Thinking about Weather

[aldersprig]

I've been talking, recently, with people in different climate zones- specifically @dahob and anke most recently - about "winter" and its varying meanings.

I grew up in Rochester, on the northern coast of one of the Great Lakes - http://www.divinglore.com/Genesis/USA/great%20lakes%20map.jpg - Ontario, the easternmost. For comparison, my husband grew up in Buffalo, between Ontario and Erie.

The weather there is snowy, wet, with a long winter normally stretching from late October to early April (it was not uncommon to have snow on Hallowe'en, although it was normally gone by mid-April). According to this chart, Rochester gets less than one inch a year less than Buffalo, although, in my memories, it came more steadily, and with less majors dumps of the stuff.

Still, I remember playing as a child in drifts as tall as I was, and having similar drifts to shovel in blizzards when I lived there - '98, I think, and sometime around '04 or '05. They call it lake affect - the cold weather from Canada grabs all the water off the lake and dumps it on us.

Down in Ithaca, this site confirms that we get less snow. It's colder down here - no giant lake-heat-and-cold-sink going on - but the worst of the weather seems to bypass us; last year, when the entire Northeast US was being dumped on, we had one small storm.

What does winter look like where you are?

Comments

[smw]

Winter here is frost on one's windshield in the morning, and the awareness that a clear sky and warm sun at midday will be followed by a very cold night. The rain makes the hills blush green. Transplanted trees as confused as I lose their leaves and bloom in quick succession.

[aldersprig]

That sounds beautiful.

[(Anonymous)]

Friendly Anon lives in the very southern bit of California. Winter here is... like a beautiful summer's day in Canada I'm told ;)

One thing though, it never rains in the summer. Ever. I used to think this was normal, that summer time = no rain. When I grew up and learned about climates I realized that this only true in very small areas of the world. Still though, to me summer means hot and dry and winter means warm and sometimes rainy (aka "the sky is falling, we're all going to drown!! ahhhh!!" ... Ahem. We don't handle weather very well 'round here.)

-Anon

[aldersprig]

*giggle* That sounds fun, though. It generally doesn't rain much in August, here...

[clare_dragonfly]

It's cold. Colder than this (it's almost 50 today). And we usually get snow in January and February, not more in October than January, like this past year...

But the crocuses are up!

[aldersprig]

Oh, man, my crocuses aren't up. I hope they bloom!

[clare_dragonfly]

I hope so too! Did you plant them? (Mine have been growing pretty much wild over two yards since before I was born.)

[aldersprig]

I planted them along the front of the house.

[inventrix]

Winter in my head is a lot like yours, but more from early November to late March due to being slightly more southerly, and less snow because no lakes. But it was pretty common to have snow on the ground for most, if not all, of winter. Once the first snowfall over an inch fell, it stuck around.

Also, cold. Hitting the low 40s was a veritable heat wave!

I still haven't gotten out of the mindset of NY winters, even though I've lived in VA for... man. Six years, now? Five, at least.

Winters here are ridiculous. Ridiculous. The key to understanding central Virginia weather, I have discovered, is to recall that it is a North/South border state. Not just politically and culturally, but also climatically. We are right on the edge of the northern weather fronts and the southern ones.

The border between the warm southern weather and the cold northern weather likes to wander back and forth, right over where I live.

What this means is that in January, it is quite common for it to have highs in the 30s on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and then on Thursday and Friday it is in the upper 50s. Sometimes you get a week as cold as 15F or as warm as 70F. It'll snow on Tuesday night and the next day it'll be 50 by 10am and the snow will all be gone. Crocuses and daffodils come up early February every year and then get snowed on.

Also? There are flowers blooming all the time.

[kay_brooke]

Winters in central Indiana are much the same, though probably not as much snow and not as cold because there's no lake effect. It looks like winters are a bit shorter, too: we have had snow in October, but that's very rare. First snowfall is usually November or December, with heavy snowfall in January/February. March varies widely: we might have an early spring, we might have a nasty blizzard or ice storm. March weather is extremely unpredictable.

This year specifically, though, has been unseasonably warm. We had a light snowfall a couple days after Christmas and some heavier snow in January that didn't last long because it's so warm out. It has been a very rainy winter, though.

[aldersprig]

It has been unseasonably warm here, too. We've had a tiny bit of snow and one bitterly cold day (both on the weekend we had company!), but generally nice. It was 56 today!

[(Anonymous)]

What's winter? #Bamusesherself

Jokes aside, we really don't have any such thing as winter here, since the only two seasons are dry and wet. 8)

—theladyisugly

[aldersprig]

Are your summers very very hot?