People used to ice skate on the lake near my house during Winters up until the 70s. Now they're swimming there throughout the winter. We had a ski lift fifteen minutes from my house 20 years ago. Now in a good winter, we have a week where there's enough snow for kids to go sledding.
replyVery similar pattern here (UK): circa 1900, ice skating on the local pond every winter. The ice was thick enough to walk on the pond twice in the 1980s. For the last decade, the pond hasn't completely frozen over once. We got about two days of 30% coverage this Jan.
replyAs a kid (I was born in the 80s), my home town would get 3ft of snow almost every winter. We even saw 10ft some winters.
replyBy the time I hit highschool, seeing a 3ft snow in the winter was pretty rare.
Over the last 4 years, there's never any snow on the ground. They are lucky if 1 inch sticks around.
sure, though New York has gotten a real honest-to-goodness winter this year. There's been a foot on the snow on the ground continuously for the last month, and it's been cold enough that the pipes in one of my bathrooms froze. I think it's easier from the West Coast to bemoan the end of East Coast winters than to live through one :)
replyThis has been a decent, classic winter. It’s an important part of the regional character. We need to have snow occasionally, remembering to shovel the sidewalks is an essential “on the ground” indication that everybody is still doing society.
replySorry about the pipes.
It has been brutal, and very cold, and we have not seen the sun. Send help!
replyThe problem is that one cold winter doesn't mean we fixed the problem. We need to look at the average change throughout the years, and that's very worrying.
replyNo disagreement there!
replyIt’s honestly terrifying. I’m in the PNW and we haven’t had winter yet. Extremely low snowpack in the mountains and not even a single day below freezing where I live.
replyI’ve been observing the change for the past 10 years or so here and this is the first year that’s it’s been so “in your face” obvious instead of just subtle changes and effects.
If this is our new normal winter and/or gets rapidly worse we will have a major water crisis sooner than anyone is ready for.
Climate change needs to be the number one focus and policy for every nation on earth right now. Not AI, not economic growth, not wars.
Here in the Seattle area, plenty of sub-freezing days (which is itself unusual for the area, in 25 years of living here), just no precipitation. And you know what Seattle is known for, especially in the winter? But when we do get precipitation, it’s warm enough in the mountains that it comes down as rain, not snow. Rough year to be a ski area.
reply-
replyThere are many things in the world that happen slowly right up until they suddenly don’t. It’s very possible the climate is one of these.
reply[dead]
replydeleted
reply