Juliancolton

I lied. Power's gone and so is my Christmas spirit. Time to fire up the 9,000-watt white noise machine.

Your chance at redemption looms:

Merry Christmas one and all. With 30k CenHud outages, including most of my neighborhood, feel very fortunate to still have power. I definitely have a sinking feeling for friends and neighbors spending Christmas morning in the dark, as well as for all the emergency responders I've seen driving up and down the street. It's just rotten in a way that only 2020 could have delivered. 2.39" so far, 61F high, 30 mph peak gust (a station record, probably translates to upper 40s or low 50s in reality).

So much for that. At least it sets the tone for the rest of the week's weather.

We should clear out in time to see it this evening. They'll only be imperceptibly farther apart than they were at official conjunction yesterday.

There's a Venus–Jupiter mutual occultation coming up relatively soon... 2060s I think? But it's only going to be a few degrees from the sun and so either invisible or extremely difficult to see. That said, backyard astronomers are already doing insane work amplifying faint data from daytime and twilight imagery, to speak nothing of where astrophotography is going to be in several more decades.

The 2 BC occultation of Jupiter by Venus was probably the most impressive planetary rendezvous in recorded history. Jupiter+Saturn is a little meh.

My pack really took it on the nose yesterday. Down to a ripe 5-6".

That stuff is one of the most fascinating aspects of wx for me. One of these days I'll make the pilgrimage to Peter Sinks in Utah. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sinks

I didn't get a chance to upload these screenshots when they were current on Friday night into Saturday morning, but I thought this was really cool. From the moment the BL decoupled until mixing resumed, I was running exactly 10 degrees colder than the air strip 1.7 miles away and 125 feet higher in elevation. Both stations are properly sited, and this pattern repeats often on clear nights, but I've never seen such a big difference. Just a razor-thin inversion with that perfect snowcover. Screenshots at 1:30 and 7:30 am.

But then that's just "I don't like crappy music," and crappy music is hardly a new thing. There's a reason you'll hear the same mega-hit two or three times on a 60s channel in one day trip... the best of the best lives on and the 95% of material in the just-okay to really bad spectrum gets filtered out with the sands of time. Labels telling artists they need to appeal more to the masses also goes back pretty much to the beginning. I'd argue that artists collectively have more freedom than ever to do their own thing without corporate pressures. They aren't beholden to the interests of terrestrial radio listeners anymore. The Jason Isbells, Phoebe Bridgerses, and Taylor Swifts of the world are objectively producing really imaginative material dripping with talent, even if it's not to one's taste – but with so many venues for independent discovery, there is, invariably, something to everyone's taste being released every day, if they're inclined to look. I mean, shoot. Bluegrass is probably having its hottest moment right now since Flatt & Scruggs got on the scene.

"Today's music" doesn't even have any meaning. It's gibberish. Jeff Lynne/ELO released in the year 2015 what I'd argue is their best album ever. Is that real music because a 70s band created it, or today's "low IQ BS"? Paul Simon released one of his best-selling and highest-charting records in 2016. McCartney, Dylan, Neil Young... they're all actively creating music that charts and permeates the popular culture. Just say "I don't like rap" and be done with it.

ok boomers

-4.0 on the mark. Wouldn't be unusual at all for that to be my coldest low of the season.

Still coasting down. -4 now. I had forgotten the raw radiative efficiency of deep, fresh snow.

Back down to 8. Let's gooo already. I'll always love the sound of snow underfoot on a very cold night. Warms me heart.

I'm up a couple degrees from earlier in the evening, hovering around 10F now. I'm not as certain of a subzero low as I had been.

We La Nina. Hope everybody enjoyed winter.

Now look what you've done.

A coastal low has to hit a ~100 mile keyhole for us to see snow. A cutter can go anywhere from EWR to ORD and it's still a cutter.

It took me fully three hours to clear even with a snowblower and tractor, and I'm definitely sore. That's a heavy snow that doesn't like to be bossed around.

The core sample I took when I measured 11.9" this morning melted down to 1.62". Good pack-building snow, in an alternate universe where we can avail of such things.

Drifting is actually pretty minimal around here. I drove around for a while and while it was clearly a windy storm based on the lack of snow on roofs and in trees, there are really no big drifts to report.

The sun is breaking through and 11.9" will do it for storm total. In a vacuum, my 11.5" call for my location looks pretty masterful. Just ignore all the other towns.