February banter thread

[stormtracker]

Going back into zen mode. I was there before the threat before this one pulled me back in.   People love to claim reverse psychology, but believe it or not, there's more to life than snow. I'm disappointed and want it to snow and I'll keep checking daily like all of us will, but I'm not mad, frustrated or the like.  We can't win them all and I'm writing this one off and don't expect much.   Here's to a decent super bowl at least.  

[BTRWx]

NCEP ensembles have the mjo going off the charts into phase 8, just saying

[mappy]

1 hour ago, mattie g said:

Speaking of hand foot and mouth, the same mom brought her 2.5-year-old daughter to play with the other kids on the block this fall when that was going around. She started talking to my wife and she said something along the lines of "I think [name] might have hand foot and mouth, but I don't know. She's got blisters on her hands and feet, and they're starting to show up in her mouth." My wife was like "Yes...that's hand foot and mouth" and turned around and took B inside. <smacks head>

Yeahhh I would never let my kid near this family ever again. 

[H2O]

1 hour ago, stormtracker said:

Going back into zen mode. I was there before the threat before this one pulled me back in.   People love to claim reverse psychology, but believe it or not, there's more to life than snow. I'm disappointed and want it to snow and I'll keep checking daily like all of us will, but I'm not mad, frustrated or the like.  We can't win them all and I'm writing this one off and don't expect much.   Here's to a decent super bowl at least.  

You need to become an all year around weather fan.  that way you can be equally disappointed in the lack of severe wx too.

[stormtracker]

This time is worse that the last time that was worst.  

[Eskimo Joe]

6 hours ago, H2O said:

Because some parents are too selfish to keep a sick kid home and take a day off work.  We've dealt with this as well.  Sick kid goes off to school and the parents know 100% their kid is sick but can't get a sitter or they think work is too important to miss.  So kid goes off, barfs everywhere and everyone gets it.

 

Happens with lice as well.  

Or...folks don't get sick time with their jobs.  Required sick leave needs to be made into law.  Too many employers require their employees to work until they drop.

[H2O]

9 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Or...folks don't get sick time with their jobs.  Required sick leave needs to be made into law.  Too many employers require their employees to work until they drop.

gonna sound like a hardass here but having kids means knowing that there will be times a kid will get sick and since its your kid you might need to stay home with them.  

 

I agree that employers should be more flexible and not penalize a parent who needs to take care of a sick kid but parents can't shove a sick kid off to school just because.  

[Eskimo Joe]

Just now, H2O said:

gonna sound like a hardass here but having kids means knowing that there will be times a kid will get sick and since its your kid you might need to stay home with them.  

 

I agree that employers should be more flexible and not penalize a parent who needs to take care of a sick kid but parents can't shove a sick kid off to school just because.  

If the choice is getting fired or risking someone else's kid get sick...they'll choose option #2.  There's no other scenario for these parents.  

[WinterWxLuvr]

21 minutes ago, stormtracker said:

This time is worse that the last time that was worst.  

Hang tough.

[H2O]

1 minute ago, Eskimo Joe said:

If the choice is getting fired or risking someone else's kid get sick...they'll choose option #2.  There's no other scenario for these parents.  

i seriously doubt someone will get fired for staying home one day with a sick kid.  come on.

Now if the kid is sickly and it happens a lot then sure.  This probably affects more low income parents wrt not being able to take off as much.  But still, the school is not meant to be nurse for that kid and infect others.

[Eskimo Joe]

Just now, H2O said:

i seriously doubt someone will get fired for staying home one day with a sick kid.  come on.

Now if the kid is sickly and it happens a lot then sure.  This probably affects more low income parents wrt not being able to take off as much.  But still, the school is not meant to be nurse for that kid and infect others.

It's happened to our neighbor when we lived in PA.  Right to work state.  They took off for a sick kid and were fired that Friday.  She was a assistant at a Catholic school in Gettysburg.  

[H2O]

you might have been told that was the reason but there could have been something else that caused that.  Straw that broke the camels back.

 

Sorry, i'm just going to disagree with parents who force their sick kid to school because they choose work over the well being of their kid.  And a fat lot of good it does them because odds are they will have to leave work anyways to go pick the kid up once the school nurse determines they have a fever or barf or crap themselves.

[North Balti Zen]

The look will "get right" just in time for 38 degree coastals in late March and all through April, killing our spring.

[mattie g]

49 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Or...folks don't get sick time with their jobs.  Required sick leave needs to be made into law.  Too many employers require their employees to work until they drop.

Most folks don't get sick time. You just use leave time in case of sickness (or death in the family or birth of a child, etc.). It sucks, and I completely agree that employees should get sick leave, rather than use up their regular leave, but we all know that if that were made into law then employers would just reduce the amount of regular leave and replace that with sick leave.

I don't know of anyone who has gotten s**t from their employer for taking time off for being sick or for taking care of a sick child, although I don't work in finance or law or any other field that generally requires long hours and the need to put in masses of billable time in order for their employers to make big money.

[mattie g]

Heading to Aslin this afternoon for a couple growlers.

Mmmmmm. Hop juice...

[EastCoast NPZ]

49 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

It's happened to our neighbor when we lived in PA.  Right to work state.  They took off for a sick kid and were fired that Friday.  She was a assistant at a Catholic school in Gettysburg.  

PA is a right to work state?  That's news to me.

It's hard to imagine any employer firing an employee for taking 1 day off, much less a Catholic school.  There had to be more to that story.

[MN Transplant]

20 hours ago, J.Mike said:

Why did VA/Fairfax County decide to use taxpayer money to spread brine on the streets (specifically Little River Tpk).

18 hours ago, mattie g said:

Money's allocated. No reason not to.

17 hours ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

And right there is the problem with govt spending.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/02/03/this-is-why-vdot-was-pre-treating-the-roads-in-northern-virginia-on-thursday/?utm_term=.124aab9b109a

 

 

 

[jonjon]

54 minutes ago, mattie g said:

Heading to Aslin this afternoon for a couple growlers.

Mmmmmm. Hop juice...

Love Aslin, we just bought their old keg cleaner for our brewery.

Also love the NE style hop-juice IPAs.  We brew an IPA and pale ale in the same vein.

Looks like that one could use some carbonation . . .

[psuhoffman]

18 hours ago, losetoa6 said:

Just give me a March 19 , 1958 or March 29,1942 and I'll call it a season ...and I'll give up all of next season snow  as well. A heavy  wet snow is the best ..imo.

Of course another 93' would be nice...but I know better. 

We're way overdue for a big big big march snow. Our records are littered with 15"+ snow events and a few 30"+ in march from the 1800s until 1970.  Then since somehow suddenly they just stopped. We still get snow in march regularly but the 20-30" march storms suddenly went away. Also we had several big 6-10" April snows before 1970 also and none since. We're way way way overdue for that to come back. 

[WinterWxLuvr]

1 hour ago, MN Transplant said:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/02/03/this-is-why-vdot-was-pre-treating-the-roads-in-northern-virginia-on-thursday/?utm_term=.124aab9b109a

 

 

 

I'm pretty sure that by Thursday morning there was no mention of winter weather in any local forecast for Sunday and there was certainly no model support for any.  Phone calls and emails move at the speed of light so I don't think it would have been too difficult to stop the operation.  This sounds like pure ineptitude being explained away in hopes few are paying attention.

That crap is caustic as can be to vehicles.  It's not like there's no expense to putting it down, to govt not to individuals.

Below are gfs forecasts from Thurs and Wed morning

[WxUSAF]

16 minutes ago, psuhoffman said:

We're way overdue for a big big big march snow. Our records are littered with 15"+ snow events and a few 30"+ in march from the 1800s until 1970.  Then since somehow suddenly they just stopped. We still get snow in march regularly but the 20-30" march storms suddenly went away. Also we had several big 6-10" April snows before 1970 also and none since. We're way way way overdue for that to come back. 

Suck 100 ppm of co2 out of the atmosphere and then give it 25 years of natural variability and we'd probably score one in that interval. 

[psuhoffman]

26 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Suck 100 ppm of co2 out of the atmosphere and then give it 25 years of natural variability and we'd probably score one in that interval. 

I'm trying to hope we haven't ruined what used to be a really nice march snow climo up here with global warming and we're just going through a long unlucky phase. 

ETA:  we still get snow and plenty cold enough for a big snow in March so I like to think it can still happen just been unlucky.  So were due to get 2/3 20" snows in March this year.  LOL

[WinterWxLuvr]

No paste bomb...lets do a March 93.

[psuhoffman]

1 minute ago, losetoa6 said:

Now you're talking my language. ...what better year then this to break that drought. ...eh? There's no doubt we're due for a March paste bomb. We'll name it  the "Hoffman express" . Bring it home PSU. I have lots of the Ludlum books that detail storms from the 1600s - 1900s and lots of nice hits in March through mid April in there for sure.

Hmm which books. Sounds like something I'd be into. 

[WVclimo]

12 minutes ago, WinterWxLuvr said:

I'm pretty sure that by Thursday morning there was no mention of winter weather in any local forecast for Sunday and there was certainly no model support for any.  Phone calls and emails move at the speed of light so I don't think it would have been too difficult to stop the operation.  This sounds like pure ineptitude being explained away in hopes few are paying attention.

That crap is caustic as can be to vehicles.  It's not like there's no expense to putting it down, to govt not to individuals.

Below are gfs forecasts from Thurs and Wed morning

They were out again today.  Saw the brine trucks on Rt. 50 in Fairfax and RT 28 in Manassas while driving through NVA.

[WinterWxLuvr]

2 minutes ago, WVclimo said:

They were out again today.  Saw the brine trucks on Rt. 50 in Fairfax and RT 28 in Manassas while driving through NVA.

Guess VDOT doesn't care about this area of Va.

 

[RDM]

1 hour ago, MN Transplant said:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/02/03/this-is-why-vdot-was-pre-treating-the-roads-in-northern-virginia-on-thursday/?utm_term=.124aab9b109a

 

 

 

 

Read the CWG article just after it came out today.  Nice for CWG to obtain some insight as to what prompted the application of all that brine on Thursday.  No slight in what I'm about to say against the reporting or the article - I find CWG to be a responsible, objective and accountable news source among few.  When CWG misses a forecast, we often see a post-evaluation of how they did, what they missed and/or what happened that was not anticipated.  IE:  lessons learned.  That's great!

However, if indeed the information provided by VDOT is correct, then it would only be confirmation that VDOT needs to seriously reevaluate their contracting practices, their processes, leadership, and/or all three.  Be it a FFP (fixed firm price) or IDIQ or some other contract vehicle that is used to contract out the snow clearing and treating services there has to be a way to shorten the lead time from the decision point to deply to the actual activation/deployment of resources.  There was a statement made in the CWG article by the VDOT spokesperson "They can’t just put the decision off until meteorologists know without a shadow of a doubt that it is/is not going to snow."  Huh?  That does not make sense.  If there's no confirmation yet that it's going to snow, don't brine.  That statement was made with the apparent acceptance that their processes are so inflexible that they must jump their decision ahead of the Pro Mets informed decision on whether it's going to snow or not?  Don't get that at all.

Putting down all the brine that was applied yesterday, a full 3+ days before a questionable event defies even the most liberal logic.  For days the models wavered significantly about the potential before giving up on anything significant entirely.  VDOT seems to want to blame the preemptive strike on their process without acknowledging they need to do something about it.  Likewise, there appears to be no accountability for it anywhere, there's certainly not a lot of flak in the public domain.  VDOT, FF Co., Loudoun Co. etc need to owe up to the fact they jumped the gun and in a big way.  Yea, they've been criticized before by not taking care of the roads when they needed to, so maybe they are gun shy.  But this sort of over zealous premature reaction is borderline criminal (though I doubt any prosecutor would take action - haha).  Do we have the option to file a class-action suit for the excess wear and tear on our vehicles, the roads and the environment?  (just ranting here - I'm not the litigious type while that appears to be the trend these days)

What I'd hoped to see in the CWG article was something about "we jumped the gun and are learning from this and reviewing/refining our activation processes" or something that implies they understand the current process is flawed will try to do better the next time.  Instead, all we got was a bunch of excuses.  We should be able to expect better - even around here. 

 

[RDM]

45 minutes ago, losetoa6 said:

@psuhoffman

I think this is it..( there's 2 volumes)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/the-snows-of-yesteryear-major-winter-storms-of-the-1700-and-1800s/2011/12/28/gIQA2MdbQP_blog.html?utm_term=.5d98377645ae

Very interesting.  Also interesting that a new copy of the second volume is $182 on Amazon.  There's a used option for $52 and only a used option for the first volume. 

[PhineasC]

Ready for summer. It seems this winter will just never start. It's been so warm.

[WxUSAF]

1 hour ago, psuhoffman said:

I'm trying to hope we haven't ruined what used to be a really nice march snow climo up here with global warming and we're just going through a long unlucky phase. 

ETA:  we still get snow and plenty cold enough for a big snow in March so I like to think it can still happen just been unlucky.  So were due to get 2/3 20" snows in March this year.  LOL

Ian's done some work looking at late season and early season snow in the area and it's pretty clear we're losing on the margins steadily over time.  Probably less of a factor for your area since you had more buffer with higher climo, but I think it probably effects the whole area.