Slowly melting

[aussie]

Well here I sit...slowly simmering in my own juices so to speak. You just know its going to be a hot one when at 5:30am, the temp is 30C (86F). Today finally reached 46C (115F). Yesterday was only marginally cooler, and tomorrow and Friday are supposed to be 44C. The weekend has some relief - down to 40C.

Some rail services have been cancelled because the lines have buckled.

Time for another drink.  [smiley=beerchug.gif]

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

We have 7" of snow outside.  Thank god for money-hungry young men with shovels!

[montmil]

So Aussie is slowly melting in the heat while I watch the ice slowly melt off the rooftops. This is day two with our local public schools and two major universities locked down. Brrrr

Here in Texas, one-quarter inch of ice shuts down our schools, roads and most businesses. I know, I know. I'll hear all about how them Yankees can drive on ice but us cats down south are terrified of the frozen stuff. Bring it on. I hate cold weather.

So, Aussie, how about emailing me some of your summer temps?

Monte

[Ed Miller]

It was 32 F at my house this morning, so I had to be really careful for the first several miles out of town.  I don't think bikes are much fun on ice.  

Down in the valley it was warmer and just wet pavement.  It's supposed to be pretty nice for the rest of the week!  

[nhmaf]

Well Monte, we don't much care for ice storms, either, but we do have to deal with snow and ice-covered roads pretty much 4 months out of the year.  Snow on the other hand - 12" or so at a time or less is pretty manage-able, but if it starts coming down more than 16" per storm, we do struggle some.

It does makes us appreciate our short riding season all the more, and we try to avoid having to do any wrenching that would keep our bikes off the roads during those precious snow-free months !

Right now we're in the middle of another snow-storm - it started around 6 AM today and we've got almost a foot of new snow from it in 10 hours' time, and it hasn't stopped yet.
The Inuit people of Alaska have a saying something like "Big snow, little snow.  Little snow, big snow"   I think it basically means that when the snow flakes are big, the storm is going to drop just a few inches on you, where as if the snow flakes are little, the storm is going to dump ALOT of snow on you...   we're getting alot of the "little" snowflakes now.

[suecanada]

18 inches of snow on the ground and it has been snowing all day Temp. at 22 deg. F. That's up in the Georgian Bay area of Ontario, Canada. Snowshoes are definitely needed for bush walking! I am held up by the old dog...really...the dog I walk i.e.  not Derek  It's getting pretty deep for him so I think he likes to follow the snowshoe tracks as I scrunch down the snow.  He's 13 yrs. old!!

[DeeG]

I heard a piece on NPR (National Public Radio) this morning, talked about some soccer (i think??) matches down there that had to be canceled because of the heat.  Some woman was saying she was at a match and it was so hot she started hallucinating, and could have sworn she saw the players on the field wearing blue dresses.

 

I used to live in the Mojave desert in California, 115F in the summer was not uncommon.  But it was a dry heat......  

Currently its clear and sunny and 22F, and about 1/2" of fresh snow on the driveway.  One more month of this nonsense and spring will be on its way.

[Altritter]

<< Here in Texas, one-quarter inch of ice shuts down our schools, roads and most businesses. I know, I know. I'll hear all about how them Yankees can drive on ice but us cats down south are terrified of the frozen stuff. Bring it on. I hate cold weather. >>

Monte, don't believe all the BS you hear about Northerners driving on ice like it's dry concrete. That's arguably the case if, and only if, the temperature is really low (so that there is less chance for pressure and friction to melt the ice surface and form a micro-thin film of water under the tires. That's what makes ice slippery).

A couple decades ago, AAA (sorry, that's American Automobile Association for benefit of our international readers) published results of a test of the distance required to stop a car on ice in dry conditions at freezing point (32°F. or 0°C., take your pick), vs. the distance required to stop the same car, same surface condition, at 0°F (-17.8°C.). A car skidded four times farther at freezing point than it did at the colder temperature. (Sorry, I can't remember the test speed, other than that it was the same for both observations; the relationship between the results probably is nonlinear if the test speed is higher or lower.)

There are some curious implications of the AAA study. Remember science in school, where we learned that no matter how cold the air temperature is inside a freezer, the temperature of its ice cubes (so long as the ice contains nothing but water) is always at the freeze point? (That's the principle behind survival in a snow cave or an igloo.) Why wouldn't the effect of friction and pressure (from the weight of a vehicle) have the same on stopping distance on ice, irrespective of air temperature. I've never read this anywhere, but I'll venture a SWAG: I suspect the key is that the ambient (air) temperature lowers the temperature of the vehicle's tires enough below the freezing point to inhibit the melting effect and lessen (or prevent completely) the formation of the slippery thin layer of water beneath the tires. Can any physicist or engineer out there confirm or blow away my gut-hunch guess?

I grew up in Central Virginia and lived a few years in Ohio and Massachusetts. I found it much easier to drive in winter there than here in the Washington, DC, area. Why? Two reasons: (1) When there's ice, it tends to form just below the freeze point because of the warming influence of the nearby Chesapeake Bay and the ocean; and (2) the drivers, because there are many transients (foreign diplomats, government employees, and immigrants) from warm climates where ice is a sometime thing, if ever. (What's the most dangerous thing on the road here? A mammoth SUV with diplomatic plates on it.   )

I agree with what I think you're saying: A Texas ice storm is scary. In late November 1982 when I was moving from El Paso to Northern Virginia, my spouse and I surfed the leading edge of a storm that turned from snow to freezing rain somewhere east of Abilene. It was a really interesting experience in an overloaded 17-year-old VW. We finally ran out of it around Fort Worth.

FWIW, we have about 1/4 inch of ice on everything here in Virginia as I write this. Freezing rain is still falling. The temp has been just above freezing all day, and probably will drop tonight. It might not be possible to get out of my neighborhood tomorrow morning.

[aussie]

Well we have had the highest nightly temps on record last night - got down to 33C - it was just a little uncomfortable sleeping! I took mein hund out for his constitutional this morning and it was 36C at 5:30am. The sad thing is, it felt quite nice after the heat of yesterday.

A couple of links if anyone is interested....The first - our power supplier decided to stage a series of blackouts across the city to keep up with power demands - interesting - I always thought I paid to have electricity connected, not to have it not connected...
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/adelaide-heading-for-record-hot-week-20090128-7ra0.html

The second is the record temps for Adelaide:
http://www.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/~blair/extremes/adelaide.html

The third is Adelaide monthly climate stats - just for Monte  :
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_023090.shtml

The first picture is what was found by a lady when she got home yesterday........

The second is self explanatory.

[aussie]

Train lines buckled

[nhmaf]

wow, I've never seen a bathing Koala before !

Do they get used to be near people such that they'd resort to accepting a free bath and drink of water when it gets so hot?

In regards to what Altritter was talking about, I believe there is something to the theory he proposes.  Also, I think that when it gets cold enough, say about 0F or a bit less, the air temperature is too low to permit any liquid water layers on any exposed surfaces - it is even too cold to support much of any water vapor too.   It is these tiny amounts of
liquid water on the surfaces of the ice on the road, or between the packed snow crystals on the roads&sidewalks, that makes them most slippery.    The hill that we live on is most slippery when the temperatures are between 20F - 34F and need to sand the road to be able to make it up in anything less than an all wheel drive vehicle, but when the temperatures are at 0F or even below, we generally have very good traction without resorting to any sand .

I haven't seen many buckled railway tracks like that up here, but we did have a fair amount of experience with broken tracks in the winter time due to contraction, not expansion! (Many in my family worked for Canadian Pacific Railway - I'm still a union member, I think..)

[montmil]

...But it was a dry heat... 

So is my oven!     Monte

[Justin B.]

Mike, I remember when we were stationed in AK that they didn't even worry that much about snow removal.  It was usually too cold for much snow action to be going on and after it stayed well below zero for a while the packed snow/ice had almost as good a traction as bare pavement for the reasons you hypothesized about.  Once you were much under 20 below then hot water, when tossed out the door, would instantly turn to steam and never hit the ground!  I made sure I tested that claim.  This was the cause for the thick ice fog that engulfed Fairbanks at times...

[aussie]

wow, I've never seen a bathing Koala before !

Do they get used to be near people such that they'd resort to accepting a free bath and drink of water when it gets so hot?

Well over the past two half - three years we've been in the grip of a drought. Eucalypts are dropping limbs everywhere and the ones that are still going strong are being denuded of all foliage. There is little water for the wildlife to drink. I have a bird bath that is extremely popular - from finches to magpies and I saw an owl in there yesterday.

When I got home today I went outside to see how the dog was fairing and there were two parrots in his water dish - with another two - I guess standing guard - or waiting their turn....all I know when the dog went past he made a very wide berth from the dish - so I think he may have been attacked - he certainly drank a huge amount when he got inside - and then stood with his front feet in the dish.....By the time I got out with a camera, the parrots had vacated!

Koalas are an interesting animal. The one in the picture is a female and quite young by the looks of things - a lot smaller than males and not nearly as aggressive. I had one in my backyard last year that was young and she perched on my clothes line and let me feed her and even pet her - though it probably was a bit silly - they have VERY sharp claws. When mating the females sort of cry like they're having an ....well......ummmm.....(if you're bashful - please look away)..



orgasm.... and the males just grunt like stuck pigs.

They can be quite tame and it is not really surprising that this one was found in a water dish.  [smiley=bath.gif]

[Darwin_R65]

It's always interesting how people think Koalas are cuddly and cute. If you look at the picture Aussie showed you can see the size of its claws, mainly used for climbing trees but also double as defence against dogs, etc. I remember as a youngster camping on the Murray River near Mildura and at night listening to what sounded like wild pigs grunting all night. Koalas mating.

did you know Darwin was the coolest Australian Capital City today?? we were only 29'C it was quite cool.

Now the Koalas aren't so bad, but it's the Drop Bears you need to watch out for.  
The koala's carnivorous cousin.


John.