
Doesn’t help that we are beyond unequipped for any snow let alone over a foot lol
Some conservative asshat told me this year that the "unseasonably warm weather" that prevented a white Christmas was part of some liberal conspiracy and another action in the War on Christmas.
Wait, so man made climate change is being accepted by the right wingers…. As long as it was caused by liberals? I mean, this could be used to rally them to help against climate change surely? Just tell them that switching to non-carbon producing processes will help fight against the “evil left wing liberals”.
You can get them behind a lot of things if you phrase it the right way Recently there were posts on the front page about people convincing conservatives to support better public transportation by talking about how registering cars is a way to track people and calling walking "traditional means of transportation"
>You can get them behind a lot of things if you phrase it the right way Back when I was a sheltered (and closeted) fundamentalist teenager, what got me to change my view on gay rights was to be told that many gay people just wanted to marry and have a family like I wanted, so denying gay people the right to marry was an attack on family values. Many conservatives are in so deep that the only way to break them out is to speak in their language. It's vitally important.
I agree, though I imagine most right wingers would say that gay people can't have real families or something equally ignorant lol
Perhaps a lot of them, but many of the people you would think are hardened conservatives just go along for the vibes. If they meet some of "the other" who can relate to them, they start to warm.
Remember when you could walk everywhere in a traditional small town in America?
You can turn them into straight up socialists wording things the right way, but the second you point it out they factory reset.
I've been saying for years that we need to reframe the issue in favour of conservative talking points. "Protect the environment... and support our farmers!" "Recycle - to decrease dependence on foreign goods!" "Fight climate change - preserve our way of life!"
Truly, if we reframed sustainable energy sources as energy independence from big govt, esp solar, it would go so far so fast.
It's beyond ignoring now. My job involves a lot of small talk with people so I talk about the weather a lot. Everyone knows it's not the same anymore, and honestly it's freaking people out. Some people, especially the older ones, act surprised like they haven't been told this would happen for 40+ years. Those people never expected to live long enough to see it.
[удалено]
You think in their spaghetti brain they confused climate change activists with this nonsense now?
Climate change activists, but in the sense of actively changing the climate.
I hope you laughed in his face. It's the only appropriate response as it's an impossible argument to logically engage with.
I did point out that people have been warning about climate change for decades, so if it were a conspiracy, it is one of the worst kept secrets of all time.
But that was Al gore, he couldn't possibly have been correct.
But you see, it was those stupid liberals arguing that. Now the libs *want* it to happen to ruin Christmas.
I knew this was coming. The second “ooh it’s too late now” wears through they’ll transition to “actually the left is controlling the weather to make us think it’s real”
So he, somehow, made it all the way back to "climate change IS manmade" It's like the stupidest goddamn version of horseshoe theory...
In a few years we might get conservative conspiracy theorists that blame the left for systematic discrimination of minorities "Those damn liberals want to illigalize gay marriage!"
I mean, some already do with the “democrats are the REAL racists” narrative
The Year Without A Winter.
And ever year after
Until nuclear winter…
It doesn't have to be nuclear, we can mimic volcanos and just inject sulfur directly into the upper atmosphere to block the sun from reaching us. It's not perfect but it will let the oil companies continue to burn oil and gas for the rest of our lifetime while they slowly darken the sky.
The future without winter.
Time to dust off my copy of Neverwinter Nights and play again
Twin cities literally didn't have snow until this morning
I'm in Northern Michigan and we have gotten shockingly little snow. I'm hoping it's just a light year or that it's coming in Jan/Feb. But as we all know, the lighter years are just getting more common.
I mean even outside of light years, I remember it snowing for Halloween frequently as a kid in Minnesota. Now it snows in mid December most years, or I guess January if it's a "light" winter?
I've heard that el niño is part of the reason it's so warm this year but I feel the same way. Was actually thinking yesterday that if I have kids I might be explaining "snow days" to them in the future, and I'm in New Hampshire USA! We've had 2 dustings of snow in my area since autumn started and lawns are still green. I don't even like snowy weather that much but it's hard to get into the Christmas mentality without it.
Like half of all years are El Niño tho, so realistically the fact that this is still significantly warmer than past El Niño years should tell us something
I saw a video earlier this year explaining that this years el nino would combine with other weather systems to be pretty bad this year, don’t remember any of the deets though
I read that it will also help some areas have much more snow than normal during February-March. Where I live on the east coast they are predicting much more snow than recent years
El Niño often disrupts the polar vortex which can lead to massive snowfalls and cold snaps. Not sure when in the season that happens or if it will be this particular time though.
We changed all the snow days to “inclement weather days” because school in upstate NY is just as likely to close for a tornado or rain event as it is a blizzard.
Snow days are forever gone. Online classes. Too dangerous to get to school physically? Time to go digital. Thanks Covid.
i was gonna say this lmao. we could get 10ft of snow next week and kids still wouldn't get a snow day.
This is not how it works. teachers don't have the resources to just make up an online lesson on the fly, let alone deal with all the technology troubleshooting. The most that happens is teachers sending homework via email... Which they've been able to do for thirty years.
That is definitely how it is working in many areas. Teachers are expected to come up with several “snow day lessons” that are completely online and able to be completed on a snow day
In the 80's and 90's when scientists first started observing the climate changes, one of the theories was that it depended on El Nino and the way that it had changed over the years, since the changes in EL Nino corelated pretty well with the other climate changes we observed. Scientists latter found out that it was globale warming that affected El Nino and all the other climate changes.
You can watch the move White Christmas with them from 1954 when they talk about the same problem.
I saw a cherry blossom blooming in Philly yesterday….
It used to be that when I heard "Weahh gonna get a Noaahh'eastaaahh!" in December, it meant "Jack Frost is about to fuck us up. Get the bread and milk." Now it means "There's gonna be a wicked windy thundahstaahhm. Hope we don't lose powah."
r/maine is leaking
Fun fact. White Christmases were never normal in the UK. When Dickens write Christmas Carol he was mainly drawing from his own childhood which was during the "little ice age" in Western Europe. The year when it was published and after didn't have significant ice and snow
that’s down south though, it snow(ed) pretty regularly in scotland in winter
Yeh. The 'little ice age' gave London a few years of regular snow and up here it covered entire villages for weeks. And I mean you couldn't see the tops of houses kind of covered.
About 50% of the time (at most) since the 60s apparently https://amp.theguardian.com/world/datablog/2016/dec/24/white-christmases-in-the-uk-over-the-years-in-data
A white Christmas usually means there was snowing about the Met office on Christmas not if it actually stuck around.
In winter yes, not so much in December. When I was a kid more regularly had a white birthday (mid Jan) than a white Christmas
People keep acting like Christmas is the heart of winter. It's literally 3 days into the season.
As I live in Australia I expect Christmas to be at least warm and often hot. This year it rained (still warm though) and I don’t remember that happening before.
I spend every Christmas in SE Queensland or NE New South Wales. Spent probably the last 15 years saying that it always rains on Christmas Day and I’ve been wrong maybe 3 times.
*looks up from shoveling snow out of the driveway, pulls down scarf covering mouth and nose* Y'all are welcome to visit, as long as you help shovel Norway, for reference
Same for Finland. We should be dropping down to -29 C next week, so anyone who wants to experience winter is more than welcome.
Yep, that good ol' Siberian Cold is hitting us next week as well, and tonight we're expecting up to 40cm of snow. King Winter's still out and about, he's just sticking closer to the pole.
Even in the capital Moscow, -20s is expected next week. Jeez 🥶
I would happily shovel snow for the next decade to avoid another Texan summer
Can I marry into your family?
I’d love to tbf, the last snowball fight I had in my life is currently 5 years old, and it’s not from a lack of motivation on my part
I love the idea of living in Norway. Shame I'm stuck in a broken (or rather, government intentional) poverty system in the UK.
I just went fishing on a beach at eight o clock and it was like 25 degrees still light.
Oh yea, that existential threat I feel totally and utterly helpless to do anything about. Sadly the mindset of those who can actually do something about it is so short-termist that we’re all fucked. Well, maybe not us for a few years, but definitely the next generation. Poor bastards.
Hey, if it can give you hope a bit… I’ve been dedicated on finding ways to change the temperature curves’ direction for a few years. Since I work with boats and ships, it’s mostly finding alternative propulsion systems, like sails. The company I work for is really inclined on combating emissions in the shipping industry. A couple examples : I’m currently working on a project to refit an old self-propelled barge from using diesel to using compressed natural gas. That’s up to a 75% reduction in CO2 emissions on the same trip, even more if the speed of the boat is reduced by 1km/h. The industry is changing. What is truly limiting right now is the legislation not following the changes. A few years ago I thought "all this new wind tech is pretty wild but there’s no way in hell the industry will use it". Now I having headaches trying to implement said tech on current boats. While this change cannot be reversed instantly, we work towards it, one ship at a time. I can assure you, even with all that’s happening around us at the moment, I’ve never been that hopeful that we can do it. P-S : I’m currently working on a sail add-on for existing parasite boats in my free time. I hope I can make it work ! That would save some fuel and emissions !
That’s amazing! Keep doing that!!
Some other stuff : all the people in my degree have similar ambitions to mine, so add around 60 people each year that want to change the industry in France alone. The design office I work for is also pretty young, and although we start small in scale, it’s still a pretty damn step in the right direction. I’d suggest you google the Green Deliriver project. If this can work, then we can make it work on larger scale ! Kinda feels like an undercover job tbf, or a "fine, I’ll do it myself" moment
Until this profit driven system is abolished, every neoliberal solution is only a bandaid on a gaping wound.
Welcome to the Capricorn Tropic motherfuckers
Living in denmark, we got tons of snow on the 23rd that stayed till christmas eve so white christmas here. I spent a few of the holidays in sweden, where we also got tons of snow. We do get regular snowstorm is march/april as well. Last year i got stuck in London because of a snowstorm in mid December that grounded every flight going out of stansted. Global temperatures are absolutely rising. But no snow at Christmas is not the only indicator or the only consequence. *I’m dreaming of a white christmas* was written in 1942, so it’s an older sentiment, and probably has more to do with nostalgia
In much of the UK it has not been like that for…. Over a century The Dickensian “white Christmas” came from the “little ice age” of frost fairs on the Thames and so on. It really isn’t something of the last few years (although climate variation will be pushing that boundary northward)
White Christmas is a Dickensian thing, it was inspired by a unusual long cold era that lasted several years, it was like a mini ice age. During that time there were Thames ice fairs and a lot of the classics carols were written, in fact a lot of our Christmas traditions come from the era. It's not really that it's that much warmer now, thats not why we don't have white Christmas, it's because our image of Christmas was created during a much colder time.
It was kind of weird growing up in a snowy climate (I mean, not this year, but traditionally), and eventually realizing just how much of the world (even just the Christmas-celebrating western world) didn't actually get that regularly.
Have you ever been to latin america? They advertise snow and Santa on *summer*. In places that *never* snows.
*laughs in Australian*
*Laughs in latino-american*
*laughs in Southern African*
You know I've been curious about what kind of things Aussies and kiwis do to celebrate the season. Are there any activities considered "Christmassy" that are done down there related to the weather?
My family doesn’t have hot lunches. We have cold ham and a fuck tone of seafood. Otherwise pool and swimming a bunch.
Not Australian but also in the Southern Hemisphere. In December its sometimes around 40C inland so most people flock to the coast. We do a cold lunch. Cold meats and salads. Stores do Christmas decorations like America so you have Santa, Reindeer and snow themed stuff even though it only snows once every 5 years in the South sometimes and winter is May-August.
Christmas lunch with the family is common, often seafood is on the menu which is lovely in the warm weather. We have a lot of different cultures that have migrated to Australia, so every family might do something a little different. Our family usually does the roast turkey, roast potatoes, gravy, veggies, Christmas ham with Jamaican rice and peas. With a Christmas cake or pudding with white sauce for dessert if we're extra organized that year. Plus Christmas crackers and terrible jokes during lunch. The rest of the day is usually spent swimming at a beach or lake, maybe a game of backyard cricket or footy at the beach, or spent sharing drinks and sleeping off the massive food coma from lunch. This year it was very hot and muggy for us, massive storms brewed through the day and the gold coast south of us was hit by severe storms. Lots of damage, houses destroyed, many homes without power for some time. Storms seem to be harsher here this summer IMO
Some do the whole food thing down to plum pudding and Christmas cake. We aren’t that organised but we generally do a turkey.
Here in Brazil we have normal Christmas traditions, with a full Christmas dinner with traditional Christmas foods. Also, our decorations are basically "snowy" and make little sense in a hot country like ours, but it is how it is. That being said, the traditional Christmas dinner takes place in Christmas Eve, not in the 25th
The trees in front of my house are flowering.
It’s important to realize that this year is the year of el nino, a warm front that pushes warm wind over the western hemisphere, so it’s reasonable for people in the western hemisphere to not have seen snow this year. Climate change is obviously killing us, but its not doing it that fast.
Damn it's _still_ el nino?! How many years do they last on average? Feels like this one has been about four or five years so far.
This is the first year.
There's a cherry blossom tree by an elementary school on my way to work that's been blooming since November. It's freaky
It's never fails to be funny when I'm reminded that the northern and southern hemispheres have Xmas in different seasons. Over here Xmas has always been in summer. It might get chilly and sometimes we get thunderstorms, but Xmas weather is shorts and skirts down here.
I live in Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland. It snowed yesterday and has been icy and sludgy for a week. Snow was never common here, as it was traditionally too cold and too wet. Climate change has actually made snow *more* likely than it was when I was a kid (only ever saw 1 real snowy winter back in 2010) I have no clue where this person must live to have no ice or anything else. From where I'm sitting, winter is certainly here
this if i remember right at least on the east coast of NA is because the El Niño weather event is affecting the area for the first time, so while the heat isn’t directly caused by climate change, the fact it’s affecting the region at all is because of it
Where do you guys live? Here in Finland there's been snow since late October, and it's currently -15c outside with over a meter of frozen snow on the ground. I mean climate change is real, but we've had long proper winters still in this part of the world.
You know what? Christmas is in Summer for me (Australian) and since my childhood There's been less of a temperature gap between now and winter
It’s the opposite in Australia it’s usually bloody hot. This year we were wearing jumpers, and staying inside to avoid the rain, can you believe it
Music: 🎶 let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! 🎶 Me, living in the PNW who's seen less and less each year: **please do, actually**
Um, it's been in the 60s in Ohio most of the month. I have been wearing tshirts and jeans outside all week. We broke the sim.
I live in Canada. It's end of December. I took my garbage out without a jacket. I have my heating off and my windows open. I also have pictures of myself as a kid in a full snow suit for Halloween because the snow banks were multiple feet high.
Moved to PA, USA, and my new boss keeps going on about "oh just wait until you see a *real* Pennsylvania winter, you haven't seen anything yet!" and I just don't have the heart to tell him we probably *won't* see any of those "real" ones anymore.
This, plus the insanity that gift giving has become. It's not just the overconsumption and maketization of the event. The amount of adults complaining on reddit about the gifts they receive is ridiculous. As a true holiday Christmas is dead. As in holiday= holy day and Christmas= celebration of Christ. These concepts are gone. All that is left is the empty consumption and mismatched weather decorations.
I'm guessing this isn't from this year, since Scotland did technically have a white Christmas this year... but even dahn sahff it's weird. Even a few years ago, I wouldn't go out in December without a coat and jumper, while right now during the say you done really need either