Atmosphere Comparison

[Jim]

The endless chatter of weather.

[outdoor_lover]

@big_load Weren't you coming out here next month anyway? Maybe you should move up your schedule,

[big_load]

I hope it's warmer than the same time last year. I think it was 23F in Tucson, about 20 degrees colder than NJ that week.

[Jim]

In Arizona, it's beautiful, but when I looked west this morning there was brown smoke streaked all over the sky, probably from the power plant in Page. At first I thought there may have been a big fire, but it was the typical brown smoke you get from the coal plants. It moved north with the wind, but I can still see it on the horizon in Utah. During one of the nice warm high pressure days a few weeks back, I could see brown all over the horizon to the north. It started out in the NW and moved to the east as the day progressed. Last week, on B.M. the visibility was markedly worse to the east from the numerous plants in NW NM.

It is going to get cold, and windy later in the week. I hope it warms back up into at least the upper 70s below 3,000'. Otherwise, winter is here. Seems every time I have plans to do anything, or try to make them, the weather turns nasty. In early September, it was lousy in the Sierra, in October we had the freak rain and snow, and now this. It isn't the end of the world to wait to go to Tucson, but the days are getting shorter and temps may not spring back. 63 with wind is the forecast for Tucson on Saturday. Not worth the nearly 7 hour drive!

[Jim]

Yes, snow is coming. Soon, there will be white crystals all over the higher terrain. It's still a while until winter, but it doesn't feel that way. Long since given up on a trip to Colorado this fall, a foot of snow is expected on top of what remains from the last storms, and I won't be doing anything up high for the time being. Wolf Creek is open with a 29" midway base, and even the Catalina Mountains are forecast to receive 2 to 4 inches. The Peaks will probably get a fair amount of snow; perhaps close to a foot. Bring on June!, I say, since it is winter out here and then the April and May winds can bring ferocious dust storms.

[chumley]

Snow levels to 4500ft and saturday night temps in the low 20s at that elevation killed a planned weekend camping trip for me. Not that it couldn't be done, but it just seems less than ideal. Maybe next weekend it'll warm up to a bit more seasonal weather...

[azbackpackr]

BLAAAAAAAGGGHHH!

It's funny, up here in Flag people will comment "It's a lot cooler today!" as if it is a great thing. Brrr! Yesterday at 11:30 a.m. it was 37 degrees with a 26 wind chill!

If I say something like, "Yeah, time to go down to the desert" I don't get many favorable responses! They all think the "desert" is just Phoenix, I suppose, and they think it is 110 down there year-round, apparently. They always say it's too hot, even though it's warmer in Flagstaff in summer than it generally is in Phoenix in January. I don't get this love affair with slippery roads and scraping ice off the windshield. I've had enough of it after 12 years (11 of them in Eagar).

I'll be out of here by the end of Dec. and may not move back, but who knows? I like Flagstaff, in the summer...

[Jim]

Ugh, Liz, don't get me started on Flaggers and their weird obsession with cold and hating anything over 75 degrees, or lower than 5000'. I'll PM you with my rant. I hear you, though, after half a decade in Flag, I wanted to go lower and get warmer. So much for that, I guess. At least Flagstaff doesn't have two blowing dust seasons. I even loved being in Tucson in June when it was 105, and the drive through Phoenix later that day when the sun was setting and the air still 100 was fun. Yes, there is a difference between visiting and living, but I never visited Buffalo, NY (at all), but I did move to a warmer climate when I was 21 and while I hated the humidity. After visiting the SW USA in August of 2003, I wanted to move to the desert and experience a long dry summer. Summer was always my favorite season when I was in NJ, not winter, not the cold clammy seasons, and colder was never better unless it was a swimming pool that was already 95 degrees on a 96 degree day. They never made movies or songs about endless Winters (at least not in a good way), but Endless Summer is a concept embedded in the forever youth seeking culture of the American Psyche. Who retires to a frozen wasteland? No one! No ONE!!!!

[chumley]

I know we're almost on the 100th page of this thread, but didn't you two have virtually the same exact :SB: discussion back on October 5th?

[Jim]

I'm surprised you remember that. It seems so. You know how it is, with ruminating discussions. The afflicted person dwelling endlessly on the subject that sticks in their side the most, constantly dragging it up and bemoaning the issue. I believe you did the same with the 110+ temps a little while back. Then again, this thread is pretty much the same thing over and other, so with the seasons come the cyclical discussion.

You'll note that I sent Liz a PM, to avoid the board hosting another long anti-Flag rant. My above post is about how I love summer, or how I don't like winter. Take your pick. I do love summer so, and that ain't belly aching.

[chumley]

Yeah, sometimes I think this thread should just be the "Jim_H hates Flagstaff, Chumley hates August" thread. We could just lock everybody else out and they could just endure our bitching...

[Jim]

Hey, Liz hates winter and wind, too.

[azbackpackr]

Or not click on the thread. Ha!

However, someone had to take over for Jim on Flagstaff weather rants. I guess I'm elected!

Jim you mentioned Tucson when it's 105. I actually like that temperature if I'm just doing summer stuff, like hanging out at the pool or watering the lawn. If I'm hiking in that heat I tend to get a headache, though. I don't mind it early in the morning in Tucson in summer, doing yardwork. At one of the places I lived in Tucson I had a really nice vegetable garden. It was close to the Rillito, so it had alluvial soil and no caliche. Also there was a private well on the property, so no water bill. And you can go to Mt. Lemmon and hike to Lemmon Pools. Love it!

One of these days it's likely I will move back to Tucson. At least, I kind of hope so. I miss the Old Pueblo sometimes.

So, weather report from Flagstaff at this moment: 50 degrees and sunny. Doesn't sound too bad. Oh, I forgot to tell you, the wind is blowing sustained at 24 mph with gusts to 50 mph. And the gusts are FREQUENT. Ugh. I'm not going hiking today. I know you guys think I'm all tough, but it was a lie.

[chumley]

Current local headline:
"Strong Storm Nears Phoenix: I-8 Now Closed!"

Followed by an article that says

On Interstate 8, several patrol officers had tried to slow traffic by sitting on the side of the road with their lights. But drivers continued to travel too fast for the conditions, so officials closed the freeway.

Am I the only one who is sick and tired of pumpkin getting blown out of proportion (pun intended)?
Can you please leave the roads open and let me venture out there in my own stupidity if I so choose? Please?
There was a day that a stupid snowstorm required chains or 4wd, and if I wanted to put chains on my Ford Escort and drive over Vail Pass in the middle of the night ... I could. (I know this because I did it. Several times.)

Nowadays, roads are closed at the forecast. It's ridiculous.

:tt:

[azbackpackr]

Fearmongering has become another way that government agencies exert control. It also allows the bureaucrats who run the agencies to get a lot of media attention. The media goes along and plays up everything as much as possible to try to get more viewers, so they can sell more advertising.

Agencies such as the CDC and organizations such as the WHO predicted massive deaths from West Nile Virus, Ebola, Swine Flu, and a host of other ailments that killed very few people (whereas the regular seasonal flu kills about 40,000 people every year, but no one cares). Educational institutions, particularly K-12, also spend millions on scaremongering. Heads of agencies such as the CDC and WHO become caught up in dire predictions and getting themselves lots of cable news time.

And when not much comes of these dire predictions, the media and the government agencies go on to the next big scare of the day, and let the old stories just quietly go away. They never ever say, "Oh, sorry we were wrong!"

So who are we to believe, when these people who are supposed to be responsible for disseminating important information are inflating the dangers just so they can get more media attention? I quit watching TV a couple of years ago, but there is still the internet news, and it's just as bad. Even PBS is not immune.

[Trishness]

I hope to see snow on the Supes this winter......now that's a pretty sight indeed.

Trish
(who loves Flagstaff, Tucson and the desert equally)

[azbackpackr]

FLAGSTAFF: Raining, thundering, fire engines going by constantly... Sometimes the weather forecasters get it right!

[big_load]

Sometimes the weather forecasters get it right!

They predicted fire engines?

[johnlp]

Lots of them

[outdoor_lover]

@azbackpackr

Ugh. I'm not going hiking today.

I did! I was just below the hill from you, Liz. I just posted it. The morning was great, but about 11:00 or so after I turned around, I pretty much hightailed it out of there. The wind was picking up and the clouds were starting to look pretty dark...

[azbackpackr]

I drove down to Sedona a few days ago and hiked Wilson Mtn. That is a neat hike! Sedona is the closest place to Flag if I want to lose a lot of elevation and get out of the snow. Also around Bell Trail/Camp Verde, which I have not yet explored very much. Driving down there a lot costs too much in gas, though, so I don't want to do it every day. I will have to start swimming at the NAU pool now that it's acting like winter.

WINTER WEATHER WARNING. Don't try to drive to Flag this morning. I woke up to see the small forested area out my bedroom window (yes, I have forest, and sometimes deer, out my window, in a cheap rental mobile home in Flagstaff) encrusted with that kind of thick snow that sticks to everything and breaks branches. Looks pretty, too. I am not going anywhere today! I have plenty to do right here, homework, etc. I have lost interest in snow, and can't wait to be in Costa Rica. Two months to go!

Well, I take that back about staying home all day. If they send the plow to my street (which they sometimes forget to do) maybe I will go to the pool. It's nice and warm in there, and you get to see foreign Olympic swimmers practicing. I notice that "swimming" is an option on triplogs, so maybe I will post it as mileage! No elevation gain, though!