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Does it snow?

Started by Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers, Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:01

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers


Phil Bunch

Partially motivated by the web page you posted, my brother just canceled their planned Christmas season visit to his wife's parents in London.

Also see winter weather stories like this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/17/snow-ice-uk-weather

Yet even the responsible news media often exaggerate the severity of winter weather, at least in the US.  If you believed what the US TV news media show about weather in the northern US where I live, you'd think we were very near death due to cold and infinite snow and infinitely powerful blizzards.  More than once my parents (who lived in Atlanta) called in past years to see if we were still alive, and could not understand how anyone could stay alive in northern climates.  It almost never snows in Atlanta.

Thus, my brother and I found it to be very difficult to interpret the online news stories and weather reports as we tried to figure out if they should make the trip from the US to London.  

Yet the unavoidable reality of so many flight cancellations on the web page Jeroen just posted was the last straw with respect to his travel plans.  It's just not a favorable time to make a flight to or from so much of Europe right now!    Also, once flights begin to be canceled on a large scale, it becomes very hard to schedule flights to or from less severely impacted airports since so many of the aircraft are likely to be stuck somewhere else due to severe winter weather.  Compounding this situation is the extent to which most flights are filled with passengers, so there is not much capability to reticket stranded passengers on later flights.  I gather the same things happened during the Iceland volcanic eruption.
Best wishes,

Phil Bunch

martin

Quote from: Jeroen HoppenbrouwersDoes it snow?
Well, we keep asking for it...
(featuring ?HH? a.k.a. HoHoHo and eng. 1 to 4)

:mrgreen:

Phil Bunch

Remarkable news story about the latest wave of cold in the UK:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340239/Eurostar-passengers-queue-seven-hours-3C-conditions-trains-cancelled.html

and

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1340227/England-set-coldest-night-big-freeze-destroys-travel-plans-millions.html

Is the weather really THAT bad in the UK/Europe these days?  I don't see much snow in the photo of London in the above news story.    

In the western New York state area where I lived for many years (Rochester, NY suburbs), 30-60 cm of snow per storm was not so unusual and could be managed fairly quickly by the available snow removal equipment and salt+sand dispensing trucks that were on call.  Even 60 cm of snow was not a cause for being late for work due to commuting difficulties.  The coldest temp I have personally experienced was -28F (-33C).  Only when 1-1.25 meters of snow fell within about 24-36 hours would substantial problems occur.  This was often caused by "lake effect" snow where wind would pick up moisture from the warmer Great Lakes waters and then dump it over the much colder land.  

My local airport (KROC) could dig itself out within a few hours of a large snowfall, up to 30 cm or more.    It works much the same in the Portland, Maine area where I currently live.  The bigger US cities and airports don't do so well with heavy snow, though.   If one were to calculate the tons per hour that have to be removed from long runways and the taxiway network, it would be very amazing, I suspect.

Anyway, is the end near for Europe due to current ice age weather?  First it was the Icelandic volcanoes and now winter weather!
Best wishes,

Phil Bunch

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

#4
I have little material to back up my comparison, but could it be that the general infrastructure in Europe is already maxed out in capacity, so that even a minor local disruption echoes through the whole system and brings it to a halt within an hour? If you close one major airport, or freeway, or railroad, even because you just need to clean it up properly after snowfall, the result is that the whole system is screwed up for two days.

The Dutch railways have introduced a backup schedule which is designed to cope with disruptions much better at the expense of reducing the number of train movements to about half. Better a reliable system that carries much less people, than a system which could carry everybody, but in practice carries nobody because it is stopped dead. Of course this means that all established schedules (of everybody) need significant adaptation. Hence, the country stops anyway.


Jeroen

Jeroen D

Well,
I'm going to experience European mayhem due to snow today. Flying Kansas City to London Heathrow via Chicago. yesterdays flight into Heathrow got cancelled. Today, touch wood, still on. Better start packing!

Jeroen

John Golin

Just so we dont' feel left out, there was some decent snowfall in Australia around the 20th December...



John Golin.
www.simulatorsolutions.com.au

Phil Bunch

Maybe somebody misplaced a "minus sign" in the global warming climate modeling??!!

Unfortunately for the global warming situation, weather is not the same as climate...
Best wishes,

Phil Bunch

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers


Peter Lang

Quote from: John GolinJust so we dont' feel left out, there was some decent snowfall in Australia around the 20th December...


That's really strange. I believe this would be the same as snow during July in the middle east.

For Germany it is said, that the coldest summer was in 1816, caused by an eruption of an indonesian volcano one year before followed by a decrease of the average temperature by 0.9°C and summer frost....

http://wetter-wettervorhersage.suite101.de/article.cfm/heissester-sommer-kaeltester-sommer--rekordsommer-in-deutschland    (in German)

Peter

awais1407

#10
Do we get snow in PSX?

Kind Regards,
Awais M.

Peter Sagar

Quote from: John GolinJust so we dont' feel left out, there was some decent snowfall in Australia around the 20th December...




Who the heck would be at Guthega at this time of the year, for there to be that many cars in the car park? Clubbies??

Peter.
Excalibur Beechcraft driver.

\"Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war.\"

Phil Bunch

NY Times story on Syracuse, NY - in western NY state about 75 miles (111 km) east of where I lived for about 30 years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/nyregion/23snow.html?src=me&ref=general

I recall one winter in which the snow was so deep, with  much blowing and drifting, that peoples' houses became covered and inaccessible.  In other words, snow in rural areas drifted so that houses became snow mounds.  Emergency services crews had to take medicines, etc, to people stranded in their own homes.  It was illegal to drive on any public roads, except for emergency vehicles, for a number of days.  Fortunately, snowmobilers were able to rescue people who became stranded in their cars, unable to move, often stuck off the road.  Now *that* was a winter!

I think I need to retire in a southern part of the US rather than in Maine...San Diego has always appealed to me, although the cost of living there is prohibitive for ordinary mortals, especially if you'd like to live somewhere near the ocean.

It's technologically possible to manage extreme snow amounts but areas that don't usually have lots of snow or frequent snowstorms would be foolish to spend the money to make snow mostly irrelevant.  Also, one of the key tools used in heavy snow areas of the US to keep the roads open is the use of salt (sodium chloride) in addition to sand.  Salt can't be used on runways, of course.  Unfortunately, it rusts out cars quite rapidly, often within 5-6 years of regular winter driving.

I think the Northern US and most of Europe should adjourn to warmer areas.  I really enjoyed my visits to Nice, France, in particular, and its climate is much better than areas to the north.  Or, perhaps we should move to Miami and follow Jeroen's example!  

In the US, the southern areas, except for parts of coastal Southern California, are very hot and very humid in the summer.  Some people, usually retirees, live in Florida for about 6 months of the year, and spend their summers in the north.  Perhaps this is the best of all worlds.
Best wishes,

Phil Bunch

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

#13
http://www.schipholtv.com/2010/12/21/sneeuwberg-op-schiphol/

The snow not only needs to be shoved off the runways, but also moved off the airport as it technically is chemical waste!


Jeroen

PS. Rumours of me moving to Miami are greatly exaggerated

martin

See also the impact of undesirable critters living off de-icing fluid below EFHK...

All part of the great web...

M

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

We got 40 cm today in the highest mountains parts of the country, rather rare!


Jeroen

Phil Bunch

Quote from: Jeroen Hoppenbrouwershttp://www.schipholtv.com/2010/12/21/sneeuwberg-op-schiphol/

The snow not only needs to be shoved off the runways, but also moved off the airport as it technically is chemical waste!


Jeroen

PS. Rumours of me moving to Miami are greatly exaggerated

Amazing news story.  

It would seem that an extensive airport redesign would be needed to manage the deicer material.  This would presumably require making the area where the deicing is done, and perhaps other areas, impervious to solvents such as the deicer.  Solvent barrier layers that would last a long time and with widely varying temperatures are presumably difficult to engineer.  Also, the fluid would have to be collected in a drainage system and recycled or properly disposed of.  This sounds like something that would have to be done as a part of initial construction of the airport.    

I suspect that this information will soon affect other airports - many countries have fairly strict or very strict environmental laws.
Best wishes,

Phil Bunch

Phil Bunch

We're just starting to recover from a blizzard that hit the Northeast USA earlier this week.

New York city and its airports got about 20 inches (half a meter) of snow, combined with winds 40-60 mph (about 60-100 km per hour).

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/nyregion/29weather.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

Also, they received 32 inches (3/4 of a meter) of snow in a nearby New Jersey town:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/nyregion/29jersey.html?ref=nyregion

Fortunately for me,  at my home near Portland, Maine (KPWM) we only received about 10 inches (25 cm meter).  The winds were about the same as in New York, and lasted almost 48 hours.  We are very glad the forecast snow amount of half a meter didn't materialize.

Looks like weather is stressful in both Europe and the USA this winter...
Best wishes,

Phil Bunch

Phil Bunch

Interesting story about passenger frustration over the many air travel delays in the US recently.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-29/storm-response-outrage-grows-as-u-s-flyers-are-stuck-in-planes-airports.html

Excerpt:

"As many as 1.2 million airline customers may have been affected by almost 8,200 flight cancellations as the storm that hit three days ago closed major airports. "
Best wishes,

Phil Bunch

Zinger

#19
It has been snowing here from the beginning of December with few clear days. This morning we got 5 more centimeters, and aggregate of around a meter. Once you get proficient clearing the cars, it ain't such fun 5 times a day, though fresh shiny white is pretty. The people around here get pretty good at driving, some still with snow on their windows :-)
Regards, Zinger