Hoth

That's some scary shit. My uncle's mother contracted it years ago. Was a vegetable for about a year before she finally passed.

Lol, Nammy with almost nothing here, while fifty miles away my summer house floats away into the Atlantic.

Mike Ventrice noted there is a suppressive Kelvin wave passing over Africa the next few weeks. I know little about such things, but he says that one would expect it to tamp down any wave activity. Who knows.

I thought the WAR was going to flex viciously?

Based on satellite, I'd be inclined to agree. I'd peg NL east for the real juice. Maybe 1-1.5" max here.

Nammy pegging me with like 4-5". That'd be the biggest event since that flooding rain last October.

When was the last time we had a legit PRE? I don't remember Sandy featuring one. Must be Irene? I think that had a pretty heavy rain event in the Boston area the day before landfall.

Josh Morgerman's hopping on a plane to Harwich as we speak.

After Sandy, that may be the event that stole the most sleep from me in the days leading up to it. Incredible event, although it was a dud in Boston (as was the rest of that winter).

Sandysurvivor has lashed himself to an I-beam and is patiently awaiting for the world to blow away.

It was a watershed day when I stumbled upon Eastern. And a terrifying one when it announced it was shutting down. Thank God for this place. For real.

I don't want to perpetuate a climate discussion in a weather forum any longer, but yes: the hypocrisy of many green leaders flying privately, owning enormous mansions (Elon Musk owns five in Bel Air alone) and spewing more CO2 per year than most use in a lifetime is not lost on the average joe and doesn't help their cause.

Thank you, Will. Much appreciated.

Yeah, you pretty much nailed it. The general idea is that if a civilization reaches a certain level of technological development, we should be able to detect it. But we haven't, so why? Thus the postulate that there may be certain natural and technological barriers that act as filters and either allow a civilization to progress or die out. Perhaps it is exceptionally rare and difficult to reach our present level of development. And even more rare to get over our present challenges, climate, resource depletion, political or otherwise, to become technologically advanced enough to spread out to neighboring planets/star systems. It probably gets easier to create extinction level risks as tech becomes increasingly powerful and distributed.

Thank you. Out of curiosity, are you familiar with the concept of Great Filters?

Ok, I don't contest that it ties in. And I didn't really stumble upon it, I merely overlooked it initially when expatiating on the various economic dominos I consider ripe to tumble. I'm just curious how you apportion climate's contribution to the floods last spring. What is more responsible for that outcome, pattern or climate? The science certainly supports more extreme events in a warmer climate, but couldn't one have epic flooding merely thanks to a stable pattern that supports excessive rain? Or hypothetically, if New England took three canes on the chin in a month, would we be more apt to blame climate or pattern? Please don't take my tone as surly or anything. I'm genuinely curious how you as a trained meteorologist differentiate between extremes driven by pattern versus climate change. Thanks in advance.

Actually, I spoke too hastily earlier. There could be a climate tie in related to low crop yields in the midwest due to all that flooding earlier this year. That may drive some inflation in food prices. I think there's some data supporting that in China at least.

Greed can turn to abject fear in the blink of an eye.

Lol, we may be robotic to some degree by then, speaking of potentially existential concerns.

Winter is coming.

I'd be more worried about the pile of debt we're leaving our grandkids to pay.

One could argue it pulled a lot of people out of poverty globally; however, it certainly has not been a blessing for the middle class of most developed countries. There's a reason ours has eroded dramatically over the last thirty years or so. Our manufacturing has just been gutted by cheaper foreign operations-in China's case directly subsidized by the State in many cases. We just can't compete with that.

Agree. We are far more likely to come to grief via other means. Climate change will introduce strains, but we're a pretty adaptable species. I mean, we survived 100,000 years of brutal ice age with primitive tools and tech. Doesn't mean it's a challenge we should brush off, or that I don't support conservation and adoption of environmentally friendly tech. I do. But yeah, I would put global financial meltdown and the breakdown of civil society that comes with it--usually accompanied by civil or world war--as my top and most likely threat. Even as we speak, things look increasingly alarming. Setting aside the disruption of supply chains this trade kerfuffle with China is causing, we're seeing the break down of trade ties across the globe and a move to towards de-globalization and balkanization. To make matters worse, we have several systemic risks flashing red at the same time. China's banking system is like a much larger and more dangerous version of ours in '08, Australia, Canada, South Korea all have deflating property bubbles and likely face a credit crunch, Europe's banking system is insolvent and has absurdly high NPLs (and will be hurt even more by the ECB's move towards negative rates), the U.S. has built the mother of all corporate credit bubbles, emerging markets have record dollar denominated debt and will be in deep shite when recession kicks in in earnest and makes the dollar appreciate against their home currency, Italy is a 10x bigger version of Greece and populists there are fixing for a fight with the EU, changes in market dynamics over the last decade (momentum enhancing passive vehicles, corporate buybacks draining liquidity, algorithmic trading) could greatly exacerbate any fall in asset prices and, finally, the central banks are largely tapped out after trying to right the ship for the last decade. The odds of something exceptionally ugly happening to global economy are exceptionally high IMO.

Winner winner, chicken dinner.

So what will be the hot meteorological term the general public will cling to this winter? A few years ago every frost was a polar vortex, last year every flurry was a bomb cyclone, what will it be this year?