High winds, Low temperatures:

[montana_charlie]

My wife and I get much of our news from Foxnews, so we are regularly entertained by the 'cable version' of weather reporting.

The weather person (usually a nice looking female) will break a sweat talking about high temps, drought, and fires in California, and she will shed tears over flooding in Texas.
She gets blown away by tornadoes in Kansas and her knickers will be double-knotted if a hurricane points toward any target in the western hemisphere.

We can sympathize with her anxiety knowing that she has probably experienced none of these 'disasters'. We, on the other hand, have seen all of them up close.

But, our smiles break out during the dramatic reporting of regular old, hum-drum, everyday-type weather systems moving through the country ... especially in winter.

Regardless of where the front spent the last three days, it becomes 'a tense situation' once it gets east of the Great Lakes, and becomes 'potentially life-threatening' when it enters the I-95 corridor.

I'm talking about winds like 30 or 40 mph ... and some may get over 50.
I'm talking temperatures down to -30, but those are 'wind chill equivalents' ... not actual air temperature.

If the temperature (the real one) is zero, and the wind is going at 30mph, that produces a wind chill number of -28. Neither of the two primary values are 'life threatening' (really) and the combination is only a problem if you are running around outside naked.
But to hear the news lady tell it, life as we know it is serious jeapordy.

Sometime recently the news lady mentioned winds in New England that she called 'hurricane force'. I don't remember the actual speed so I can't say if it reached up to the required 74 mph, but we can call it 'high wind'.

Montana is known for being windy on a frequent basis. In the winter, we get the Chinook wind in our area, which raises the temperatures, and melts off the accumulated snow.
For this week, we have been experiencing some balmy weather with gentle Chinook winds. But, last week the winds were something to write home about.

We knew it blew hard, but we didn't get all crazy wondering how hard. Yesterday, a report came out in the Great Falls Tribune that listed some of the highest speeds recorded in our neck of the woods.
The speeds mentioned in the article ranged from 87 mph at Choteau to 117 mph at Augusta. Obviously, winds below 87 just weren't bad enough to report on.
If it was mentioned on TV at all, she would have said 'windy out west' or '(maybe) 'breezy in Billings'.

If the news lady on Foxnews saw something like this in the I-95 corridor, she would be broadcasting from an underground bunker.

[TheDoctor]

And to think that I almost took a job in Helena! I would probably love the low population density, but the cold...

[Dale in Louisiana]

Easier to build a fire than an air conditioner.

dale in Louisiana
(Who's dreading another Gulf Coast summer)

[Jim Flinchbaugh]

yeah, every thing in the national weather centers is an emergency now. 6 inches of snow closes school.
I'm 49 & when I was a kid 2 feet of snow usually resulted in a 2 hour delay on the bus ride at best.

I had a friend that lived in Chinook several years ago. From his front room he watched the wind blow
several hundred feet of wheeled irrigation pipe over 3/4 of a mile, take out 3 fences and jump a ditch.
The only thing said was by the farmer- "where the hell's my water pipe at?" :)

[btroj]

Once any weather gets east of the Mississippi it suddenly becomes far more important.

Once those of us west of NYC and DC realize that anything important must be in those two cities we will all be better off.

Somehow we all just keep on living not knowing how irrelevant we are.

[LIMPINGJ]

If you ever sit around small airports in the windy parts of the country, especially if they have less expensive fuel prices and are therefore attractive to pilots on cross country flights. You can tell who has learned to land in crosswinds and who comes from the less windy parts of the country. Sometimes they have to go around two or three times before they can get back on the ground in a somewhat controlled manner.

[Three44s]

You know why it's so windy out here in the west?

............. Because the just mentioned couple of big cities back east ........ SUCK!


Three 44s

[uscra112]

You had a great opportunity to post that picture of the "wind gauge" in Montana that's a cannonball hung from a log chain.

[jonas302]

Somebody called it weather terrorism I kinda like that term

[quilbilly]

Over the next few month it will be interesting to watch the hystericals on all the networks, not just weather, report on the drought in California. From tree ring data, this may turn out to be the worst drought in 500 years and truly catastrophic. You will really know it is coming when Lake Tahoe drops ten feet below its outflow and continues going down. About 500 years a go the lake was hundreds of feet below where it is today due to a 50 year drought according to tree rings. According to researchers in California a few years back, if such a drought occurred today, thje state would only have enough water for 3 million people (less than 1/10 today's population). For the record this is the result of a mini-ice age, not global warming.

[waksupi]

I remember days of shoeing horses in the Helena area. I wouldn't say it was windy, but there was 3/4" gravel blowing at least six feet above the ground.

[bhn22]

I dunno. Elmer Keith once said that if he ever got out on Montana, he would never come back to live.

Then he moved to Idaho? What sense did that make? I think I need to quit rereading Keith, and concentrate on somebody else for a couple of years.

[Wis. Tom]

You are forgetting that the media has to push extreme weather, as that is the gamechanger that the govt. wants, to control whatever is left of our economy. Tax the serfs that use fossil fuel, because global warming is now the last moneymaker left, now that they now own the healthcare system. Anyone that reports truth about the weather, is faced with grant money cutoff, and no job to come back to. Polar vortex, easy, it's global warming. Heat wave, easy, it's global warming. Stormy weather, easy, it's people's fault, or cow's fault, because they breath. Solution, easy, tax, tax, tax.

[MaryB]

75mph winds here a couple days ago, I had one of those tent style garages bolted to a platform of 2x12's. I was out in the shed looking for a tool(that other thread on losing stuff comes to mind) when I heard a loud bang. The cover over the frame exploded apart into shreds from the wind pressure. Just another winter day on the prairie of MN

[JeffinNZ]

"The weather person (usually a nice looking female)".

And there in lies the problem. She wasn't hired because she knew the names of all the clouds.

[DIRT Farmer]

I have noticed when the national news or weather channel mentions my area it is a tornado or the Ohio is out of the banks. Some of us get excited when the Ohio gets to 35 feet above pool, the duck hunting is great, and the people who live in the bottoms are smart enough to have fuel in their boats and extra beer for their friends who come to visit.

Note the Evansville airport did get mentioned today because a biologist came in and captured a snowey owl that had taken up residence. I guess it got to cold in the warming North lands.

[montana_charlie]

You had a great opportunity to post that picture of the "wind gauge" in Montana that's a cannonball hung from a log chain.
It blew away two weeks ago. Somebody in North Dakota might find it, though ...

[Love Life]

Polar vortex, Snowmageddon, Snopocalypse. All buzzwords that set me to laughing.

[dagger dog]

How else can they fill the hour slot on the evening news, when weather becomes news you know the bottom of the bucket has been reached.

Here in Hoosierland at the mere mention of the word snow, all the bread and milk flies off the shelves.

Can you imagine these poor folks having to milk a cow, much less get to the barn in such drastic life threating weather !

[runfiverun]

It blew away two weeks ago. Somebody in North Dakota might find it, though ...

it might not have hit the ground till Minnesota.
I was just in north Dakota and they were using tire chains off 18 wheelers as wind socks.
it didn't stop us from working 18hr day's though.

[bikerbeans]

I stopped watching the local TV weather because it seemed to me the weather men and women get offended when no one dies after they predict the end of life as we know it.

BB

[375supermag]

Hi..

Cold and snowy here in southcentral Pa. today.
Weather reader says it might be as much as a foot of snow with 30-40mph winds.

I had scheduled a vacation day because of a neurologist appointment, but I re-scheduled it about a half hour ago to Feb.24th.

I don't drive to work (44 miles one-way)when it is snowing, so I sure as heck ain't driving 50 miles one way to see a doctor and pay a $50 co-pay.

I'll stay right here and watch the snow pile up from the window in the den and listen to classical music.
Wife and I were watching a squirrel cleaning out one of the bird feeders, so she put about a 1/2 lb of sunflower seeds on the deck for him. Happy squirrel!

Snowblower is gassed up and ready to rock.

Wife is obsessing about the roads...our son is at work and she worries about him driving home in the snow. Hopefully, the plow crews will clear the roads by the time he gets off work.

[jonp]

"The weather person (usually a nice looking female)".

And there in lies the problem. She wasn't hired because she knew the names of all the clouds.

94203

[jonp]

Anyone else want to throw themselves off of a bridge when they hear of "Winter Storm Athena" or whatever? When did we start needing to name a snowstorm???