Oh my fvcking gawd!

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Temperature is one thing. Snow is another.

Canoga Park has elevation. Westwood is at sea level.

Okay, it's a whole 600 ft. difference in elevation. Congratulations, you win that particular frozen pissing match.

I'm not trying to win some "my winter was colder than your winter" competition. I'm just getting tired of hearing, "OMG this is the coldest it's ever been!" and, "There hasn't been weather like this in 60 year!" and, "It's the apocalypse!" everywhere I turn.

If, in my short span of existence, I can remember off the top of my head winters that were at best incrementally better (or more realistically, just as bad in different ways), such as a winter with snow and temperatures of -8 degrees at near sea level (as far as I've seen, nowhere with an elevation under 1000ft has come even CLOSE to -8 this year), then this is hardly unprecedented, apocalyptic weather. It's people with short memories. And if I can pull that up from memory, I can only imagine that there are plenty more examples if one were to actually look up the historical weather data.

But I guess people somehow feel better if they convince themselves they're living through the worst winter ever. *shrug*

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

In 1989, a temperature of -8 F was recorded in Canoga Park. This year's downright balmy.

Now that you mention Canoga Park, it makes me curious. Any chance we attended the same elementary school?

[innerSpaceman]

Well, I may have memory problems ... but it's never snowed in my part of town in the 30 years I've lived here. I'm not claiming the snow made it West L.A.'s worst winter ever ... far from it: It was delightful.

But it was highly unusual. As is the week-of-winter, week-of-summer pattern we've been having lately. Perhaps the sky isn't falling, and no single weather event or pattern can be attributed directly to global warming. But the type of unusual weather events happening all over the U.S. and the world are exactly the types of weather events science predicted for this time frame of the global warming phenomena. And if those predictions continue to bear out, the sky will only seem like it's falling because the sea level will have risen so high. My area of West L.A. will see no more snow ... because it will be under water.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

But it was highly unusual. As is the week-of-winter, week-of-summer pattern we've been having lately.

See, that's my favorite. How cold it's getting is definitely on the short end of the bell curve, but the cold-warm-cold-warm oscillation happens every single year in SoCal. Every year. And has been happening every year for quite a while every January. What's amusing to me is the people who love to tell the, "It was cold and rainy and windy and horrible weather right up until the day of the Rose Parade when it was suddenly sunny and warm," anecdotes, and then seem to immediately forget those over the next two months and live in shock over that exact same weather pattern playing out like it always does.

Yes, snow in Westwood is highly unusual. Just as snow in Canoga Park was highly unusual in 1989. It's a statistical anomaly and 2 instances of light snow in 20 years are evidence of absolutely nothing on the scale of global climate change.

Heck, maybe it's a good sign, seeing as over the previous 40 years there has been no snowfall at the LA Civic Center, whereas during the previous 40 years there were at least trace amounts on average every 4.5 years or so. (source). So this single, statistically insignificant snow event is just as plausibly evidence of things returning to normal as it is of things going to hell.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Moonliner

Now that you mention Canoga Park, it makes me curious. Any chance we attended the same elementary school?

Nope, I lived further west, other side of Falbrook (now technically West Hills ) and went to Welby Way.

Your school, however, is less than a mile from CP's parents' house.

[RStar]

Just like the "average" rainfall is on a cycle here in So Cal as well. They say, on average, that we have a drought every seven years. But the slide is incramental, so the years before and after the drought are low in rainfall also. And at the other end is flooding. Of course there are little exception blips that would cause bumbs in a graph, but in gerneral, we have a seven year cycle.

And this also effects the life cycles of plants and animals. There is a seven year boom of rabbits due to the growth of plants durring the rainy season, and they die off durring drought.

I think everything on earth works this way, and patterns would be noticable with enough information. And take decades or mellinia rather than years, and we may see weather patterns of mini ice ages, ozone depletions, mean global temperature changes, and greenhouse gas increases as well. Not to mention asteroids and volcanic eruptions that changed weather.

What does all of this mean? Hell, I don't know. I just think it is interesting, and anyone that whats to draw any kind of conclusions from a small sample of information should be very carefull.

That is all.....

[Ghoulish Delight]

Following up the previous cars-on-ice video, we discovered this gem.

Pay close attention to the emergency vehicle that shows up at some point to "help" direct traffic. See if you can figure out what's wrong before the driver does.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Pay close attention to the emergency vehicle that shows up at some point to "help" direct traffic.

He was helping: he was pointing out to everybody where NOT to go.

[Not Afraid]

He was helpig out the lookie loos.