Polar Vortex 2014

gonna be gettin real cold soon

http://vortex.plymouth.edu/uschill.gif

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20140104/DAB3UT982.html

This was Canada's plan of attack all along.

I'm secretly hoping I don't have to go to work in -20 degrees weather

I guess an upside is that the mosquitos will be knocked back on their heels a little bit this year.

The trick to walking on ice is keeping your center of gravity over your feet instead of in front of them.

cool, makes sense- lets try and keep this thread PG-13

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/01/03/an-astonishing-dangerous-cold-snap-is-about-to-descend-on-the-u-s/

yeehaw

This probably won't help Texas get any colder.

getting real cold here

My trick to walking on ice is to hop like Roddy McDowall in Planet of the Apes

hoping to god they close the office tomorrow

It was 18F when I arrived at work in downtown Cleveland this morning. I haven't been outside since, but it's currently -4 (or, with the wind chill, -21). I am going to see if I can set a land speed record getting from the building to my car.

btw can we send the windchill packing? No one knows what -21 feels like anyway.

Au contraire! http://jezebel.com/this-is-what-40-f-feels-like-1495629103

This probably won't help Texas get any colder.

After living in Texas for 14 years, I've become a real wimp about cold weather. Temps in the 20s today felt bitterly cold. Pretty sure I'd die if I were anywhere in the midwest right now.

Hello from California!

72 here

wind chill -20 tomorrow on my wind tunnel walk to the office

Hello from California!

― polyphonic, Monday, January 6, 2014 4:55 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ gross

http://i.imgur.com/O5yGNdJ.gif

i'm actually jealous of cold winters. i really enjoyed december in minnesota. i wouldn't mind a couple of months of freezing temps. my issue with cold places is that the cold weather seems to last waaaaaay too long.

december is kind of the preseason

why is it none of us have HEARD of a polar vortex til now?

privilege, probably

The basic theory is not new:

Climate change -> warmer poles -> more erratic jet stream -> more extreme weather events like this.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/arctic-warming-is-altering-weather-patterns-study-shows

yes, i've read that before, just the phrase seems new

Yeah, for some reason the media have latched onto that this time, instead of the more typical "arctic air mass" or "polar air mass".

polar vortex sounds cool

I guess maybe it's a "Day After Tomorrow" reference? Too bad that isn't available on Netflix streaming. Would make for appropriate viewing this evening.

10 degrees inTennessee right now, headed for 5 overnight. This doesn't happen very much here. Roads are clear, but my kids' school is closed tomorrow on account of it's too cold.

yes, i've read that before, just the phrase seems new

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 6, 2014 4:17 PM (53 minutes ago)

I sent NOAA a bunch of emails about it but they turned down my suggestion of Arctic Titty Twister.

Today was five minutes of fun with sub zero temperatures, and several hours of killing time. Looks like it's around ten below right now.

POLAR VORTICES
VELOCIRAPTORS

i am envious of the midwesterners who get to complain about minus 40 temperatures. that's hard as fuck. it's only like -12 here

otm

I think we're outside the official vortex limits in Toronto, but no school busses today, so somewhat of a day off--fewer than 30 kids for the whole school (and only half my class yesterday, even though busses were running). 20 below here (C).

46 degrees here in Miami-Dade County. Lots of girls with jeans tucked into Peter Pan boots.

u shaddap

up to 8/-11 in Brooklyn. Picked today to stay home and nurse my cold etc.

at -9/-32 here, having to fuel up my car in this and nearly lose my hand in the process was pretty brutal

so are you most of you home? Work cancelled?

i thought we'd at least have a delayed open, but nothin--wore my balaclava in to work.

My right wing friends are filling up my facebook with the reasoning that since we've not heard the phrase 'polar vortex' before now, it stands to reason that it's yet another media propagated lefty lie.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/rush-limbaugh-global-warming-polar-vortex-hoax-101792.html

idk, seems more like the weather channel-esque tendency where every major weather event has to have a name now, and they were just lucky enough that there was a meteorological term that worked

p sure the phrase will soon turn up in backpacker rap, most likely rhymed with "cerebral cortex"

other hyperbolic weather phrases from the 21st century

SUPER STORM SANDY

adding an e to the front of tornado ratings TO TAKE IT TO THE EXTREME

ie the tornado in moore oklahoma was an EF5 instead of an F5.

forecast for NYC Saturday: 55 degrees and rain

I'm going to make a grocery run noe, it's 12

Let's dust off this link: http://ifglobalwarmingisrealthenwhyisitcold.blogspot.com/?m=1

egyptian food cart in chelsea didn't make it today : /

13 here, really not so bad when you think about it

I am thinking about it, and it really is so bad.

lost power for two hours, temp dropped 15 degrees indoors, called comed (electric co) 5x and now i have to deal w the reality of going to work tomorrow morning :-/

what a nightmare to have electric/gas issues during this sorry LL

my nerves were tested
i failed!

oh no is it ok now???

yeah it was off for a few hours and the estimated repair time was wigging me out because who tells the truth about that stuff? but they were telling the truth. acc to the message i listened to 5x there were 1,772 customers affected by this outage and that seems pretty urgent, even under these circs

i'm not sure if my nerves are ok but we have power! that's a step in the right direction!

better in the city than semi-rural where you’re on the grid but service is a longer wait ime

I worked from home all day with no plans to leave the house but was an idiot and left at 4pm to meet coworkers for a drink

stopped at Target on the way home and the open refrigeration cases were empty, the store was cold, and the reserve staff was working — including my favorite target employee! he worked at an older store was closed down when they consolidated cans stopped having smaller lower income neighborhood stores and is a sassy older dude. warm moment on a cold day

glad you have power, LL! mine went out this morning right as i was waking up to go to work, but it was only -2F outside, instead of the crazy temps farther north. it made the decision to go straight to work pretty easy.

2 degrees F in New York this morning

next Tuesday's forecast: 56

Damn LL, that's scary. Glad everything worked out.

anyone else going stir crazy? i feel like i would strike up a conversation with a random pile of dust & hair in the corner if it would communicate back with me. i am not bored and have no shortage of things to entertain me but i am tired of entertaining myself and would like to do something slightly more productive. if i were a reclusive basement musical genius i could make a polar vortex album but i am not, unfortunately.

Making music is a great idea though!

make chili

I wish I was stir crazy, rather than at work

i was fine staying home, except i ran out of coffee because i was too tired and cold to go to the store monday night

today has only gradually been different from yesterday (we're up to -4 now, with a -20 windchill!), so it's funny to be out and to see everyone going around doing the same old things they were not doing yesterday

i helped an old woman with her wheelchair!! i hope santa is paying attention this far out from december 2019

Our power has been out since 9:30 AM

I've been at work, but about to head home into the darkness

*wolf howls in the distance*

geez that sucks

throw a bomb at them Karl

It was remarkable how many more people I saw out today.

omg karl! i hope it's back!! let us know either way if you can!!

so have your jobs been lenient? Sounds like not.

my school cancelled classes and closed tues night through thurs
(following the lead of many institutions of higher ed in the area -- which is a welcome change from pretending that our students are somehow more hardy than everyone else and able to attend classes in a weather emergency)

My wife worked from home both days. Both my kids had school canceled, though, weirdly, in one casenot parent-teacher conferences today.

xp yeah i had two and a half days cancelled but it didn't matter because i wasn't working during them anyway. campus seemed kind of sparse today even though it's more residential than commuter.

Power just came back on! My phone died too so I just went to bed, hungry, like a wicked Victorian child

glad you're charged

it’s now going to be uncharacteristically warm on sunday and I feel like the impending clogged storm sewer slush madness is going to be a dumb follow-up

prepare for the sidewalks to turn into churning rivers/log flumes of dog waste

I think I'll take it. Our cat was so confused the last couple of days, compelled to go outside and then figuratively frozen in confusion at the same time he was probably literally freezing. The other night as far as I can tell he was outside just long enough to throw up before coming back inside.

this morning he asked to go outside, so I let him out for a couple of minutes. when I opened the door for him he ran straight to his emergency litter box and peed.

i am not complaining, simply stating a fact. my littledogs have been going out and doing their business outside throughout this ordeal -- i just know there are several layers of frozen water about to melt that will reveal unknown treasures (dog poops)

i was worried night before last that you were going to have to rely on littledogs as your heat source!

that makes me grateful that there is a relatively low dog/house density in my neighborhood

I know my next door neighbors have probably just been letting their three dogs do their business in the fenced-in back yard for the last week and not picking anything up so the smells by next monday will be a treat

lest anyone think i am a monster, i picked all mine up as i have done since the dawn of time

A naïve question (I swear I'm not trolling) from someone who has often had to endure -30C (pre-windchill) and the like: with its humid continental climate, Chicago routinely slips below zero during the winter, no? How unusual is the current vortex? And is there no emergency plan in effect?

I've lived in Chicago and Montreal and can tell you: it's very unusual!

it is historical and unusual
temps up to maybe 10 below 0 are routine and to be expected (shitty but not out of the ordinary); this time the standing temp was -21 or so, and the windchill was -49 or something like that. the temperature was this low from tuesday night until this morning, when it went up to 2 last i checked.

emergency plan = cancellations/closures/warming centers and beyond that ?? it's not like snow where something needs to be removed. it's an inhospitable environment that needs to be waited out i guess.

That is indeed insane. Good luck to you all – waiting it out does appear to be the best course of action.

I'm not in Chicago, but our weather's nearly the same minus lake effect. Generally there are a few days every couple winters that dip below zero. It's usually just overnight and for a day or so. This year it was multiple days in a row, and much colder than usual. Infrastructurally we're just not set up for that level of sustained cold -- the Target store I went to the other night was chilly because the heating system couldn't keep up.

on a more personal note, I've lived in the same house for eight winters and the crawlspace under my kitchen, which I've procrastinated on reinsulating, has had the cold water pipe freeze up exactly twice: once last year on a cold night, and this year for several days running, even during the day

I'm reminded of an architect friend explaining how lazy chain stores would expand to the north and have a local agency look over the building plans before submitting them to a local planning office. On multiple occasions, he had to explain to people in the south that their roofs, as designed, would collapse if we got more than two inches of snow. Because they're cheap, he had to fight them to make sure everything was *just* up to code.

You can imagine how much they wanted to spend on heating systems and insulation. Only get blasting cold a day or two every couple years? Why would we design for that case!

pomenitul, there are ~infrastructure~ considerations that come into play when the temperatures are so extremely cold, because even things in the upper midwest are not designed taking those extremities into account. but it's more a matter of strain on the systems, risks, etc., not a bright line across which there would be an emergency.

the power company in my area sent out a notice to some rural parts to reduce thermostat temps to reduce load on their gas lines. then they expanded it to every customer in the region. it was the same kind of thing they sometimes ask in summer peak load times for a/c.

there was a story here about the government responses that described their adopting 'a heightened state of readiness' to i dunno do things or approve of services.

in recent years w/ the economy and the age of the transit system there has been an uptick in homeless people relying on our light rail trains as shelter - something that has been elevated already this winter. with the weather this week the officials out and out said they would not be chasing off anyone, nor anyone on a bus who kept quiet. normally homeless are rousted from the transit stations overnight, and they made a concerted effort to get everyone transported to a bed in a shelter, or barring that, let them stay with supervision overnight.

so i guess part of the 'emergency plan' is to relax the staunch midwestern social norms! which is very trying to our psyches

over a dozen fatalities so far:

https://news.yahoo.com/fedex-worker-found-frozen-death-160314403.html

The guy was 69 years old and working for fucking fed ex and fucking froze to death

i have my window open now. Crazy weather.

hang in there man, stay cool

I was hoping we'd get more of a reprieve after last week, but apparently Chicago is going to get a massive ice storm tonight? I keep seeing phrases like "travel impossible" and "tree and power line damage likely" in reports.

jfc
i heard one inch of ice

hope travel is not impossible because my class tonight was cancelled last week thanks to this garbage and i would like to get the show on the gd road

Yeah, I'm hoping it doesn't get that bad.

Glad you survived the power outage. Had a similar nerve-wracking several hours that afternoon.

meanwhile NYC is getting a 60 degree day

the seasons and earth are dying

over here we have frozen the earth so that it can be reanimated in the future once scientists discover a cure