75% of the US will suffer below-freezing temps this week
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lite.cnn.io
https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/national/weather-forecast-... (third map)
It would probably be better to just report it as some sort of "scarf required" zone followed by "scarf required and it might be a bit uncomfortable" zone.
At least, temperatures that allow for snow to appear are not normal in the south or on the west coast. Spot temperatures below freezing are.
I'd believe it's normal for 75% of the land area.
That's more of a stereotype than a fact.
It gets very cold in winter in the vast majority of nation, including the south and west. It snows in Las Vegas every year. Las Vegas even has a ski resort.† But people rely on an old cartoon-inspired vision of what a "desert" is, rather than the fact that "desert" means a place with little water, not necessarily high temperatures year-round.
Their vision of "American desert" is usually Monument Valley.†† But guess what, that's under snow right now, too. And it's not unusual.
† https://www.leecanyonlv.com †† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_Valley
Vegas and Colorado are neither coastal nor southern. My vision of "American desert" is probably near Albuquerque where I lived for several years. It snowed every year. But you'll note that New Mexico isn't part of the south either, despite its location on the border.
It's on the border between Arizona and Utah.
It's colder than it typically is almost everywhere, so for people who live in the north it's a big deal. For people who live in the south and don't plan for freezing temps... also a big-ish deal.
Now, Wednesday, we'll be < -20F, which is cold, but nothing we haven't dealt with before and nothing entirely out of the normal. If anything, winter has been abnormally warmer for us.
I grew up in Mitchell, but left about 30 years ago. As a youth, I had a paper route and vividly remember walking backwards on some cold days to keep the wind out of my face.
Good luck with this upcoming cold snap!
About the south: I used to stay for a while in Austin, TX. During winter we had temperatures below freezing (just ice, no snow). The locals told us that this happens at least every other year. For this some were suprisingly unprepared though, in particular with regard to driving skills, water pipes and building insulation.
Last year it even snowed here. Twice. Nothing major, just a thin layer of snow for a day or two, but the schools shut down. When I lived in SD a light rain would lead to everyone driving 20mph below the speed limit on the freeway.
To some extent that "yes, much of the country is cold" in January, yeah, the headline might be slightly out of sync - maybe it's only 60% normally? I think the bigger issue is just how cold it is in so many places where it's not normally this cold.
That said, if you don’t live in a sub-arctic climate and don’t own the kind of outerwear rated for -15° F and below, suffering an actual injury is a very real possibility.
The US is a really big place. Some of us go for a jog in 35°c, and some of us wear shorts and a t-shirt in 5°c.
Where I live, I only own a single item of 'warm clothing' because it's unnecessary for 360+ days of the year. We also have no heating in the home other than a small space heater. These temperatures will be rather uncomfortable, and will likely kill half our garden and potentially cause damage property.
Not fun.
This morning I saw a few cars in the ditch after some ice last night, so stopped to see if anyone needed a ride or just to get out of the cold. In these temperatures, I try to be a little extra mindful of neighbors in need and helping people who are stranded.
Good news though, it's going to be much warmer this weekend, so something to look forward to!
I'm sure this was linked to HN because of larger climate change concerns. Average global temperatures are increasing, but short term periods of warming and cooling are pretty cyclical.
Gotta love the 70+ degree swings.
I just want consistent weather, i.e. minimize the distance between the weekly minimum / maximum. Is that too much to ask?
A thaw/freeze cycle also isn't that bad if you've already shoveled what you need to. If you haven't, yeah, it's going to suck when to get around to it.
One day last week I spent my time after work removing it off my car, then driving to where my friend works, and removing it off her car too.
[1] Other things you agree includes a terrible budget, corrupt politicians, and the sad realization that the government here only works here at all when those corrupt politicians are in charge.
Conclusion: Our results indicate excessive mortality among the homeless as well as the weak and rather typical influence of atmospheric conditions on mortality rates in this subpopulation, except for a greater risk of cold related deaths than in the general population... Deaths caused by hypothermia were thirteen-fold more frequently recorded among the homeless than for the general population. A relative risk of death for a homeless person even in moderate cold stress conditions is higher (RR = 1.84) than in thermoneutral conditions.
Throughout the US from 1999 to 2011, an average of about 1,301 per year (but not exclusive to homeless). https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6151a6.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf
Also there was an average of 658 deaths per year due to heat or humidity (again, not exclusively homeless). https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/prolonged-exposu...
These deaths are mostly preventable by just giving people a room to sit in that's warmer/colder than the outside air, for a very small number of nights/days. An outreach program during these periods of extreme temperatures could have a big impact.
Very apropos to HN. The home page is beautiful: http://lite.cnn.io/en
On a wide 4K monitor, the text is not centred, stretching from the far left to the far right, making it very difficult to continuously read a sentence from left to right. Limits like 80 characters per line exist for a reason.
The text is formatted in a very annoying manner, line by line, sentence by sentence, like it was spit out by a debugger in a terminal. I'm trying to compare this to the experience of reading a column in a newspaper with proper typography and visual layout.
The page already loads a css stylesheet which is mostly empty, for whatever reason, and also tries to load an analytics plugin with javascript, so I don't see the reason to omit basic stylesheets to at least make it readable.
Compared to the "full" version with an adblocker, even with JS disabled, in my eyes it's still a significant step down.