
An astonishing, dangerous cold snap is about to descend on the U.S. - sethbannon
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/
======
orasis
_Yawn_ I lived in Fargo for years and one January the _highs_ didn't get above
zero for an entire month. Dress properly, don't stumble around drunk in below
zero weather, and have a backup heat source if the power goes out. Hardy up
softies!

~~~
cookingrobot
This report says Minnesota will get -62f.

~~~
nkurz
You were misled by the terrible article. The -62 F is the projected "wind
chill", not temperature. Further on in the text, it says that the NWS says
"lows of 15 to 30 below are expected" and "Low temperatures may fall to 30
below over north-central portions of Wisconsin".

Their definition of "historic" is also quite a low bar: "Some of the coldest
air in years, if not decades" and "predicting it will be the most severe since
1996". For the area, this is really cold, but not historic.

For those going back and forth between units, an easy thing to remember is
that -40F == -40C. That's the coldest I remember growing up in Northern
Wisconsin. Overall, the climate in is approximately the same as Moscow,
Russia.

------
elipsey
2F now in upstate New York, and hilarity ensues. I'm from Alaska so I'm used
to it; I would have expected New Yorkers to be unsuprised occasional cold
weather but not so much...

I was standing in a grocery line in Fairbanks a few years ago when it was
-50F, and the guy in front of me says: "How about all that global warming out
there?"

Everyone get ready to explain the difference between climate and weather
again.

~~~
ethanbond
Well it's actually a more important distinction than one between climate and
weather. It's a distinction between "warming" and polarizing. Global warming
models usually predict hotter summers AND colder winters. So it's not a matter
of weather vs climate but of bad naming.

~~~
elipsey
Good point, and there are other important changes that should be communicated
like increased storm severity, and associated risk of floods (which we study
in my lab), higher precip in some areas, less in others, and, I'm sure, lots
of other stuff I don't know about. If I could figure out how to express all of
that stuff clearly and concisely in between being yelled at by Bill O'Reilly,
I guess I would have a different job title :)

------
jleyank
_sigh_ In case anybody doubts the power of marketing, think of how much easier
it would have been if "global warming" had been called "climate change". It
would have been easy to describe how teapots get roiled as the water gets
warmer, and you can see this if they're glass. Roiled atmosphere = bigger
storms. This is way more concrete than arguing that it's warmer or colder.

~~~
ams6110
Except it's evidence of nothing. We've had severe cold snaps every decade or
two since... forever.

