I’m still trying to work out the difference between Fahrenheit and Celsius, so I’m going to be a bit worthless for awhile, weather-wise.
We are having storms of hazy, yellow dust that is being blown in from Mongolia, but as my memory serves, they are well within “normal” parameters for this time of year here.

Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 11 2006 12:16 utc | 4

Vielen Dank for the formula, Bernhard. Apparently we are bouncing between 34°F and 68°F (presently at 51°F). Good pneumonia weather.
Technically, anything used to measure something is a “metric system”. If you mean will the US ever go to the international standard, then the answer is “sort of”. In scientific circles, one must always use meters instead of feet, liters instead of gallons, and so forth. The problem is that I never did any scientific writing that involved temperature.
Colloquially, citizens of the US will probably always talk about miles and quarts. But, then, I’ve met people from the UK who can confidentally estimate how many stone a thing weighs and it never seems to dawn on them that the people to whom they are speaking have no basis whatsoever for comparison.

Posted by: Monolycus | Mar 11 2006 13:19 utc | 6

Here in Bacharach we got socked last Friday with more than 8″ of snow in one afternoon. It shut the town down. It is now almost completely melted away and the Rhine had to be closed to shipping because of flooding.
I had a heckuva time getting used to °C around here until I adopted a few rules of thumb: 0°C is freezing, 10°C is warm enough to be outside without a coat, 20° is room temperature, 30° is ideal for swimming and 40°C body temperature means you’d better get to a doctor.
(normal human body temp being 37°)
And one other useful tip: at -32°, C and F are identical.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Mar 11 2006 13:36 utc | 8

Well in northern Maine its been a winter of very little snow (I’d say under 40 inches instead of 150 inches) and very very mild (only 10 or so days below zero instead of 20 to 35). We’ve had two rain storms in February and March instead of snow storms. The old timers said they can’t remember a year like it! That made it tough for the ski season, dog races, biathelons, and nearly everyone else involved in winter tourism. The main crop in N. Maine is also at risk. Warm winters mean more pests and a far greater risk of potato blight. But there is a bright side. Bush is down to 30% in the polls.

Posted by: diogenes | Mar 11 2006 14:01 utc | 10

Here in Northwest Montana it’s 25°, clear and sunny, kinda brisk and nice as it warms up. Unlike a few weeks ago, where we had predicted -50° below. However, it only made it down to -20° below for a couple of days then back into the 40’s. Missoula weather is usually on the mild side year round as we are 360° surrounded by mountains which take the brunt of the weather. Very little snow this year which always feels me with dread as the forrest fires will be deadly this summer. It was bad here in 2000, very bad
as we are 20 miles from Bitterroot National Forest.
P.s. Yes, that photo is real. I met the award winning photographer at an anthro club meeting.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 11 2006 15:06 utc | 12

malooga,
thanks for the correction. And acccording to Solzhenitsyn in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, -40°(C/F) was so cold that even the Gulag prisoners weren’t sent outside to work.
I wonder how hot/cold it is for Slobodan Milosevic right now…

Posted by: ralphieboy | Mar 11 2006 16:03 utc | 14

Cool. Thanks for all the pictures!

Posted by: beq | Mar 11 2006 16:26 utc | 16

oops – it’s Shindell.

Posted by: correlator | Mar 11 2006 16:58 utc | 18

Water consumption in CH has been reduced from 500 liters per day pp. early 80’s to 400 l. (162 l. pp pd households plus 240 l. in industry, agri, etc.) last year. It seems hard to do more – however two-push flushes on toilets (regular flush = about 10 liters, small flush = half) are not that common yet. Changing your toilet flush reduces your water consumption by up to 30%.
The consumption curve, naturally, goes steadily if slowly up (population) and costs rise as the infrastructure is fixed. Using less water drives up the cost per liter.
You see, it can be done, and with no pain at all. Most people are unaware of these numbers and actually believe the opposite, that each person uses more water with time because people bathe/shower more.
Now the time to cut waste has come. That will be done too. I reckon 20 liters a day pp (household) are lost through waste. Seepage in pipes is a problem as well.
And this in one of the wettest countries of the world…
No rain. no rain.
One article on bottled water:
Link

Posted by: Noisette | Mar 11 2006 19:21 utc | 20

yes ralphie, for many water is just a given, turn on the tap…
—-
In the US, and other Western developed, 10 calories (typical meal, leaving aside type of food, etc.) on a plate have been produced by (rough):
9 calories from fossil fuels (fertilizer, irrigation, tractors, transport, etc.)
1 calorie from sunlight.
Some say such calculations are off, and ‘modern’ agriculture uses more than 10 calories of fossil fuels to provide 10 calories of food. Transport, conditioning and cooking are tricky issues. Then, there is still a little human labor involved – but the people who work eat, etc. It is all back of the envelope stuff. Maybe one could shave of a fraction of a percent due to so – called renewables, hydro, etc.
Basically, when we sit down to eat, we eat plate of ‘oil.’ Eating oil makes one fat. (Metaphor; the rapaciousness of the food industry is also to blame, as well as ‘economics’ and ‘gvmt’, which subsidises in a crazed way..)
Now this is already bad enough. It is not ‘sustainable’ as they say.
Scarier, perhaps, is that the whole system is extremely vulnerable to disruption and breakdown.
Even given plentiful, say limitless ‘affordable’, obtainable fossil fuels:
One essential ingredient is water – most of the water used comes from rain, either as falling on crops/topsoil or as essental to fill water tables which are then pumped. Very cold winters and snow are no help at all.
Another is people: while the agri part is not very labor intensive, the transport and distribution system is. Bird flu experts, for example, worry not only about all the medical and health-type related things one would expect them to address (are masks efficient? etc.) but wonder what to do about food distribution and what will happen when 10% of people – or far more, 30% – at any one point in time – are incapacitated or dead. The distribution itself implies contact, which is something these experts abhorr. They would close the supermarkets immediately. What is the alternative, for, say, a city of several million, with no or little stocks, on a very tight goods-to-consumer schedule?
— I’m clogging the thread, was thinking about all this…I’ll shut up. But ‘weather’ -climate- is an essential part of this picture, and the no. 1. consideration is precipitation.

Posted by: Noisette | Mar 11 2006 20:50 utc | 22

Do yourself a favor and read up on Water resourse management and policy, I started here: Central Eurasian water crisis: Caspian, Aral, and Dead Seas in claas reading several semesters back. It will shock you.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 11 2006 21:28 utc | 24

There was a hailstorm here in the Bay Area last night. I’m reasonably certain that that is abnormal. Still, I was expecting this winter to be much more bizarre than it turned out to be. Maybe global warming hasn’t completely screwed us over yet.

Posted by: Rowan | Mar 11 2006 22:21 utc | 26

Monolycus, what I have learned to do after returning to Canada from the US is “double it and add thirty.”
So to go from C to F — today it is 4 degrees C:
Double it (2 X 4 = 8) and add 30 (8 + 30 = 38).
A celcius degree is about 2 farenheit degrees (1.8 according to Malooga) and in celcius freezing is zero degrees, rather than 32, so you need to add the 30.
It works out because doubling gives you a bit too much, but adding 30 instead of 32 takes a bit back — so the rough estimate is 38 degrees F, while careful arithmetic yields 39.2. Close enough for me.

Posted by: jonku | Mar 11 2006 23:37 utc | 28

Such graceful snow trees.
@ Rowan There was a hail storm in Washington state near the Idaho border on Tuesday, when I was visiting. I’ve only seen hail in summer before. Someone who had lived there 20 years said she did not remember such a storm before.
Today in the middle of the Pacific is lovely, smells and feels like a spring day with soft breezes after a couple days rain in more northerly regions.
But before today it rained for most of March, with the forecast calling for more of the same next week, storm systems blowing up from the southeast. The drenching is sorely needed. Total rainfall is well behind the norm for this time of year. As in some snow states, like Uncle $cam’s Montana, most of the heavy precipitation happens between late Sept and March.
While the islands could never be called a dry land, there are dry enclaves in the lee of the mountains, and these will spark wide-ranging brushfires in the summer, if rain is too light. Military helicopters from the local bases have been critical in helping the few local firefighting helos control brushfires. Don’t know what might happen this summer, as more and more equipment and resources are sucked into Iraq.
Just last month the Army announced that their helicopters would no longer supply the EMS services across the islands. They say the helos are needed for training and war duty starting April 1. Plenty of time for a small and isolated community to make alternative EMS arrangements. Fire fighting helos haven’t been mentioned yet.
As for island weather, it seems gentle, even on very rainy days like the last few, when the radio seems to buzz out a new flash flood watch every 2 hours. The temperature ranges these days between 69 low and 79 high (approx 19 -24C), so damp clothing isn’t heavy or uncomfortable. Umbrellas are seldom seen, and everyone is friendly about ducking for cover under the nearest doorway or monkey pod tree, as a sudden torrent hits.
There have been more “dry” than “normal” years in the past 6-7 years. Water consumption rates keep rising as mainlanders with $ move in, driving housing prices up beyond what working Hawaiians can afford, watering lawns in new developments built in the arid regions. Local authorities murmur about concerns for the future of the water table, but nothing changes.

Posted by: small coke | Mar 12 2006 3:22 utc | 30

here at the confluence of the missouri & mississippi rivers it was a scorchin’ 78F today, which i took full advantage of, dragging the kayak (malooga – i’ve got a pungo too, only a 140) out to a local national wildlife refuge to consort w/ nature. as this has been a very mild winter (esp january – the dogwoods started budding up late jan), i’ve wondered if these crazy temps are affecting all the migratory birds, on top of whether the damage & toxicity in the lower mississippi basin post-katrina interrupted anybody’s travel plans. the large masses of birds usually start moving on sometime in march. two weeks ago i made it out to a different NWR, when it was in the low 30’s, and there were still some large numbers of ducks, geese, pelicans, and eagles hanging out. i attempted applying some interspecies communication skills in an effort to query anyone on what they thought of the winter so far, but the closest thing to a response i got was a bald eagle circling overhead my kayak several times, engaging me in several minutes of gawking, head snapped back, eyes following the eagle, monitoring all my senses in case there was a message here, when it suddenly occured to me that i had not checked to see where my kayak was headed for some time now. as i lowered my head, i was w/i 3 feet of shore & headed right at a large doe laying alongside a fallen tree. we both had looked up at each other at the same moment – our eyes locked for only seconds, though it seemed longer, until she decided that i wasn’t in control of my vessel & better bolt pretty quick. (i picked this up through body language only, still no special mindmeld) as i regained control, i heard the loud gaggle of what sounded like a lot of geese approacing me. i searched the sky to my left. nothing. to my right. nothing. i looked up again, and they were coming up from behind me – massive lines of 350-400 snow geese, way way up there. continuously shifting patterns as they pressed on through the steady winds. lots of noise, these geese, but no discernable references to the weather. i followed them to the horizon w/ my binocs until they disappeared. all of this happened consecutively in a span of maybe ten minutes tops. there was no shortage of wildlife that day. i ate lunch under bobcat sleeping about 10 feet off the ground in a tree. and saw a total of about two dozen bald eagles.
at the other NWR today, despite the warmth, there were still a lot of migratory birds. thousands of ducks, a couple hundred canadian geese. didn’t see any pelicans on the water where i was, just saw them when they soared overhead. pelicans are probably my favorite birds to watch. they’ve got these huge wingspans – up to 9 1/2 feet across – and they love to just glide along on the winds, making large spirals across the horizon. they fly in formation, so effortlessly & gracefully. they’re fun to watch too when they’re on the water.
anyway, the turtles loved the warmth today. at one point, i counted 39 in my field of view, sunning themselves on logs. i was able to get right up next to a huge snapping turtle, straddling a fallen tree. the frog choirs were in full force, looking for love.
damn. ten inches of snow? forecast here calls for 74 tomorrow, and then highs in the 50’s through next week.

Posted by: b real | Mar 12 2006 4:11 utc | 32

@ b real
Thanks for the wonderful mental imagery. What a canvas!
Here in Miami Beach, our normal two week winter of high 40’s to low 50’s has been shortened to one week.
About those pelicans…
I once was visiting the parents for Christmas, who at that time lived about 50 yards from the Alafia river.(South of Tampa,Fl.,brackish water, about a mile from the Gulf of Mexico)Being presented with a new medium action fishing pole, I immediately took it to the river to try it out. As I was reeling in an “accidental” redfish (A type of rock bass, illegal to catch, but excellent eating) a nearby pelican decided that he wanted it more than I did. The next thing I know, instead of reeling in a tasty fish, I’m reeling in a large, very pissed off pelican. I was so startled by this turn of events that I neglected to adjust the drag on the reel, resulting in the pelican snapping my new rod in half, resulting in my having to hand over hand line the bird in. Landing the pelican on the dock, he began to hiss at me(!) I was a bit cross by now, so I grabbed him firmly around his beak, telling him “Oh,shut up!” and removed the hook from where it was embedded in his crop,and told him to piss off, which he did, leaving me to contemplate my brand new broken Christmas fishing pole.
I learned the hard way to keep the useless bait stealing grunts and pinfish to throw to the pelicans to keep them busy while I pulled in the occasional speckled trout.

Posted by: possum | Mar 12 2006 18:29 utc | 34

@ Uncle $cam: Missoula, cool. I’ve only driven through the town, but I stayed at Lolo Hot Springs a couple of times. Fond memories of sitting in the bath house with a late summer thunderstorm rolling overhead.
@ b: great cats! what are their names?
Orygun weather: clear, sunny, and warming, after a week of fast-moving snow storms. January was flood month, but the creek behind my house managed to stay in its banks, just barely. Not unusual for Pacific NW.

Posted by: catlady | Mar 12 2006 21:32 utc | 36

Marvelous weather in the Mid-Atlantic USA region this weekend. Temperatures since Friday have been in the 70’s, little rain, some gusty winds. Not unheard of weather in this region at this time of year, but definitely towards one end of the curve. Crocuses, daffodils, forsythia, some early cherry trees blooming. A bad report this weekend in the press on the health of the striped bass (rockfish) species in the Chesapeake Bay…..seems a bacterium is destroying populations that were being celebrated within the past few years as a species recovery success story after decades of overfishing. The recovery effort was calibrated to the bay ecology as it was at the point when the die-off began, not to the degraded state it is in today. The healthy recovered populations were too great to survive in the degraded environment of today.

Posted by: maxcrat | Mar 13 2006 0:17 utc | 38

I hate to say it but it looks like A Hard Rains Gonna Fall. followed by A Shitstorm!

Posted by: R.L. | Mar 13 2006 6:54 utc | 40

from Guardian article about UK hosepipe ban linked to by b:
Thames Water denied the shortages were solely due to huge leakages from its mostly Victorian pipes, which waste one third of water travelling from reservoirs to taps.
One third! 33% of water wasted! This is criminal, these companies should be prosecuted!

Posted by: Dismal Science | Mar 13 2006 13:40 utc | 42

We too had a warm spell, but more snow now.
That first cam, solid gray, I don’t think is broken – that’s pretty much what it looks like now, it’s snowing so hard.
http://www.rfta.com/webcam/

Posted by: correlator | Mar 13 2006 16:35 utc | 44

Very unusual weather here in coastal Maryland. Mid 80’s today and it’s not yet spring. We could always get another frost which might kill the blooming flowers, but I doubt it.
I wore sandals for the past few days [barefoot today!] and we haven’t even burned our socks yet. [Sailor’s ritual during the vernal equinox.]
Thanks for all the updates. It’s interesting to know where familiar voices are.

Posted by: gylangirl | Mar 13 2006 23:02 utc | 46

DeA! Good to hear from you.
Speaking of exaggerated extrema, anyone ever read Cordwainer Smith’s Quest of Three Worlds? In part 2, “On the Storm Planet,” Casher O’Neill is hired by the Administrator of the tornado-riven world of Henriada to assassinate the young turtle-girl T’ruth. In order to travel on the roads, cars are equipped with giant screws that drill in to the asphalt every time a set of twisters come by.
“Don’t put your ship in the Boom Lagoon,
Look up North for the raving wave.
Henriada’s boiled away
But Ambiloxi’s a saving grace.”

Posted by: catlady | Mar 14 2006 6:10 utc | 48