Snow...

[njroadhorse]

Drove through the mountains near Somerset, PA today.  Couple inches on the ground and it was blowing like crazy.

[Chris]

About 5 inches fell this evening in my city: Zwolle, NL

[agentsteel53]

what does the caption mean underneath the exclamation-point sign? 

I thought Europe was striving to be language-independent in their warning signs, but "!" doesn't tell me very much, other than I should watch out.  What am I watching out for?  A curve?  A railroad track?  A half-bear half-shark half-alligator creature?

[Chris]

It says "with frost and rain". Apparently, this cyclist tunnel gets slippery then.

[agentsteel53]

dang!  I had been hoping for the third option!

[Truvelo]

Where I live is OK with just hard frosts each night but further north the snow is really thick like this article shows.

[PAHighways]

Drove through the mountains near Somerset, PA today.  Couple inches on the ground and it was blowing like crazy.

It was doing the same down here on the "lowlands" next door, especially around 6 PM.

[mightyace]

Ran into lake effect snow in Northeast Ohio Saturday and Sunday.  Light snow/flurries to Columbus and from Cincinnati to just north of Nashville yesterday and today.  No appreciable accumulation but temperatures into the teens! (~ -10 C)

[SSOWorld]

Lake effect kept me from attending the Detroit road meet. (would have had to drive right through it)

[Alps]

Lake effect kept me from attending the Detroit road meet. (would have had to drive right through it)

Yeah, you were better off without it.  The closest I came were "snow squalls" hitting the Barrie area, but besides reduced visibility it wasn't covering up the remaining tire tracks on the 400 and I was still able to move at 80-110 km/h.  I had far too many hours driving in those tracks, though...

[froggie]

Burlington, VT was the "big winner" this weekend.  33.1 inches at the NWS office there...

[Truvelo]

We've just had snow this morning. It's about 2 inches which seems tame compared to that in Vermont.

[english si]

Because, when going to TESCOs late on Sunday Afternoon (about an hour and a half before it closed) and there was little bread, I went down just now to get some more. They had very little bread - some rolls and some stuff from the in-store bakery.

At first I thought this was because of a delivery that hadn't come. But then I saw a near-empty fresh meat aisle, no fresh milk on the shelves and finally no bananas. Talking to staff, I found out that it's because of panic buying - odd that it was perishables, but I guess it was "I won't be able to get that stuff for a couple of days, and my old stuff will go off/run out before I can get some more", especially given that milk and bread are fairly staple foods (the meat's a bit more odd and bananas are the most popular fruit). The tinned food aisle was well-stocked, and didn't look like it had recently been refreshed. I guess we're really not used to possible snow-ins.

The Met office, as an extreme weather warning for Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, suggests 6-12 inches, perhaps 16 inches in places over the next 24 hours (the snowfall ends Wednesday night). That said, having watched the London weather report, Slough and that area will get it bad, but we'll miss out on the really heavy stuff - perhaps 8 or 9 inches, so, like last time, about a day of stoppage and a few days of problems. I'll be surprised if you wouldn't be able to walk to a smaller shop (if not TESCOs) to buy bread and milk (not that they'll have them now) on Thursday. Driving would be slow, but not ridiculously dangerous, by Thursday evening, given what happened a couple of weeks ago.

[bugo]

We're scheduled to get our FOURTH significant (>1 inch) snowfall of the year tomorrow night.  We've had more snow the last month than we usually get all winter.  And there's still ice on some roads from the first snowfall.

[mightyace]

Talking to staff, I found out that it's because of panic buying - odd that it was perishables, but I guess it was "I won't be able to get that stuff for a couple of days, and my old stuff will go off/run out before I can get some more", especially given that milk and bread are fairly staple foods (the meat's a bit more odd and bananas are the most popular fruit).

The exact same things happens here in Middle Tennessee!       We have a couple of inches forecast for Wednesday night/Thursday morning so I expect to see the same here soon.  Though I had no trouble getting milk last night.  (I actually NEEDED it after being away from home for two weeks.)

[agentsteel53]

meanwhile here in northeast New Mexico (elevation 6800) we would have maybe 15-20 inches of snow by the New Year ... we got one 4" event in late October, and an inch two nights ago.  Gimme back my snow, ya bastards!

[jdb1234]

Here in Birmingham, we are expecting one to two inches Thursday.  A day when I have to be at school until late that night.

[english si]

we have 2-3 inches now, though the snow is predicted to keep falling (I reckon we'll end up with about 6-8 inches). Oddly, Luton Airport is reopened, which means that they don't see a huge snow threat today, though no schools in the area are open, because of problems on the roads and getting there.

The blunt instrument of the extreme weather warning strikes again - the M4 corridor has been hit with 8 inches, so a few Bucks villages have had what was predicted for the county. However it fails to take notice that the county, while definitely not the biggest, has a set of hills running through the middle causing about three different climates (north of the hills, on the hills, the small bit of Bucks south of the hills which got lots of snow).

The biggest problem is places have run out of grit, due to having to spread it for either snow or ice or both for the last 10 weeks.

I'm trying to remember if the Met office said anything about the winter we were going to have. After their 'Barbecue summer' prediction for hot and dry weather was almost universally laughed at (we had a wet summer), they probably kept silent. I know that they said that this year would be the hottest year on record - so far it's not looking good with large parts of Europe and North America under a big cold snap. I guess the climate change activists could (though oddly they haven't been that vocal so far) spin it as 'extreme' weather, but that's so vague a category that while this would clearly count, fairly average winters get spun as extreme because they are too warm, too wet or too dry and not right on the average.

[Truvelo]

It snowed again here last night so I grabbed my camera and took this picture. I couldn't be arsed to set up the tripod so I took it handheld at ISO 4000 instead and I'm glad to say the only noise is the falling snow

[Brandon]

Talking to staff, I found out that it's because of panic buying - odd that it was perishables, but I guess it was "I won't be able to get that stuff for a couple of days, and my old stuff will go off/run out before I can get some more", especially given that milk and bread are fairly staple foods (the meat's a bit more odd and bananas are the most popular fruit).

The exact same things happens here in Middle Tennessee!       We have a couple of inches forecast for Wednesday night/Thursday morning so I expect to see the same here soon.  Though I had no trouble getting milk last night.  (I actually NEEDED it after being away from home for two weeks.)

It's bizarre behavior, and being from the Upper Midwest, I don't understand it.  People in places like Chicago never do this sort of panic buying even when looking at getting a foot or more of snow.  We're supposed to see 10 inches during Thursday and Friday, and yet people are pretty calm about it.  I expect the snowplows will be busy, and we'll see garbage trucks and other maintenance vehicles pressed into service as snowplows as usual.

[Brandon]

Lake effect kept me from attending the Detroit road meet. (would have had to drive right through it)

Always the usual winter hazard on I-94 in NW Indiana and Berrien County, Michigan.  I've used the Indiana Toll Road to I-69 or the Toll Road and the Ohio Turnpike to I-75 to avoid some of the worst of it.

[mightyace]

It's bizarre behavior, and being from the Upper Midwest, I don't understand it.  People in places like Chicago never do this sort of panic buying even when looking at getting a foot or more of snow.  We're supposed to see 10 inches during Thursday and Friday, and yet people are pretty calm about it.  I expect the snowplows will be busy, and we'll see garbage trucks and other maintenance vehicles pressed into service as snowplows as usual.

Well having spent the first 30 years of my life in PA, MD and OH; I never ran into it until I moved here.  I still don't understand it.  The kind of storm that might keep everyone in for a week probably happens here once every 100 years.  The only thing that came close is an ice storm in 1994 that turned people's power off for most of a week.

[Chris]

A very slow moving snow shower paralyzed Amsterdam and vicinity, all roads turned into solid ice quickly, and the average speeds on about every road dropped to 2 mph. Delays of over 3 hours were reported on the Amsterdam beltway (A10). Every single road in the area is jammed, reports state over 800 km of traffic jam in just an area of 20 by 20 miles.

This is Amsterdam traffic at 10 pm:

[74/171FAN]

We are supposed to get up to 1 inch snow here Thursday night into Friday.

[jdb1234]

Here in Birmingham, no snow yet.  I am of course at UAB today.  Apparently, people have been buying up generators so that they will not miss the game tonight.  ROLL TIDE!