Will the Arctic Cold Front Cause Severe Weather and Damage to Crops?

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The discussion centers around varying winter weather experiences across different regions. An Arctic cold front is expected to bring severe conditions, including strong winds and potential blizzard-like conditions, leading to dangerously low wind chills in some areas. Participants share personal weather updates, with some experiencing significant snowfall while others report mild conditions. Notably, areas in the Midwest and parts of the UK are facing heavy snow, while regions like Western Washington and parts of Florida are seeing typical winter temperatures without snow. Concerns about the impact of cold weather on crops, infrastructure challenges in handling snow, and personal anecdotes about coping with the cold are prevalent. The conversation also touches on the contrasting experiences of those in warmer climates, highlighting the diverse impacts of winter weather across the globe.
  • #201
turbo-1 said:
I have to get outside today and shovel slush. I moved the snowbank yesterday in the pouring rain, so my wife could get in and out of the driveway, but now the whole driveway, walk, and back deck need to be cleared. This is back-breaking stuff, and I may resort to moving it with a square-end spade instead of a snow shovel so that I don't get over-enthusiastic. Every shovel-full feels like a concrete block out on the blade. We lost power repeatedly, but not permanently, last night, and this morning a line truck, and a tree-service truck roared by. Apparently, people farther out on the road weren't so lucky. Most folks out here have wood stoves, anyway, so losing power isn't such a hardship. More rain and snow are in the forecast, though the worst is probably over.

Maine Emergency Management Agency is warning about more rainfall. The snow-pack is saturated, as is the ground, so any more rain would be run-off. The lower reaches of the Kennebec are already swollen, and that has allowed much of the ice-jam to clear, so the dangers of flash-flooding are eased somewhat.

There was a show on pbs not too long ago about the flood on the Connecticut River, a lot due to a warm couple of days too early in the season.
 
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  • #202
We have had some arctic high-pressure zones around recently that have herded storms out to sea to our south. Still, it has been unseasonably warm for most of the month. People with maple syrup operations have been tapping trees and evaporating sap - more than a month ahead of their normal seasons. There are some big maples that overhang this road, and some of them have branches low enough that the stakes on large log-trailers can hit them and break them. As a result, there are puddles of maple sap in the road as the branches drip, drip, drip on warm days.
 
  • #203
You're above normal and we're below normal, it's been averaging about 20 degrees below normal almost every day for the past two months. My heating bill has never been this high.
 
  • #204
Snow doesn't bother me as much as it used to. After I got it started, my son shoveled the walk today.
 
  • #205
Our driveway and the porch had about 8-10 inches of a couple of inches of saturated snow. It was similar on the driveway, but the bottom inch was more like ice. Several people used our driveway to turn around when the road was blocked for a downed line, so the bottom of the driveway was packed down to several inches of ice.

Today it's snowing lightly on and off. The trees are laden with ice and snow, and the temperature seems to be hovering around freezing - just enough for the snow to melt and stick to the trees, many of which are top heavy. I have one branch broken on our maple tree, but it's about twenty feet up, so I have to get up in the tree to remove it.

And we've been having intermittent loss of power.
 
  • #206
Evo said:
You're above normal and we're below normal, it's been averaging about 20 degrees below normal almost every day for the past two months. My heating bill has never been this high.

yeah, same here in Central Illinois---

I think we've even had a little bit more snow than normal; and, because of the low temps, the snow has stayed around longer this season than I've seen in quite a while.
 
  • #207
I have cleared my back deck, and the front patio, and am taking a much-needed break. Luckily, I have a slippery plastic snow-scoop with a metal cutting edge. Even so, every load of that wet frozen stuff felt like a load of rocks. There are a couple of healthy teenage boys a few houses from here, but they never seem motivated to earn extra money, so I'll have to keep pecking away at the snow-removal on my own. The slush is so heavy that it plugs the chute of my snow-blower and much of it is in places that are not easy to back-drag with the tractor. Oh well, in another couple of months, this stuff will be gone, and I'll be planting flats in my greenhouse.
 
  • #208
turbo-1 said:
Still, it has been unseasonably warm for most of the month.

Evo said:
You're above normal and we're below normal, it's been averaging about 20 degrees below normal almost every day for the past two months. My heating bill has never been this high.

rewebster said:
yeah, same here in Central Illinois---
Interesting variations from regional weather patterns - strongly influenced, I imagine, by the big glob of pressure that's been sitting quite still over the Northeast this Winter. For whatever reason, it seems however, that there's been more warm weather than cool, last month.

Averaged over the entire Globe (as well as only over the Northern Hemisphere), this January has had the warmest anomaly of any month in the last decade, according to UAH!

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
 
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  • #209
We're freezing out here, I don't care about anyone else. :devil:

BUT ALSO THE COOLEST JANUARY IN SEVERAL YEARS ESPECIALLY WITH ARCTIC AIR MASSES DOMINATING THE FIRST HALF OF JANUARY.

THIS FEBRUARY WILL LIKELY RANK AS THE COLDEST FEBRUARY IN SEVERAL YEARS...INDEED THE COLDEST SINCE THOSE OF THE LATE 1970`S AND ALSO IN THE TOP TEN COLDEST FOR FEBRUARY

AND BELOW NORMAL TEMPERATURES THROUGH THE END OF MAY DUE TO THE INFLUENCE OF A MODERATE TO STRONG EL NINO PATTERN
Oh well, there goes my hopes of a warm spring to get my garden growing. :frown:

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cach...2009+2010+kansas+city,+KS&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1
 
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  • #210
It would seem likely that there could be significant flooding on the Missouri and Mississippi River systems this spring.

We had an unusually cool spring and summer last year. A number of flowers didn't bloom, and the warm weather crops were rather poor. The lettuce and chard did really well, as did the cruciferous plants.

Interestingly, I think the NW and parts of the NE got warmer than usual weather while the central US and SE got colder than usual.

This winter has probably been more normal than most of the last several years, in which winters have tended to be warmer than usual. It used to be that the river froze over such that ice was cut from areas for refrigeration. That was more typical of the 1800's though.
 
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  • #211
turbo-1 said:
We have had some arctic high-pressure zones around recently ...
Your high-pressure zone is said to be responsible for keeping several little snow event to our south. Thanks Maine.
 
  • #212
I am currently KO'd by snow shoveling. The snow went to right below my knees. (~18in)
I finished shoveling, went to sleep at 5pm and didn't wake up until 10pm.
 
  • #213
We now have 132,000 people without power in our area, and it probably will be 2-3 days before power is restored, and possibly longer in remote areas. I drove along one of my usual routes, and there were power lines down. My office mate is without power for a second day.
 
  • #214
It is mud season, and the frost is coming out of the ground. So is the water. I was taking Duke for a walk, and while waiting for him to find a place to "annoint" I looked into the ditch only to see water bubbling strongly out of a hole in the bottom. This hill is loaded with ground-water but finding a new spring was a surprise.
springhole.jpg
 
  • #215
It's not so cold anymore, but today it's raining and very windy. A 60 foot tall eastern hemlock came down in my side yard. It was kind enough to miss the house entirely and just clipped the garage with no damage. Now I have to consider how I'm going to deal with it. However, today is too nasty, so I'm going to let it stew there. The power is out in nearby towns, but we're all right. Anybody else experiencing weather problems?
 
  • #216
Jimmy Snyder said:
It's not so cold anymore, but today it's raining and very windy. A 60 foot tall eastern hemlock came down in my side yard. It was kind enough to miss the house entirely and just clipped the garage with no damage. Now I have to consider how I'm going to deal with it. However, today is too nasty, so I'm going to let it stew there. The power is out in nearby towns, but we're all right. Anybody else experiencing weather problems?
Egads! I'm so glad that the tree missed you. My mother was not so lucky when a similarly tall pine tree fell on her house during a hurricane. Insurance paid for the damage to the house, but IIRC it cost her over a thousand dollars to have the tree cut up and removed.
 
  • #217
Evo said:
Egads! I'm so glad that the tree missed you. My mother was not so lucky when a similarly tall pine tree fell on her house during a hurricane. Insurance paid for the damage to the house, but IIRC it cost her over a thousand dollars to have the tree cut up and removed.
I'm going to cut it up myself when the weather lifts. But $1000 seems high to me. Last year I paid $1200 to fell two trees and grind three stumps. They did the work while I was away at work and took the wood away, so I'm not sure if they cut it up or not.
 
  • #218
Today was a wonderful sunny spring (!) day. I can't believe April is here already. The calendar lies! Tomorrow, we may get brushed with the top of the storm that has whacked the East Coast. Gusts to 50 mph or higher, so I'll check out the generator, top off the oil, fuel it, and give it a test-run. When the power goes out, this road is about the last one in town to get some attention. A line-man friend of mine told me when we moved out here that we were just a notch higher in the power company's priority than the camp roads around ponds.
 
  • #219
Jimmy Snyder said:
I'm going to cut it up myself when the weather lifts. But $1000 seems high to me. Last year I paid $1200 to fell two trees and grind three stumps. They did the work while I was away at work and took the wood away, so I'm not sure if they cut it up or not.
They're excuse was that they couldn't resell pine for firewood, so there was no profit for them. I just can't see my little 5' tall eldelry mom weilding a chainsaw and lugging wood. Although when she was younger she could tackle anything.
 
  • #220
Jimmy Snyder said:
It's not so cold anymore, but today it's raining and very windy. A 60 foot tall eastern hemlock came down in my side yard. It was kind enough to miss the house entirely and just clipped the garage with no damage. Now I have to consider how I'm going to deal with it. However, today is too nasty, so I'm going to let it stew there. The power is out in nearby towns, but we're all right. Anybody else experiencing weather problems?

We're getting rain and general ick, but nothing terrible. From the news stories, it sounds like half of Pittsburgh is flooded. We probably have some flooded areas too, but I haven't ventured out or turned on the news today to find out. I live on top of a big ridge...if it floods by my house, it's time to build an ark. Fortunately, we had a warm week last week before the rain hit, so a lot of the snow had already melted before the rain started. The ground was already soaked from the melting snow, and the rivers were already swollen from the rain, but at least it isn't both at the same time. Pittsburgh's problems, I think, are from flood waters arriving from upstream to the confluence of three rivers just as the rain started there.
 
  • #221
Moonbear said:
From the news stories, it sounds like half of Pittsburgh is flooded.
Which half? Half of the 5% of the city that is not perched on a near-vertical side-hill? Western PA and WV can certainly see high water, but I can't see wide-spread inundation and ruinous floods (the property-damage/soak your house type) being a real problem there. Even as far downstream as Luke, MD, the topography is still so rugged and steep that high water would go as fast as it could come.
 
  • #222
The tree that fell yesterday had a bifurcated trunk and only one of the branches came down. Measured ground to tip it was 60 feet to the angstrom. However, the bifurcation was 7 feet above ground, so the branch that fell was only 53 feet long. The township bought some very expensive paper recycling bins and gave them to each householder. The trunk fell squarely on my bin and tipped it slightly. However the branches are holding the trunk off the ground and so the bin was not damaged. Some of the branches slightly blocked my way to the garage where my tools are, but fortunately branches have been falling like rain so I had my branch trimming saw with me and was able to clear a path to the garage door. All in all, I came off pretty well. However, I do not trust the still standing branch and will bring it down later this year at some expense.
 
  • #223
Jimmy Snyder said:
It's not so cold anymore, but today it's raining and very windy. A 60 foot tall eastern hemlock came down in my side yard. It was kind enough to miss the house entirely and just clipped the garage with no damage. Now I have to consider how I'm going to deal with it. However, today is too nasty, so I'm going to let it stew there. The power is out in nearby towns, but we're all right. Anybody else experiencing weather problems?
I flew into Newark last night, and the flight got bounced around. I had to dodge debris on I-95 and US-46, and take it slow in the cross-winds so as not to get blown into other cars or the median barrier.

The Palisades in NJ was a mess with debris from fallen trees (at least one every mile). Traffic was stopped three times for tree removal, and it appeared that at least one car ran into a fallen tree. Up near home, it was a matter of avoiding pools or water on the road. I did pass one SUV/Van that had some how driven (skidded?) off the road into a ditch, just where there was a water fall coming down the hillside.

I've been trimming our maple tree and several fir trees so their tops don't fall into the neighbor driveway. Several trees were damage two weeks ago when we have the rain/snow/ice storm.

We had a large blue spruce removed several years ago, and it cost about $1000. But we also got a package deal on other trees we needed to remove (with discounts on some cedars we needed removed).
 
  • #224
Wow, Astro! So happy that stuff all passed to the south of us. We sure wouldn't want as much rain as you folks got. The ground here is absolutely saturated, so it all would have ended up as surface run-off, taking out our gravel roads and undermining the paved ones. BTW, the new spring that popped up a couple of weeks ago is still bubbling merrily along - it looks like a little Yellowstone mud-pot, but without the heat.
 
  • #225
Astronuc said:
I flew into Newark last night, and the flight got bounced around.
I assume you know what a wheel landing is. I couldn't believe a commercial airliner (DC9) could do a wheel landing until I landed at Orlando, FL with a 60mph cross wind.

Check out this landing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sV1CzvZHlM"
 
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  • #226
Although there are no wind advisories locally, and the forecast mentions wind of 9-13 mph, we're getting winds and gusts that seem to be a bit stronger, at least by the sound of the wind roaring outside, and the trees saying a few feet at the top. I'm just hoping that I don't wake up to a branch or tree on either of the neighbor's cars. I've manage to trim some trees which I thought were most at risk, but I still have 4 trees (~40 feet each) that I need to remove to be safe. But then, that will leave our maple tree (which is one that I've been trimming and removing broken branches) more exposed. The original own of the house had planted fir trees around the property, all too close, and over the years they started to show signs of stress from the crowding. One of them blew down in the neighbor's backyard a couple of months ago, and I managed to push another one over. Two weeks ago, one or two fir trees lost some top branches from the accumulation of ice and snow.
 
  • #227
After the warmest March on record, we are having a colder-than-normal April. I got up at 3am to walk the dog, and it was snowing out. I figured it would be gone when I got up later in the morning. Wrong! It's still coming down hard.

aprilsnow.jpg
 
  • #228
That's looks like quite a bit turbo!
 
  • #229
Evo said:
That's looks like quite a bit turbo!
It should be around 6" or more, but all the surfaces were well above freezing and the snow melts pretty fast - almost as fast as it accumulates.
 
  • #230
turbo-1 said:
It should be around 6" or more, but all the surfaces were well above freezing and the snow melts pretty fast - almost as fast as it accumulates.
It does look heavy and wet.

Our weather has turned cooler, but not that cold.
 
  • #231
It's cold air aloft that's the culprit. At ground level, the temp is near 40.
 
  • #232
I'm in northern Michigan for the next few days, and its freezing! Turkey hunting opens tomorrow, but I fear all the birds are hunkered down against the winds and misty freezing rain.

On the up side, I have a fire going on the beach, and Lake Michigan is kicking up some cool waves. Going to grab my blankets, and a hot buttered rum, and just take it all in.
 
  • #233
We had a temperature swing of about 25 degrees from yesterday (warm and sunny) to today (alternating snow and rain).
 
  • #234
What's this? Snow showers on April 29? It has been snowing off and on all day, alternating with sun and clouds. The air aloft must be very cold, because it is in the high 40's near the ground.

snow429.jpg
 
  • #235
May-Day! May-Day! Currently 82 degrees outside and rising. This spring's weather is giving me whiplash!
 
  • #236
We've been pretty consistent the past week, lows in the 40's, highs in the 60's. It's only reached 61 today. I don't remember such a cold April, but I'm not complaining. Well, I'm complaining a little, I want to set my plants outside.
 
  • #237
Evo said:
We've been pretty consistent the past week, lows in the 40's, highs in the 60's. It's only reached 61 today. I don't remember such a cold April, but I'm not complaining. Well, I'm complaining a little, I want to set my plants outside.
We had a day last Sunday when the temperature was 92 °F, but now we're looking at temperatures in the 30's at night and low 50's during the day.

The berries don't mind, but just about everything else prefers warmer weather at this time of year.
 
  • #238
It's getting close to mid May and the temperatures are in the 40's. Having to run the heater in May!
 
  • #239
I have had two wood-fires today. Wind is howling and temps in the 40s. We lost power twice this week already due to heavy storms, and I'm not anxious for another.
 
  • #240
I see the first flower on one of the tomato plants
 
  • #241
What is with this crazy weather? It's been so cold all month, the temperature right now is only 55F.

Did you all see the softball size hail in Oklahoma and that hailstorm in Colorado? There are videos on weather.com
 
  • #242
Same (maximum) temperature here (13C), it's about 5C (8F) below the average. Waiting for spring.
 
  • #243
Spring came early here and prompted early blooming of fruit trees. They bloomed before the pollinators were in place to tend the blossoms, then several hard frosts got many of the blossoms. Estimates from orchard operators place projected losses around 20-40%. The very warm March jump-started everything.

It's good that garlic is frost tolerant - they came up early and are up to about mid-thigh now. About a month ahead of normal.
 
  • #244
Just barely got up to 55 deg today amid "scattered" showers. I only wish they were scattered. The rain is constant and relentless. What a way to put a damper on the garden! A cold rain can cool the soil quite effectively and only several sunny, warm days can bring the temps back up so the vegetables will thrive. We have about 2 weeks before the threat of frost is over (traditionally), but last year, heavy cold rains like this after Memorial Day ruined the germination rates of cukes and squash. It was very hard to find seeds to re-plant with since everybody lost their direct-seeded plants.
 
  • #245
It's 55F and raining here too. Finally you're getting some of my weather. I was talking to the neighbors the other day, everyone is worried this year will be like last year. The farmers really need a good summer to recover from last year. We have lots of little farms around here. We're basically just neighborhoods dotted between farms.
 
  • #246
I love that song. Its Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald right? On topic though, I wish it was colder here... Its burning up in Delhi!
 
  • #247
Evo said:
It's 55F and raining here too.
:cry: And raining, and raining ...
 
  • #248
dlgoff said:
:cry:
how's your garden dl?
 
  • #249
Evo said:
how's your garden dl?
Remember turbos garden last year? Now I see why his plants are going on big hill rows this year. I'm thinking rice next year.
 
  • #250
dlgoff said:
Remember turbos garden last year? Now I see why his plants are going on big hill rows this year. I'm thinking rice next year.
Oh no.
 

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