xkcd #2866: Snow
xkcd #2866: Snow
Alt text:
For someone who has ostensibly outgrown staying up late waiting for Santa, I do spend an awful lot of time refreshing websites to see if packages are here yet.
I am always impressed by how randall can show a lot of detail in very VERY simple shapes. Eg the head rotation in this case.
I'm going to appreciate that more now
I'm from Finland. This is how it usually goes in the winter:
During the 2 hours of daylight we get at this latitude:
- Ooooooh this is pretty
- Bet I can get some nice photographs
- ...or I would, if the sky wasn't overcast goddamn it
Other times:
- Rummaging through the closet for wool socks and more clothing
- Put on the headphones, hit the metal music collection on my Nokia, and face the Darkness with a grim stare
- Would hit the beer, but not in this economy
Sounds fun! If beer is getting too pricey by you, you can always make some prison hooch in a bag to help brighten those dark, dark days
After the first month of sweeping snow off your car every morning you being to wonder how long until spring. If you also need to shovel snow every morning, it happens even faster.
The advancement of weather prediction has kinda ruined this. I know in the morning exactly at what time it's going to rain/snow. It may be off by an hour, but usually it's dead on. I know at the beginning of the week what the temperatures and chances of rain are going to be and thus what the chance of snow is.
People bitch about weather prediction all the time, because it's often wrong, but it's crazy how much better it is than it used to be in the 80s and 90s. And as someone why rides a bike to work (15KMs one way) every day, I check the weather daily and will know if it's raining when I didn't expect it to rain. It's super accurate compared to what it was even 10 years ago.
People are also morons about the weather. A couple of months ago there was a huge storm in the area, with a couple of people killed. In the morning there was a weather warning alerting people to the storm and advising not to go outside if it isn't necessary. I worked from home that day, but my brother said he went to work on his bike. He was bitching about the weather warning, he biked trough it, it was a bit wet and windy, but no big deal. The weather alerts should be abolished, only causing unwarranted fear in his words. I was like dude WTF, people within KMs of where you live died because of the storm. Just because the chances of dying from such a storm are low, doesn't mean people shouldn't be warned or that you can just ignore the warning.
And don't get me started on the whole climate versus weather thing. However it has gotten so bad the last couple of years, even people who deny climate change have to admit the weather is going crazy at times and is not normal anymore. Alas they have plenty of other BS arguments to throw at you when you mention it.
The advancement of weather prediction has kinda ruined this. I know in the morning exactly at what time it's going to rain/snow.
That's definitely not the case in my part of the world, particularly in the case of wintery weather predictions and definitely not true down to the hour. So, let US have this enjoyment when it does actually snow, because it could very well be that the weather people didn't even mention the possibility of snow today or they said it would only be a small chance of flurries but we got enough accumulation to actually build a snowman or they said it was going to be sleet but it turned out to be snow or 3 days ago they were predicting that it was going to be unseasonably warm or they said it was not going to snow until after sunset.
Yeah I know, some places are inherently less predictable, especially near mountains or big bodies of water. Just sharing my experience, which may be the exception, or it may be the norm, I don't know enough about weather prediction to know which is which. It has gotten better for the entire globe I think, but in some places the weather will never be predictable.
But don't worry, in about 10-15 years snow will be very rare where I live. It has already become more rare with many winters passing without any snow with staying power. I remember when I was a child going to school on a sled with a big snow pack most every winter. I even remember one time we got snowed in and had to dig out the front door. Now I don't even own a snow shovel any more, whenever there is a bit of snow (which is rare), a broom will do fine to brush it aside. Especially October and November have gotten much warmer than in the past.
He's acting calm in the last panel but we can all see the actual age chart hasn't fully recovered yet
Still looking over his shoulder too
That time scale looks way off, I'm snow-high for days at a time!
My graph has a new peak as soon as I walk outside on slippery ground and am terrified of falling.
Invert this graph for Londoners.
