It's been a pretty insane 12 hours across the Bay Area | Hacker News Reader

It's been a pretty insane 12 hours across the Bay Area

wrh.noaa.gov

125 pointsapsec112128 comments

There are plenty of Bay Area adults who can't remember the last time there was lightning here. It's that rare. Fun times!

I worry about wildfire in the hills, since it hadn't rained for months. Thankfully, it wasn't an entirely dry storm. We had quite a bit of rain in my corner of Palo Alto last night - more than the 0.01 trace amount officially reported.

Adults in the Bay Area. who can't remember lightning have memory issues. There was a huge [lightning] storm in 2012, and there was lighting in [edit: this] May... I've seen lighting, thunder, and hail (caught on video) in the last 12 months.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Thunder-lightnin...

Hmm. I must have slept through the 2012 event. This one definitely woke me up.

I do remember a glorious ~2004-ish thunderstorm, right at dusk, rolling over the Santa Cruz mountains. So maybe a little more than once a decade or so for the big lightning events?

I thought it rained frequently there? I love far enough away to not know. Have also lived in the driest part of the US in the past...gratefully the past.

It rains quite a bit in winter, especially November through January. But lightning is very rare.

It was bananas. Glad it rained too because wildfires are the last thing we need with all the madness this year has been throwing at us.

> I worry about wildfire in the hills, since it hadn't rained for months.

The Bay Area rarely gets summer rain, and what we get is pretty negligible. Since you said "hills," here's what I found for La Honda:

https://wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?ca4660

The great thing about having so many transplants is that nobody cares about basic weather patterns like this.

The only news is the fires if there are an abnormal amount of them.

Yeah seriously. This gave me flashbacks to Boston.

I'm in Southeastern VA. We had our first hurricane this year in early August, which is very unusual for for region. July was unusually hot with no rain, and now August is nothing but rain every day. What's most interesting to me, however, is that it seems that weather prediction models have literally stopped working all together. I use Windy.com (incredible weather site if you haven't tried it) and you can look at the ECMWF (aka European model), NAM, GFS and Meteoblue models. ECMWF is the most accurate model we have, and it has always been very reliable in my experience. Starting this spring, it seems the model has become wildly inaccurate. It can't even predict the weather anywhere close to accurately even the same day. Highs and lows are often off by 10 degrees F, and rain...forget it.

I don't know the exact source of these inaccuracies, but I would be willing to bet climate change has broken some of the assumptions that these models rely on to make their predictions. Those factors may be in a state of flux so that the model can't even be corrected at this point.

I would be very interested to hear from anyone else who is familiar with ECMWF and has (or hasn't) noticed the same problems.

I believe I heard on NPR that due to the grounding of many planes from Covid, weather models have less data points for prediction.

Normal passenger planes provide significant data collection for weather predictions?

Yes, a lot of the detailed weather data is actually provided by planes, but with a lot fewer planes flying, they get fewer data points and the models lose accuracy.

Interesting! Thanks for that.

Anecdote from Hamburg, Northern Germany. We have something like a "heat wave" here, with now 11 consecutive days above 30°C, which has never happened since the beginning of recording in 1891. Also very localized heavy rains with flooding and storms in the region. Where localized means tree fell onto overhead catenary of railroad and blocked mainline to Hannover.

Five kilometers away? Nothing. Funny times.

I interpret these events as the first manifestations of extreme weather events as projected by some climate models, due to more energy(heat) in the system.

UK weather has been very odd over the last 12 months. We’ve just had a week of record August temperatures, and very few people in the UK have air conditioning in their homes.

Climate change seems to be really starting to have measurable day-to-day affects.

I think it’s weird that all articles by scientists seem to say we should be worried about an average increase of 0.5C, which seems fine.

But what is really happening is these ridiculous weather patterns becoming so much more common the last few years that it’s noticeable to pretty much anyone.

0.5c only seems fine because they never contextualize that with the standard deviation. An average increase in temperature across the whole world, for a whole year can mean huge localized spikes in variation, or it can mean everywhere is a little warmer. Unfortunately for us, earths climate is ludicrously nonlinear, so we are in for the former, rather than the latter. Making global heating simple enough to communicate to everyone necessarily means lossy compression, but small numbers like that really don’t convey the risks at all.

It was around 35C here (London) for a week straight! I can't remember anything like this before. As you say, our flat has no air con and it was pretty difficult trying to work and sleep in that heat.

To work maybe a fan blowing air from inside towards an open window with you in between is enough. I'm using that in Italy with similar temperatures this month. Don't let direct sunlight get in or it will become too hot and monitor the temperature of your hardware.

However my memories is that UK houses are built for a colder climate than even the north of Italy (which in winter is colder than London) so you might need an AC anyway. I'm using one in the night to sleep with closed windows (city noise outside and darkness.)

Here in Seattle we’ve had an exceedingly mild summer. Anecdotes work in both directions.

No, climate change works in both directions. It causes extremes in both directions. Source: I have a PhD in Oceanography with focus on climate modeling

I seem remember hearing this over a decade and a half ago too. I've been confused and frustrated how the message ever got lost.

So, you agree that anecdotes are worthless? I don’t understand your comment.

I think OP meant those anecdotes are both examples of climate change. Causing extreme wildness and extreme craziness elsewhere

climate change just causes bad weather. So when the weather is bad you can just say - "That's climate change for you."

Some people complain about this, me, I think about the poor bastards in the past who had no response at all and I think, "eh, it's an ill wind indeed that blows no good."

So your weather has been unusual as well? Would you say that this might be reminiscent of a changing climate? The anecdotal accounts of weird climate changes in many locations are really stacking up at this point. Together with the scientific data it is looking like all the changing climate is due to climate change.

Seattle usually has a mild summer. And a mild winter. It's overall just a mild climate all the time.

Today is hot. There was a hot day in July. Rest of the summer so far has been pretty mild.

You mean other than today at 97F / 36C. Brutal.

Past Wednesday, while Skyping with my parents in Europe, I told them that this year's Bay Area summer had been unusually mild so far.

2 days later and we had the start of a record breaking heat wave.

MILD SUMMER?

We've been breaking records...

And we don't have AC either really

What records? We’ve only had a few hot days all summer.

https://twitter.com/NWSSeattle

Coupled with the ludicrous rain storms we’ve been having there is clearly something going on. 36deg one day and then inches of rain the next and 18deg!!!

Not nearly as common at night. The last time I recall a night time thunderstorm was in the 80's. That said, this morning at dawn it felt straight out of a movie thriller. All we needed was the leading edge of an alien spacecraft to emerge from the cloud bank :-).

It was also interesting to note on Nextdoor the Midwesterners who were unfazed by the storm and people who have lived here their entire lives freaking out. Those roles reverse when we have a magnitude 5.x or lower quake.

I love the NOAA commentary as it adds context to what is expected.

Having (barely) slept through the bay area weather this morning, others took advantage of the situation to get some gorgeous photos of lightning. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/08/16/rare-august-thu...

There's also some maps for lightning strikes in the bay area that are fun to look at: https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;... (8-16-20, 12 UTC for example)

When the National Weather Service calls something “insane” in their bulletins, you know it’s actually insane.

It's insane by Bay Area standards, but having lived in Atlanta it reminds me of typical Southeast summer weather.

Yeah, I read most of it. Sounds nasty. Lots of wind, lightning, only scattered rain though?

I can’t really figure out what is so insane, or even very interesting about this at all? Just that it’s uncharacteristic for the area? Is it that a large number of HNers are in the Bay Area this is trending?

It’s quite unexpected weather for the region— though of course what’s seriously abnormal in one place might be old normal hat for another. The dumb example here is “Oh, snow in the sahara? Well, here in Alaska we get snow all the time so what’s the big deal!”

For me the chief concerning thing is the “literally dozens of new fires” around the area.

This is true. I was confused at first, but I can imagine how it would be jarring to locals. Let’s hope the fires don’t get out of control.

I live in the south east, I remember a few years ago we were in a serious drought, and we experienced a run of widespread wildfires. For weeks on end there was a visible ‘fog’ in the air from the smoke. Very strange.

> Let’s hope the fires don’t get out of control.

In the realm of Apocalypse 2020, yesterday (Saturday) northern California had a fire tornado.

It's just really unusual for the area. I've lived here for about 8 years, and during that time I've heard exactly two claps of thunder (until last night). Thunderstorms are just not a thing here.

Lifelong resident. It's unprecedented in my experience to see such a rapid change in the weather pattern here. We have rainstorms often enough, and we get heat waves at this time of year too, but our heat waves don't ordinarily get interrupted by storms with gale winds - they will always diffuse gradually into windy or foggy weather.

I had to remind myself seeing it suddenly pick up last night that no, the world isn't ending, this is an ordinary tropical pattern.

The red flag conditions make it ideal for fire starts, combined with high winds that can get out of control real quick.

This comment is dismissive and doesn't seem to be relevant. Of course insane weather in location X may not be insane in location Y.

I live in the Bay Area and I don't read it as dismissive. We're just soft. We can't drive in the rain, either.

Don’t worry. People in Seattle can’t drive in the rain either.

It’s not just a Bay Area thing. It’s an American thing.

I've been reading about rolling power blackouts in California due to excessive demand. Shouldn't this situation be ideal for solar power? high power demand during the day, lots of daylight hours?

Look at the "Net demand trend" graph here, and take a look at yesterday: http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx

Non-renewables (edit: all minus solar and wind), hit their peak at 6pm and stayed there until 8:30pm.

The problem is that solar isn't available during the late evening hours, where, e.g., A/C demand remains high.

Provide a financial benefit for those who use during peak power (to day get their home down to with AC 65F) while solar production is high, and then turn off their AC from 5-9.

I’ve heard of people charging up their powerwall at night with cheap power. (TOU plans) And then they consume that power when electricity is normally expensive

I’m starting to think a power wall is more useful than solar

The other problem with renewables is that when it's hot in the Bay Area, the wind isn't blowing as much.

The rolling blackouts that happened on Friday were initiated around 6:30 PM PDT. On Friday, at 6:30 PM solar was 3,460 MW (from a high of 10,875 MW mid-day) and by 7:30 PM PDT was 133 MW.

Peak indoor temperatures (and, therefore, peak air conditioning demand) on the west coast of North America tend to happen from early evening to sundown.

Needless to say, the ability of solar power to cover this peak is highly limited because the solar peak is earlier in the day.

The trick is to cool the house down as much as possible while the sun is up and generating power. It'll take the house a while to warm back up once the sun goes down. I.e. take advantage of thermal mass.

I know it takes my house hours to move 10 degrees if the HVAC is off and the windows closed.

The blackouts start around sunset, when solar drops off the grid but people still want A/C.

If only we had some sort of energy clean generation technology with a high duty cycle which could ramp up regardless of sunshine or wind...

Is that sarcasm?

That technology is nuclear power plant.

If only there were some way to store power so we could use it when solar drops off...

Or just run your AC down to 65F till 5pm and turn off the AC till 9pm.

That’s true. Your house becomes a negative thermal battery

How does the cost of storage for p999 events compare to the cost of natural gas or nuclear?

I can't say I've read a ton of NWS weather bulletins, but are they usually so colloquial in the discussion or is this one of those "so nuts its warranted" situations?

This is not a weather bulletin meant for public consumption. It is a semi-formal "area forecast discussion"[1], aimed at other meteorologists.

[1]: https://w1.weather.gov/glossary/index.php?word=AREA+FORECAST...

Entirely depends on who is writing it. I like to read the forecast discussions because they tend to give more of the rationale for the forecast. You learn the thought process that goes into it, based on what they're seeing.

That said I'm also a trained severe weather spotter so the forecast discussion is where I go to see if spotter activation may be likely or not.

I've found one benefit to reading the bulletins is they give context to how they are generating weather probabilities. They may say there's a 50% change of rain 5 days from now, but then you learn this is because computer model "A" says 100% chance of rain, while computer model "B" says 0% chance, so they split the difference. Or maybe they say chance of rain is 80%, because model "B" is often off in this specific weather scenario.

It's also fun when some major storm is coming in and they are like "PWAT values are over 2 inches... this is historic!"

I thoroughly enjoy the PNW forecast discussions. They feel so human compared to other area discussions I've perused.

I live in SF. I'm from Florida. I was impressed.

Impressed compared to the craziness that is the southeast's weather we all know and love/hate when the elements decide to spice things up, or compared to the usual bay area fare?

It was impressive by Florida lightning-capital-of-the-world standards. I don't have any SF Bay Area standards for lightning storms. I think I heard more lightning last night than in the ten years before that.

By the way, if you want to learn a bit more about your local weather, start reading your local "Area Forecast Discussion" (just search for that phrase plus your local region / airport) - you'll end up predicting the weather on a qualitative basis, while picking up new vocabulary and observing more about the world around you.

I think the format predates ASCII.

As a bonus, if you watch the local news on TV, you'll hear the local weather personalities parrot language from these forecast discussions...

Meh. You have seen nothing! Imagine walking home at night, along a park which gives unusually wide views of some parts the horizon. Weather feels OK, partially cloudy. Nonetheless something is OFF.

What is "off"? Startled you see glowing and flashing clouds, but it is so far away, you can't exactly tell. Also dark. And no sound of thunder at all? Then you see tiny bright threads arcing between mountains of towering dark clouds, maybe 30 to 45° upwards from the horizon. The dark clouds begin to glow stroboscopically. Still no sound at all. It shines pink, violet, electric whiteblue, orange, yellow, sometimes, especially in the upper regions even greenish. You stand there, awestruck, and still don't know what it is. Cars on the street stop, drivers getting out, asking you what that is, because they've seen it since maybe 10 minutes, and didn't know what it was either.

You tell them you have no clue, never seen something like this before, but it's probably just a large thunderstorm, far away and high up in the sky, maybe 50 to 60km away.

About 10 minutes later, back home, you open https://www.lightningmaps.org/?lang=en and see an inferno unfolding. It dawns on you that the "tiny threads" which flickered horizontally between the glowing clouds for up to 1.5 seconds must have been dozens of kilometers long.

For some strange reason I had clear line of sight in form of a cone into that front, maybe 60 to 80° wide. Very unusual.

Next day the media is full of it. Also some very impressive videos of it in the net.

Anyways, I'd have expected that one can see this far from some mountaintop, or tower, or a plane, but not from the ground.

TBH my first thought was: Is this how it(WWIII) begins?

I'm sure this is abnormal for the Bay Area, but insane seems kind of overblown - this doesn't sound out of the ordinary for the midwest at all. Thunderstorms, hail, and occasional tornados are routine in the summer.

Just last week, the windspeed equivalent of a category 2 hurricane rolled through IA/MO/IL, destroying homes, business, and billions of dollars of crops: https://twitter.com/coldbrewedtool/status/129407960042804429...

In the 26 years I've been in the bay area, nothing like last night has occurred here. So, a qualified "insane" for the Bay Area.

It's all relative...

That's like saying if it was -40 degrees where ever you are and then someone else says "that's nothing, we get that in Antarctica all the time"

It's very rare here. I grew up in Oklahoma City so I know thunder, but last night I leaped out of bed because it was so spectacular, and the character of the thunder is pretty different with all the mountains around here. Initially it wasn't raining and I assumed the oil refinery in Richmond was exploding. Then after a moment it started hailing and I felt right at home.

Would be good for the HN community to keep in mind what a global audience cares about.

If the insane Bay Area weather affected major internet services globally for example it would be relevant.

This certainly can be the top story in local Bay Area news, but too often does the HN Community conflate local Bay Area top stories with stories of global significance.

But they are not in the Bay Area. This sort of climate change is probably due to climate change. Who knows what climate change climate change will bring to the Midwest. If it is the sort of unpredictableness happening where I live it will be unpleasant.

Strange weather here in Southern IL too. Wettest August I've ever seen (In my ~30 years here).

It's supposed to be dead dry right now. It was dead dry last August.

But now we've been getting random thunderstorms almost daily.

Weirdass weather.

I recently moved from champaign to the bay area.

I was reminiscing and missing the midwest summer storms earlier this week.

It's called (human-induced) climate changes

Everyone is seeming to notice it more this year, so I can't help but wonder if it's the opposite: That human effects on the weather (not climate) had reached an equilibrium, and everything stopping from the pandemic is causing local weather to chaotically revert to what it was before.

One example of how an effect like this could work: https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/04/09/coronavirus-pla...

Wait i thought the problem is that it creates droughts, not more wet weather?

Or is it one of those things we could to point at if the needle moves in any direction?

Climate change causes... climate change. Whatever the climate has been for centuries in your area it will probably be different in the next 10-20 years. It might be warmer, wetter, cooler, drier or just more variable. It's hard to predict.

Exactly, it causes more instability, plus a slightly but steadily growing temperature.

And unfortunately, vegetables, plants, trees, nature like stability

While a lot of it is just humor, some people are really nervous about everything because of COVID19.

It seems pandemic stress is intensifying our feeling about other events. People immediately relate every incident to 2020 as if everything is getting worst.

I don't remember any year that some places on earth didn't report unusual weather conditions. Maybe people are reading more news and incident news are trendy and get more coverage.

Meanwhile in Colorado, dry conditions and lightning sparked the Pine Gulch fire, which is just one of four major fires ongoing right now. People are getting pretty concerned.

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/16/colorado-wildfires-pin...

The NOAA.gov mobile site is a joy to use and should be a case study on usable mobile design. Everything is where it needs to be, contextually relevant, and easy to navigate back and forth between cities and forecasts. Check it out if you haven't already, if you add it as a bookmark on your home screen (Android), you can launch it as a webview chromeless app.

Coincidently, the transformer unit in our neighborhood failed on Friday.

The storm was a welcome surprise.

As a former forecaster, I've always appreciated the little Easter eggs and irreverent comments that are occasionally embedded in forecast discussions... But yeah, this actually sounds like insane conditions for that area.

2500 lightning strikes does sound like a lot. Would be interesting to know how the world stacks up in terms of "average lightning strikes per hour" during a typical thunderstorm for that area.

> during a typical thunderstorm for that area.

That's why this is "insane." It's not typical to have _any_ thunderstorms in this area. It's also not typical to have rain in August.

The median number of lightning strikes per year is zero.

I don't know how in my mind weather forecasts and discussion from NWS came to carry such weight, but they do. Generally, they are not BSing.

I think the most frightening thing to read in Courier all caps is, "EFFORTS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD NOW BE RUSHED TO COMPLETION".

F-- Twitter and the political BS, this kind of all caps is real.

Gusty wind gusts

So this is news because lighting is so rare there, it’s literally ‘once in a lifetime’!? I couldn’t figure out why this was here :) It is kind of weird to see this kind of reaction, to those of us in most other parts of the country.

Edit: I didn’t really appreciate the drought conditions, let’s hope the wildfires don’t get bad.

Tell me any part of the country where it wouldn't be news to have months of essentially no rain, followed by 1200 lightning strikes, still with very little rain.

The issue isn't simply the lightning (that would be rare in the Bay area). It is the lightning combined with drought conditions making wildfires a major issue.

Alot of the eastern edge of the rockies meet this criteria. Take a look at the string of hotspots between Denver and the southern border. Those are mostly in desert climates where it isnt terribly unusual to go without rain. As you would expect, fires are a major problem there as well.

https://ecle.biz/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/avg_sd_2005-2014...

You are right.

The population density is probably lower though.

I really hope the fires don’t get too bad. I was unaware of the drought conditions.

I remember at the end of 2016 in the southeast where I am, we were in the midst of a severe, multi-year drought. Wildfires started popping up everywhere, causing lots of damage/ deaths.

It was very strange, the atmosphere was ‘foggy’ from the smoke for weeks. Praying for rain!

Heh. Your idea of a "severe, multi-year drought" is California's idea of "string of unusually wet years".

It is all a question of perspective.

(And what we call drought, well...)

Not to mention weather so hot it caused the first state-wide emergency rolling blackouts in 19 years.

It was not any hotter than it gets most years. What has changed is probably that California's ability to govern itself has declined to such an extent that it cannot consistently keep the electricity flowing.

> As of 4:30 p.m., at least five cities had logged record highs, according to the weather service. Among the hottest of those spots was San Jose, which saw a high of 101, breaking last year’s mark of 98.

> Temperatures soared to 98 degrees in Oakland, breaking last year’s mark of 90; 96 degrees in Salinas, breaking the 1984 mark of 84; 96 degrees in Richmond, breaking last year’s mark of 90 degrees; and 95 degrees in downtown San Francisco, breaking the 1995 mark of 86.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/14/bay-area-heat-wave-ar...

Isn't that the weather pattern of northern Australia? The Dry, then lightning storms, then eventually lots of rain and floodings.

There was lightning and thunder (and hail depending on where you were) in the last year and even big summer across the sky lightning events like this in the last 5-7 [actually 8]years (I was on an airplane landing at SFO for it). It's just not common, and 100+ temperatures aren't common so together it's pretty weird. If it was the US central plains, it would be Tuesday during every summer month.

[Edit It was 2012:]

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Thunder-lightnin...

We are in the middle of a 110 degree heat wave which was briefly interrupted by a series of lightning storms and rain.

I think it was the unpredictable turns in weather.

100% agree. In many other places in the world this would be just Sunday.

HN is so SF Bay centric sometimes

> HN is so SF Bay centric sometimes

Given that 21% of global VC money is pumped into the Bay Area[1], that seems like a pretty natural thing.

[1] - (Through 2017 though): https://hbr.org/2018/11/how-the-geography-of-startups-and-in...

A good reminder that technology opinions here too only represent the tip of the iceberg of the software engineering world and hardly are representative of the industry at large.

I'd expect geocentrism from local media but not a federal domain.

There are numerous bay areas in the US. Maybe drop an SF in that headline NOAA?

It's a local area forecast discussion from the local office and the local area is officially named "San Francisco Bay Area/Monterey". What do you want from them exactly?

The HN headline is a representative sentence taken from the body of the article by the poster. The title provided by NOAA is “Area Forecast Discussion, National Weather Service San Francisco Bay Area, 1117 AM PDT Sun Aug 16 2020”.

It clearly marks the San Francisco/Bay Area office in the header of the site and in the header of the content.

There's additional evidence that someone is adopting Colloquial Millennial in a Federal weather advisory:

> The biggest impact appears to have been numerous fire starts. The fire agencies are still flying recon but literally dozens of new fires from the North Bay, East Bay, South Bay, Santa Cruz mtns and down to Monterey.

I don't understand the need to say "literally" there.

Until recently, "literally" was a powerful word, arguably best held in reserve for important occasions. The most recent years of popular use have diluted it.

I don't believe that "literally" was intended to be said by a speaker numerous times each day, to be a filler word like "um", nor for general-purpose emphasis, nor to express unhinged enthusiasm, nor to convey "listen to me, I am the center of the universe right now!", nor to plead "I'm actually not lying this time".

I blame Rob Lowe for this (and other things).

What I take issue with is that there’s no verb in the second part of that sentence. The overuse of “literally” is one thing, but the fact that, “literally” has come to mean, “literally [there are]” bugs me a hell of a lot more.

> the fact that, “literally” has come to mean, “literally [there are]” bugs me a hell of a lot more.

I think you’re jumping to an incorrect conclusion. There are numerous sentences in the article (and others from NOAA) with no verb, it has nothing to do with the word literally. This isn’t a piece of literary writing, it’s abbreviated language intended for a very narrow field of professional readers. There are many examples of other professional communication that similarly do not follow normal conventions for casual writing nor conversation. Look up airline or boat pilot transcripts, or medical science papers, or HAM radio users... a huge number of niche fields that have their own sub-languages.

> I don’t understand the need to say “literally” there.

It’s used for emphasis, like it always has been for literally hundreds of years. The meaning has not changed recently, but it has been trendy for people to complain about it on the inter webs.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-lite...

Even if the meaning did change, that’s one of the neat things about language, it’s fluid and changes over time. We don’t need to blame anyone, because words changing over time is the natural state of things.

Thank you, I stand corrected about the older history.

How I was taught, and how I saw the term used, seemed vastly more useful than it is now, post-Lowe.

Also, I'm not sure I agree with those dictionary company lexicographers abdicating responsibility. If they argue they're not taking a dump in language, then they're gold-plating someone else's dump.

> I’m not sure I agree with those dictionary company lexicographers abdicating responsibility. If they argue they’re not taking a dump in language, then they’re gold-plating someone else’s dump.

I don’t understand what you mean or why you think they’re “taking a dump”. I’m getting the feeling that 1- you didn’t finish reading that article I linked to, and 2- you might not fully understand what lexicographers actually do. Their goal and their job is to understand how people actually use language, not to define it. Their job is not to establish any rules, nor to be enforcers or make sure people follow any such rules. They are documentarians, and as such their sole responsibility is to show how the word “literally” has been used in the past. The dictionary isn’t a set of unchangeable language axioms, it’s more like legal case law, it’s just a reference of some stuff people said.

I did read the article, and I'm disagreeing with the assertion that the only role of a dictionary is to document history without judgment.

That might be the situation for the OED (and I owned a copy of the Compact Edition, so you might believe I might be sympathetic), but dictionaries are/were also issued/prescribed to students for usage guidance, long before we heard of particular venues' style guides. We'd see term senses declared by the dictionary to be "archaic", "slang", "vulgar", etc.

Let's see those lexicographers at least exercise some editorial warnings about the most egregious evolving senses.

Also, I'd like to see some official attribution of blame to Rob Lowe, for this particular episode of the destruction of language, as part of general decline and fall of civilization.

Sprinkle emoticons throughout this thread.

> Let’s see those lexicographers at least exercise some editorial warnings

They did. There are notes on the definition that are also pointed out in the article I sent you.

> but dictionaries are/were also issued/prescribed to students for usage guidance

Sure, yeah, as a reference. I don’t follow, why does using dictionaries imply that lexicographers should not document history without judgement? Notes like ‘archaic’ and ‘vulgar’ are not judgements the lexicographers invented, right? Those are historical facts that are widely agreed upon by society before the dictionary writes about it.

What exactly is the “dump” you think Merriam-Webster left on English? I’m trying to understand your point, but not seeing it.

Language evolves

Linguistic prescriptivism is usually a losing endeavor.

Pretty sure the first known uses of literally were in way that would literally upset you.

since at least 2002

https://www.weather.gov/media/pub/pdf/sdata/072002.pdf

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