Winter weather this year has been ...
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 21816 votes
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 40 comments
Australia! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Australia! (Score:4, Insightful)
the time of the year when the ground turns into rivers.
AS for me, I live in NY because I happen like the 4 seasons. If I could get this weather without the taxes i would be gone.
Re:Australia! (Score:4, Funny)
If I could get this weather without the taxes i would be gone.
It's called New Hampshire, but please don't move there, you'd probably bring the taxes with you.
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New hampshire doesn't have enough water. I would have to move lake Ontario down river a bit.
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"the time of the year when the ground turns into rivers."
Check out this week
http://www.bom.gov.au/qld/ [bom.gov.au] Check the Tropical Cyclone one all but guaranteed for Monday (well north of me) and another coming special delivery from Fiji maybe Thursday could be a bit closer to home
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the time of the year when the ground turns into rivers.
No we call that summer (or at least this year).
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AS for me, I live in NY because I happen like the 4 seasons.
You have obviously never been to Melbourne - a point of pride is that that you can all 4 of the seasons in one day.
Now if you mean to imply that Winter must include snow, then you are delusional and suffering from a [I don't know what as there are places in the US that don't get snow]-Centric point of view.
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Head on up to Canada. You definitely get your four seasons....
You mean 4 different flavors of winter?
No, thanks, mate, I do refer 4 flavors of summer, even if all in the same day.
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Head on up to Canada. You definitely get your four seasons....
You mean 4 different flavors of winter?
Aren't you the clever comedian. I've never heard that one before. Did you come up with that yourself or did your mommy help you.
Oh yes, up here in Canada we get up in the morning, crawl out of our igloos, hook up the dog team and go ice fishing on Lake Ontario.
Come up here in June with your skis and winter clothing. Don't worry I have a guest igloo you can stay in.
Pinhead.
I Live in Toronto and we've barely got 6" of snow on the ground. Just across the lake in Buffalo they've had tons more snow than we ha
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As I speak its 40 degrees outside in Melbourne. 39 tomorrow. My trick for cycle commuting is to jump in the shower in my cycling clothes right before I go, then pour most of my water on my skin when I feel hot. The body can only use 300ml per hour anyway and I carry about a litre. Going to be a warm week. Over 20 on most nights.
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Yep: most of the interior of Australia (inland WA, NT, SA and western parts of Qld and NSW) regularly hits or exceeds ~120 F in summer. However noone* lives there. Australia is weird in that, despite its huge land mass, virtually all the population is concentrated in just a handful of big cities. It's not like the US or Europe where you have these mid-sized cities dotted around everywhere.
And of those few large cities, all bar one are on the coast (Canberra is the only city with >100,000 people that's no
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What is winter?
July. :p
Now, I live in Thailand, so I can honestly ask, what is winter? Oh, right. It's beer garden season! :D
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Ask again in four or five months....
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At least give him something more confusing than annoying:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs_eMqI1MIQ [youtube.com] -- Venetian Snares - Winnipeg is a frozen shithole
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You evil, evil bastard.
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Not quite ;) Australia uses the meteorological definition of seasons, rather than the solar/celestial definition. So:
Summer: 1 Dec - 28/29 Feb
Autumn: 1 Mar - 31 May
Winter: 1 Jun - 31 Aug
Spring: 1 Sep - 30 Nov
It actually never occurred to me that it was done differently in different countries until I visited America and discovered they used the equinoxes/solstices to mark the change of season (so it's not quite on the same date each year).
Interestingly the NOAA uses the meteorological/calendar month definiti
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No, 1st of June until 31 August in quite a lot of the southern hemisphere - southern parts of Australia included.
Bad options (Score:4, Insightful)
They are all biased towards people who dislike winter. What if it's not cold enough for me? The slush is really annoying, and I would prefer if it would just stay solid. No vote for me.
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Then pick "Not so good -- inconveniences galore."
Disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess what I'm saying is the lower 48 needs to stop stealing our weather. It's ours, damnit!
I'm not stealing it. (Score:2)
The weather has been really mild here in New Mexico as well. I've gotten used to not having any snow in Albuquerque, but it hasn't even been cold. There have only been 4 days the entire winter where I had to wear a scarf when riding my scooter, whereas in previous years I had to wear it for about 6 weeks.
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Amen to that. You know it's bad when you see everybody on your street washing their cars. I did that yesterday, and it really wasn't that bad.
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I guess what I'm saying is the lower 48 needs to stop stealing our weather. It's ours, damnit!
Maybe some of those pesky Europeans have grabbed your Alaskan winter. They've had colder and snowier conditions (often record-breaking) in the UK, Ireland, France, etc.
Of course, here in northern Europe, it has been within the normal range for winters, perhaps slightly cooler than average but nothing remarkable. We've got tons of snow on the ground in Eastern Finland, but only had a couple of days when it went below -30C. Airports did not close - we can deal with the white stuff in quantity...
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Are you gonna come pick it up in person, or should I send it via FedEx?
Seems some Hawaiians were trucking it to their kids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spdOvoa6S7E [youtube.com] :)
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In any event, Alaska has no inbred hicks anymore - they've all moved to Washington DC to try their hand at politics, thank god.
Most people in New England... (Score:3)
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Until this year I'd only _read_ about ice dams (Score:2)
Re:Until this year I'd only _read_ about ice dams (Score:4, Informative)
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I have a huge ice dam and I just put up the stockings today. It's hard because it all bunches up at the bottom when you lift them into place. How do you avoid that?
You can avoid the salt issues by using calcium carbonate (commercial ice melt).
But it works...two hours later, I had drainage. Brilliant.
Re:Until this year I'd only _read_ about ice dams (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't do that. You will end up in England, where nobody knows how to operate a shovel and the country grinds to a halt every winter.
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Now I'm waiting impatiently for my hardware store to get in a new supply of snow rakes [google.com], nervously listening for the sound of water dripping into the attic.
Odd. While the link told me what a snow rake is, I had to google around for a half an hour to find out why I'd want one. For those people living in wintery places with sane building codes, the problem is this: US roofs are apparently designed for a ground snow load of 0.45 kPa (10 pounds per sq foot) to 1.4 kPa (30 psf). Canadian roofs seem to be designed for loads between 5-20 kPa (100-400 psf).
The moral of the story is to design your house for the 30 year snowfall.
Midwest (Score:2)
Having feet of snow and watching all the non-locals drive too fast and slide off the road is pretty much the norm around here.
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Having feet of snow and watching all the non-locals drive too fast and slide off the road is pretty much the norm around here.
The first time I drove in snow in the US (in VA, 1995 I think), my car had been parked in a lot and we got about 2" to 3" of snow during the day. Late afternoon when I got out of work I took my car for a drive around the (now empty) lot and spun it a couple of times to get the feel of how slippery things were. I then drove the 10 miles home on the partially ploughed streets. I got home perfectly fine, yet I saw at least 3 cars which had run off the road. All the way home I was think "my excuse is that t
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Bike commuter here, but in Australia. I often wonder if people in snowy places are temped to use cross country skis.
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Man I commend you people for bicycling this time of year. I have to ask, how cold does it needs to be before take a car? I wouldn't think it's the slush that the occasional heat makes that's the problem. More the nice layer of ice with snow on it the next day.
Please don't laugh (Score:2)
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You almost never see ice on the ground in Australia so I got a nasty shock in Galway, Ireland in December 1997. Stepped out on the footpath and fell flat on the ground. It was no colder than I see in Melbourne but I reckon the ground must be colder over there all the time so it is easier for ice to form.
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Although that's true of the bulk of Australia, it's always dangerous to make generalisations. Ice on the ground is common in fairly sizeable areas of Australia in winter (any elevated location away from the coast). I can tell you that accidents due to black ice on the road are common around here (Canberra) in winter. Not so much in the city itself (Canberra is in a lowish spot compared to the surrounding terrain) but on highways just outside the city. Any areas of NSW/ACT/VIC which are >800m above sea le
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I married an American and have spent plenty of winters in her home state of Wisconsin in the US and I can assure you it gets a lot, lot colder there than in Ireland (-20s ... even -30 occasionally). And I too have fallen flat on my ass, being a noob Aussie not used to such conditions ;)
Ireland can be worse: the temperature usually hovers around freezing, so most of the time fallen snow quickly melts, then freezes to ice. Colder places don't have such a problem with ice.
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You must be new here.
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Hawaii has sun surf snow (Score:2)
Pittsburgh (Score:2)
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NYC snow (Score:2)
It seems I picked a perfect time to relocate to NYC (from London), as apparently this is one of the snowiest winters on record. I am in awe of the sheer quantity of snow that's lying around. I'm also impressed with the infrastructure in place to deal with it - after a foot of snow overnight the streets were ploughed and just about passable, and the trains were running. Although I gather that it was a different story just before I arrived, with the whole city shut down for about a week. However it seems like
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Alternative option... (Score:2)
My brother-in-law has been able to take his daughter sledging for the first time and they both loved that. I went camping in the snow for the winter solstice along with a load of other people and watched the eclipse fro
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My brother-in-law has been able to take his daughter sledging for the first time and they both loved that.
Hmm .. not sure if taking a kid sledging [wikipedia.org] is an appropriate activity in England. But I suppose you need to get the practice in if she is going to apply for membership in the Barmy Army [wikipedia.org]
Winter? Oh Yeah! (Score:2)
Living in San Diego CA we dont really have winter.
More apt to say we got: :-)
Rainy Season
Fire Season
Summer
Sorta Summer
Earthquake Season
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OTOH, there was still some snow on Mt Laguna a couple of weekends ago, and a good chance of more snow tonight.
Then again, this January has been warmer than last July.
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Earthquakes don't come in seasons.
But I do like to joke that despite common comments to the contrary, California does in fact have four seasons like everywhere else: there's Sunny, Hot, Flooding, and On Fire [iscaliforniaonfire.com].
What, you don't have On Fire where you come from?
A bit more snow than usual... (Score:2)
It's the way winter should be (Score:2)
As a Canadian living in New Jersey I think it is great. We have had about 4 or 5 good dumps of snow and it is white and beautiful out. The best winter in the 10 years we have been here. Much better than the usual drab, dirty wet winters that we usually get.
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Nice sig
More than a grain of truth in that.
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I would prefer both of them to be a right.
2010 the warmest global year! (Score:5, Informative)
2010 was the warmest year since global temperature records began in 1850 - although margins of uncertainty make it a statistical tie with 1998 and 2005. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) concludes 2010 was 0.53C warmer than the average for the period 1961-90 - a period commonly used as a baseline. The 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1998, it notes. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12241692).
Last month was the coldest December documented for the UK since nationwide records began 100 years ago, the Met Office has confirmed. For central England, it was the second coldest December since 1659. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12119329)
So, again, a global average doesn't equal your local weather. And, again, local weather doesn't make a climate.
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Re:2010 the warmest global year! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not according to this blog. [powerlineblog.com]
Apparently if you look at NOAA and NASA data published in 1999, the warmest year was 1934. However, if you look at that same data published today, you see VERY different data for the early 1900s. There's an FOIA request to get the raw data, but it isn't moving quickly, apparently.
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Re:2010 the warmest global year! (Score:4, Informative)
how do they measure temperature to 1 hundredth of a degree?
By averaging lots and lots of samples?
Locally, I reckon it was only 0.51C warmer last year.
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Wish I had mod points for that wry statement
Re:2010 the warmest global year! (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you seriously asking that. Those figures are global averages over the whole year taken from thousands of sites. So hundredth-of-a-degree precision is nothing.
Re:Wrong, data set adjusted (Score:5, Informative)
Conspiracy theory trash. All major temperature records show 2010 to be the hottest or near hottest year and an unmistakable upward trend. Ten Temperature Records in a Single Graphic [skepticalscience.com]
As for the accusation in the linked article that the raw station data from which the NASA GISS and NCDC temperature records are compiled, not being publicly available, my only comment is that it is either a bare faced lie or astonishing ignorance. The NCDC station data has been available for download for years. Anybody making accusations that it is not is unfit to write anything on the topic of temperature records.
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You don't know what you are talking about. The source code for the software that produces the NASA GISS global temperature record is freely available from the GISS web site as are various papers discussing the production of the record.
If that's too hard then try the Clear Climate Code project that has rewritten this software in Python. Guess what? It produces results very similar to GISS. Open source and downloadable. Go on. Knock yourself out and try to falsify the GISS work.
Nothing Unusual (Score:2)
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I too remember >18" at a time falling in Michigan back in the '80's(jumping off 2nd story roof into a 15' drift was awesome!), but shhhh, you might start un-scaring folks!
And whatever you do, don't talk about alternate, empirically based theories where fearing doesn't factor:
Variations in solar irradiance are widely believed to explain climatic change on 20,000- to 100,000-year time-scales in accordance with the Milankovitch theory of the ice ages, but there is no conclusive evidence that variable irrad [jstor.org]
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...strictly covering the post LIA period(last 2000 years)...
2000 should have been 200...
In Hawaii, We Don't Do Winter (Score:2)
Folks living at higher altitudes on the islands of Hawaii and Maui stoke a fire for a month or so. Otherwise, the only signs of winter are more visitors, and the leaves failing off some of the plumeria trees.
Inconveniences galore (Score:2)
So far it's been a pretty mild summer here in my part of down under (all crops are being harvested late) until this weekend. It's also been terribly inconvenient weather as well... every weekday when I leave for work it's warm and sunny and the ocean is nice and calm so I think "can't wait to get the boat out on the weekend", but then the wind starts blowing sometime on Friday night and doesn't stop blowing until sometime on Sunday night which means the water is too rough.
No wind this weekend for once, but
About to hit the cross-country ski piste (Score:2)
... that passes some 100 meters from home. Glad to see proper winters are back to Northern Europe.
Should be, "Given your normal climate, winter..." (Score:2)
It's all perspective. If you live in the bay area a few extra days of rain can ruin your whole winter; you might not get in that extra round of golf.
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"Should be, Given your normal climate, winter..."
It's all perspective. If you live in the bay area a few extra days of rain can ruin your whole winter; you might not get in that extra round of golf.
Gasp .. but .. but ... but .. that might imply that /. is read outside of the greatest country in the world.
More snow than I've ever seen in my life (Score:2)
We got 20 inches in a day here in Minneapolis last month, and it hasn't stopped. There's snow up to my dick out there. Hasn't been too cold though. I guess last Friday it did get down to -16 F, and it was zero-ish all week, but that's been the only really shitty cold week. Other than that it's been teens and occasional twenties. Hit 33 once this week!
Also, I bike to work (10+ miles). We're tough people.
Oh, the poll wasn't about the layout? (Score:2)
At first, I somehow missed the actual poll question, thinking the poll options were for feedback about the new layout.
Only the last one didn't make any sense. Heh.
I live in coastal southern California (Score:2)
What is this "winter" you speak of? For that matter, what's "weather"?
Slashdot is talking about the weather now? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a sign that the readership is getting old. Next poll:
Slashdot Poll: How is the pain in your lower back?
-manageable
-better than last week
-not so good
-agony
-Hurts worse than the time Cowboy Neal stepped on my toe in '98. Do you remember '98? It was the great Internet boom of '98 and we were laying cat5...
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Yeah, I had to drive up to Denver for a wedding, and I guess they had the only storm of the season at the same time. It took longer to drive from Colorodo Springs to Denver than it took to get from Albuquerque to Colorado Springs. Then by the time the wedding was over and we had time to go to a park to play in the snow, it was all melted :(
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Here in the North SF Bay area of California it has been pretty decent. A bit of rain, some fog, and it I've had a smidgen of ice on my windshield in the morning maybe 3 times. Nothing that is of any concern.
Depends on your point of view. I just moved here from Cleveland, and I do miss the snow.
Though, it was amusing being the only one in the parking lot who had any idea what to do the morning the windshields all iced over. Nobody else seemed to know what a snow brush was, nor keep one in their back seat. What an unusual place.
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Decent here in Finland too.
Half a metre of snow and regular -10 C and sometimes colder. The contrast amuses me: if you had a winter like this suddenly I'm guessing your society would start looking like the Mad Max world. I hear the Brits tend to panic when they get some centimetres of snow, which I guess is understandable. :)
Well actually it has been great rather than decent. The worst winters are the winters with slush instead of winter.
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Typical Canadian winter. Stop complaining, I'm lucky even living in a snow belt. All of the really bad stuff was to the south of me. Seriously, if all you're worried about is some trees and a couple of houses you haven't had a winter yet. Generally about the time you hit 2-3' of snow pack on your roof it's time to start shoveling.
Randomly normalish weather here includes, 6ft + of snow in a couple of days. Upwards of 15ft in 2days depending on where you live. General freakish gulfstream dumps of 'warm'
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I lived in Sedona, AZ for years and enjoyed the mild winters and the lovely summers... not being nearly as hot as Phoenix... but, alas my father got ill and died and so it was back to Ohio for me to be closer to my mother who is 89.
When it was time to get a new girlfriend then I drove out to Sedona, picked one out, and brought her back to Ohio with me.
One day, perhaps my home will be once again be in Arizona... but even as I am typing this... deep deep down, I know this is not the case. Being intuitive is
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I sense we are heading for an ice age actually and that the global warming is a bi-product initially, but I am not sure if that is any better than heading for global warming and having an ice age as a bi-product.
Anyway, weather in today's time-frame seems to be different.
Hope you feel better soon. Arthritis is no fun.
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What makes you think that global warming will make your part of it warmer?
In the UK, it could get a lot colder I think. The average temperature of the planet is a very different thing from the temperature where you and I are.