[Optional soundtrack for the post]
So 2024 has completely changed my relationship with the weather. I used to believe I would make a good Seattle resident because I love rain so much. Gray, cloudy days don’t depress me at all. As long as I can loll around indoors, they make me feel snug and cozy.
Now, after the biblical deluge that temporarily flooded us out of our home, I look askance at clouds. We’ve had mostly bright, sunny days during our displacement, but today was cloudy, and it rained a little bit.
I was pissed at the rain! Fuck off, clouds!
Open thread!
cain
Yes, you would make a lousy northwest resident haha. :)
That said, it’s not just the cloudy and rainy weather, it’s the high humidity which makes it seem colder than it is. Soo cold even colder than Indiana where it can go below zero. But I can hang out in that weather, the weather here is like cold from the inside
ETA – yes, first!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Here in Denver, we always say that the most consecutive cloudy days we collectively can endure is 2.
Beyond that, everybody gets really stabby.
My wife was born and raised here and wanted out to see the world after college so away we went. After 33 years when we came back, she’s been like “Why did I leave for those places with dreary, gray winters and nothing but clouds?”
An anecdote about climates like Seattle. When I was supporting the Juneau office, the people there would say “People leave here to move to Seattle because it’s drier there”. Now, when the sun did come out in Juneau, it was breathtakingly beautiful. But the other 300+ days a year, not so much.
WereBear
In the mountains we get mist in the morning, but this one started with strong cold winds. Still, we like to say, “There’s no bad weather, just poor dressing for it.”
Layer8Problem
Clouds suck. We’ve had too few of them here, leading to a drought, with drought-caused fires. I’d like a nice thunderstorm myself. It’s the low frequency bass sounds I’m fond of, far away.
Geminid
Joni Mitchell wrote a song like this.
Steve LaBonne
@cain: Here in Ohio the only days when I feel cold indoors are the 40 degree rainy ones.
thruppence
It’s cold in my heart, folks. I feel like my hope for the future has been amputated. I can still feel it, like a phantom limb, but it is gone. I’m gonna have to learn to live without it, learn to limp around and see if there’s still something useful I can do, but I ain’t feeling it. I hope this will change. Sorry. Bummer.
Old School
@cain:
Hmmmm… I always though high humidity made it feel warmer.
Has something gone wrong in my education?
eclare
Supposed to rain here in Memphis tomorrow. I hope it does, we really need it.
BC, I hope you get back to Chez Cracker soon.
zhena gogolia
@thruppence: I feel exactly the same way. My whole sense of well-being is gone.
I don’t know why I didn’t feel this way when Reagan trounced Mondale, but I just didn’t. I didn’t even feel this way in 2016.
WereBear
When I saw the wave of broken relationships and other FAFO trends I cheered up about 20%.
Might be petty of me… but so soon! So sad! Their foot hurts where they shot it.
Trollhattan
In Seattle is rains often, not a lot. I know this from growing up in Seattle. 37 inches/year. One town in North Carolina received 30.5 inches during Helene. Less than one day.
Mind, the sun would shine gloriously all May as we fidgeted in our classrooms then, once released by the Seattle School District into our summer vaycay, The Cloud would take residence for big chunks ‘o that summer. This was in a time before >90-degree temps arrived there to stir the weather pot in new and fun ways. 85 was an aberration and holy hell, did we sunburn ourselves to a crisp.
My biggest adjustment there today would be returning to the very short winter daylight. Don’t know I could hack it.
RaflW
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’m in the high country about 75 mi west of Denver this week because we in Minnesota would be overjoyed to only have two sequential cloudy days. November is sooo gloomy there.
I spent Saturday night down in Denver so I could attend services at First Universalist on Sunday morning. By the time I got in the car to head west to I-70 it was like 58 degrees and delightfully sunny. I tell people in MN about Denver’s ‘self-shovelling sidewalks.’ That said, it snowed enough that it looked like some more serious plowing was needed for this last storm.
Jerszy
(Abe) Simpsons did it.
cain
@Old School:
I asked ChatGPT, it may or may not be correct:
Also an article:
https://www.weareiowa.com/article/weather/weather-lab/why-do-you-feel-colder-on-winter-day-with-higher-humidity-wicking-effect-clothing/524-5808f591-6368-4854-b802-6ed85179d1a5
WereBear
My first Alpine winter I was hooked on the blue skies and the pitpat of the snow. What can I tell you!
It’s a dry cold.
thruppence
@zhena gogolia: Reagan supporters could convince themselves they were supporting hope for the future. The whole Trump regime is embodied malice
And then there’s the millions of Americans who couldn’t be bothered to vote, couldn’t be bothered to pay attention. Politics is for other people.
jonas
Supposedly upstate NY has more cloudy/rainy days than Seattle and the PNW. There was a big AFB a little east of Syracuse — Griffis AFB — that was supposedly designated a SAC base during the Cold War because it was so constantly overcast in the region, Soviet spy satellites had a hard time monitoring it.
I can deal with subzero cold, snow, and love fall colors and the first blooms of spring. I really, really, really hate rainy, soggy days that seem to go on forever around here. Everyone gets seasonal depressive disorder, especially after DST ends.
catclub
yep. thunderstorms are rare there.
Cold moist air makes you feel colder.
Warm moist air makes you fell warmer.
Moisture in the air conducts more heat, either from you or into you, depending.
Trollhattan
@Old School:
There’s a type of weather that can suck the heat right out of you: mid-30s F, wind and drizzle. In Scouts we routinely were made to watch “Hypothermia, Killer of the Unprepared” (how’s that for a sprightly title?) because that’s the the deadliest type of weather common to the Cascades. Mid-20s and snow is much easier to deal with. Since I was in Scouts a lot of whizbang fabrics have made cold-and-wet easier to handle.
As long as your clothes don’t get soggy, cold and humid isn’t bad. Cold and dry, like at ski resorts, fries my sinuses.
laura
I feel the same way about wood smoke- I loved me a cozy fireplace until October 9th 2017 when the Tubbs fire burnt down Sonoma County and hastened my father’s death. Now, the smell of fire is deeply unsettling and makes me anxious af.
John S.
@jonas:
Not supposedly.
I used to spend a lot of time in upstate NY near Lake George. It is absolutely much, much cloudier, colder, rainier (and snowier) there than it is here in the Seattle area overall throughout the year.
WereBear
@Trollhattan: My favorite in the genre is “death cloth.”
Old School
@cain: @Trollhattan:
All right, so it depends on whether you are out in the rain.
If you are in a dry room, a humidifier can help make it feel warmer.
RaflW
Overall, though, my biggest thing about winter isn’t the weather, per se. It’s the immutable pattern of our orbit + our axial tilt. If Utah wasn’t politically intolerable, in the short- to mid-term (scaled to my possible lifetime, I mean) I’d kinda rather spend winter snowboarding time in Park City than Summit Co, Colorado.
P.C. is enough west that the winter solar noons and sunsets are perceptibly better than here. I grit my teeth through the stretch of time now-mid January when the sunset in many places is before 5pm. It’s some psychological threshold for me that is just hard.
But CO is politically better, higher so climate change will maybe screw us more slowly in terms of snow, and we have friends here and Denver. We’d be starting from scratch out in UT.
Hildebrand
Yep – after the storm in 2021 that flooded a good chunk of Detroit, and pumped three feet of storm water into our basement through the drains because the main pumps failed, we have been less than thrilled when any storm lasts for more than five minutes.
Sure Lurkalot
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Truth. The rare 3-1/2 day snow event we had starting the night of 11/5 was particularly soul-crushing given the turn of the screw, even for the “we needed the moisture” crowd.
CaseyL
Seattle is indeed dreary most of the year, starting in late September and lasting until March. I’ve been here most of my adult life, and even now I start to get SAD, or something like it, by January.
It’s not the weather so much, though, as the darkness, and DST definitely plays a role. The reason March is the month when the dreariness ends is because the clocks go forward again, and we’re no longer getting up in darkness to go to work and coming home in darkness from work.
An oddity I’ve noticed over the years: When it’s actually snowing, outside feels oddly warm. Not warm in the sense of “take off your jacket” but warmer than the ambient temperature would indicate. The phenomenon ends once there’s a good layer of snow on the ground. Then it’s just plain cold.
la caterina
@WereBear: Right there with ya. Whatever schadenfreude I can get, I’ll take it.
Lobo
Be good, gracious and generous with each other. TPM makes the point that it was a close election and not worth the hyperbole on the blame game. The impact is worth the hyperbole and what needs to be done now and in the future.
These themes seem to be coming up more and more. It was structural not personal, e.g., if only Harris(put in your favorite alternative history move). The big, bang three from a Digby, It’s the Media Stupid
What to do:
Change media strategy(this is for someone like John Marshall at TPM).
Treat POTUS as a celebrity role(symbolic) with the VP as the detail person.
Acknowledge racism & misogyny.
Attack structural when you can, e.g., statewide initiatives on voting and gerrymandering.
For me, I am going to listen to Black voices here on presidential candidates. They are pragmatic and realistic on what makes whites and others comfortable. Aspirational might not be the winning strategy in respect to POTUS. I can say someone like Ruben Gallego fits the POTUS profile from a Latino perspective. I don’t think he would make whites and others too uncomfortable.
Peace
catclub
Cotton? wet cotton?
cmorenc
I lived in Portland, Oregon for 10 years – initially moved there in August, and through most of September it was sunny almost every day. But then, on September 31st in mid-afternoon, clouds rolled in and the entire month of October the sun was only out twice for 5 minutes, no exaggeration. The weather was constant overcast with intermittent drizzle or light rain, temp mid-40s to mid-50s, nominally cool-ish but not at all cold by drier-climate standards, and not particularly windy. Nevertheless, it was a kind of damp chill that would penetrate underneath long-sleeve clothing, even with a light sweater or jacket. Six months of the year, it was either drizzling or about to drizzle in Portland.
Coming from North Carolina where although we get ample rainfall it’s uncommon for the sky to be cloudy for more than three or four consecutive days, Portland’s endless October clouds were a shock, as was the significantly shorter daylight in winter months than I was used to.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@thruppence: I always think of John Lewis talking about how people he knew died for the right to vote. The right to vote was almost sacred.
And people who can’t be bothered throw it away like trash.
WereBear
@catclub: It stays wet the longest and sucks the warm right out of you.
eclare
@John S.:
A friend in college was from Syracuse, and she claimed that Syracuse had more cloudy days than any other city in the US.
That was decades ago, I don’t know if that has changed.
WereBear
Even if you don’t want plants, get a grow light. I’ve found working under one of those “sun spectrum” kinds of bulbs helps, and I also have real grow lights for the African Violets.
Old Dan and Little Ann
When it’s sunny in Rochester during the winter time I will often go out back, face the sun with my eyes closed, and pretend I am a plant soaking in the rays. Currently sunny BTW.
Belafon
@Lobo: I think the next Democratic president needs to be a salesman. If she isn’t in front of the camera at least twice a week, she’s slacking.
I’m going with she because I liked someone idea earlier: When people ask Democrats to fix things, they need to know it’s on our terms and they’re going to pick the candidate we chose because we know she’s the best candidate, not because they need to be placated.
Dan B
Seattle is a few hundred miles north of Minneapolis and 400 miles nirth of Chicago so the sun sets after 4 PM for months. I did a lot of experimenting with high quality LED lights that have a high CRI (Color Rendering Index) so they’re very close to sunlight. It seems to have helped stave off depression from the short dark days
The favorite LEDs are from Waveform Lighting.
Dangerman
Trust me on this one. Seattle’s weather is bullshit. There is a reason there was an expresso machine in the office and walk any direction, any time, and you will hit either a bar or a coffee place in a relative few steps.
Indicator 1: Christmas Party, last Christmas in Seattle (I think). Ice storm. I was stuck on I5 near Boeing Field for like 5 hours. Horrific. Women were getting out of cars to do the best they could by the side of the road.
Indicator 2: July 2nd, my last full summer there. July 2nd. July mothefucking 2nd. Outdoor concert on the waterfront. Nanci Griffith (RIP) backed by the Seattle Symphony. It was so cold the symphony had to leave for fear of damaging their instruments. I was in my down pondering the possibility of hypothermia in July.
Flip side: When Seattle is pretty, it is spectacular. There are views of Rainier that will bring one to tears. Easy access into Canada was wonderful (although, the last time, coming back to USA, was a bitch; I guess I looked wrong to the guard). But unless you are ready for next level shit on weather on occasion, it’s best avoided.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@eclare: Could be. I grew up in West Michigan which is cloudy except for the rare day here or there from about November to nearly May. It’s Lake Michigan to some degree that’s responsible and Syracuse is also East of Great Lakes.
Gretchen
@WereBear: I saw a divorce lawyer say that November is usually a slow time and two filings a week is average. She’d had 7 between Tuesday and Friday last week. FAFI indeed. They’re all whining that politics shouldn’t affect relationships. Actions have consequences, guys.
jonas
It has not.
WereBear
@Gretchen: Bring back shunning!
Steve LaBonne
@Belafon: I doubt very much that Harris will enter the 2028 primary (our loss) but if she does she will have my vote. She is a strong communicator and ran an exceptionally disciplined campaign.
Dan B
@Dan B: Waveform lights are available in 95CRI for a reasonable price compared to other manufacturers. Most LEDs are 80CRI which seem very gloomy to me and make human skin, white, black, or brown, seem grayish. The cheaper phosphors lack good quality red so they’re not nice.
Cree used to make 90CRI LEDs but got out of the business. Sad.
Steve LaBonne
@WereBear: I did that in my life years ago. I’m grateful to have none of these assholes in any part of my life, and grateful that I am retired and no longer have to work alongside them. They could be on a different planet as far as I’m concerned.
Layer8Problem
@John S.: Partner had a relative with a place around Tupper Lake. We’d go up weekends. Four times out of five in the spring, summer, or fall it would rain, at least that’s what it seemed to me. Partner would be wailing “I’m cursed!! Nothing ever goes right for me!” I’d have to gamely backfill trying to explain that’s just what it does in these parts. Partner was convinced it was a universe-spanning conspiracy. Nope, just Adirondack weather.
John S.
@Dangerman:
Everyone is different.
I lived in South Florida for 40 years, and have now lived outside of Seattle for going on 3 years. I love it here.
You couldn’t pay me enough to leave Washington state.
ETA: I typed this while it’s cold, wet and gray outside.
eclare
@Steve LaBonne:
I will do what I did in 2020 and vote for whoever SC votes for in the primary. I will follow the lead of Black women.
Dan B
@Dangerman: Puget Sound is cold. It’s 40° in winter and 45° in summer so it’s probably 41° in early July. The ferries have covered seating outside with heat lamps on year round.
Steve LaBonne
@eclare: Also a good plan.
VeniceRiley
IDK, taking my view from black women. No fight. Starve them of attention. It’s futile to stand in the face of their fake “I’m the actual victim! Memememe!” rage.
Gretchen
@Lobo: That’s a really smart summary. And that’s one thing that gives me comfort: Trump isn’t the leader of a political movement. He’s a cult leader, and cults usually don’t survive the loss of their cult leader. He’s not in great health; we haven’t really heard from him since the election, and I think we may be in a Weekend at Bernie’s situation. They’re getting their roster of incompetents and losers into place, but the infighting is going to be something.
Michael Cain
I live in Fort Collins, and was recently reading the large detailed report the local power authority wrote on their efforts to convert to 100% no-carbon. Their worst-case event was the “three-day dark calm”. Such events happen, statistically, less than once per year.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I don’t normally comment, link to or otherwise participate in anything I/P…but, just saw that Hair Furor has nominated Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel. One blurb from that bastard’s opener:
I saw this bastard at Ephesus in 2018 where he was leading one of his Holy Land Cruises. Totally blindsided by the encounter and surreal as hell.
Trollhattan
@WereBear:
“death cloth”
Reminds me of college days. My skiing friends all wore Levi’s on the slopes and would empty a can of Scotchguard on them before heading up the hill. Appearances to keep up, and all.
Any Californians remember “Ski Bare”?
Gretchen
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: OMG. I keep seeing these nominations and thinking they’re a joke Kristi Noem at Homeland Security? End Times believer as the ambassador to Israel? This can’t be happening.
cain
@cmorenc:
Funny story, I was visiting San Diego, my parents were there for a short time living in an apartment. The first time I was there, everybody was kind of rude and short tempered. I came again another time and everybody was happy and it was all light rainbows in the same store – A Trader Joe’s.. which normally is always a happy place.
I figured out the difference between the two days was that it was raining for a few days there one trip and then it was sunny and great weather the 2nd time.
It makes a difference with a lot of people. Portland definitely is dreary, but the weather patterns have changed and we get more sunshine than we did in the old days.
When I first came to Portland about 30 years ago – we did not see the sun for 3 months. I shit you not. I think we got a little bit here and there for a few minutes. Then in March, you get one day of sunshine and it stays with you all the way till May. That was the worst.. I can go for months without sunshine, but once I get a taste of it having to wait till as late as July to see it again.. pure torture.
Gretchen
I grew up in Detroit and spent years in Chicago. I would get low every September anticipating grey, cold, dark, depressing weather until April. My first winter in Kansas City I thought, you call that a winter? There were warmish, sunny days even in January. I was astonished to realize that seasonal depression didn’t have to be a thing.
Michael Cain
Three of the four major global weather models have a cat 2-3 storm hitting Florida straight-on next week, landfall around Ft. Myers. That’s a long ways out in time for the models, but they’ve been quite good this year.
John S.
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I suspect the right-wing Orthodox Jews will be delighted by the pick.
zhena gogolia
@John S.: So glad the protestors spent the campaign screaming at Harris.
Trollhattan
@cain:
I hear you re. the never-appearing sun. CA’s Central Valley used to endure Tule Fog, sometimes for weeks at a time. A typical day: noon 42 degrees and 1 mile visibility, midnight 38 degrees and 0 visibility. The fog would just squat its ass at ground level and rise to some extent, during “day.” Except when it never lifted and the multi-car collisions were spectacular.
It probably still happens in the southern San Joaquin, Bakersfield and such, but not to the north. We’ve paved our way to success!
Note for the subject, in general.
Betty Cracker
@Michael Cain: Fuck the disorganized mass of clouds in the Caribbean, fuck any potential hurricanes and fuck three of the four weather models!
Trollhattan
@Gretchen:
Noem will keep us all safe from dogs, believe you me.
cain
@Old School:
Well, not sure if a humidifier will help since the air is already humid and you’re asking the air to absorb more moisture from the humidifier.
LIkely, a dehumidifier is the answer.
cain
@Gretchen:
I’m only going to laugh as the rest of the world will as well. It’s all set up for a circular firing squad with each other.
Will look forward to editorials screaming at Dems in light of the problems.
cain
@Betty Cracker:
I hope we don’t have the earthquakes that we’ve been predicting, cuz we are on our own here in the west coast.
Betty Cracker
@Trollhattan: First good laugh I’ve had all day — thank you!
Old School
@cain:
A humidifier in a dry room. Dehumidifier in a humid room.
mrmoshpotato
@Layer8Problem:
I love a good thunderstorm.
Harrison Wesley
@Betty Cracker: So you’re auditioning for teevee’s new Nihilist Weatherperson?
BlueGuitarist
@Trollhattan:
You know the Charles Darwin, October 1, 1861 letter?
“I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.”
He was even grumpy about orchids.
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/18/163181524/charles-darwin-and-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day
Roughly contemporaneous, John Brown letter to his family Nov. 8, 1859, after sentencing:
“I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day: nor a storm so furious or dreadful as to prevent the return of warm sunshine and a cloudless sky.”
https://archive.wvculture.org/history/jbexhibit/bbsms02-0047.html
The 5 Stairsteps, Ooh Child
https://youtu.be/ov_s6mGXLjQ?si=qH37pJ7b9HaO9woJ
(things are gonna get easier)
Lobo
@Belafon: I respect that. Me and mine just don’t have that luxury at the presidential level. For safety and self-protection my aspirations have to be tempered by who can win. Again, I trust black voices. It is true that a lot of brown and black voices were wondering if America was ready for a female president, much less a black one. The answer was still no!
Harris and Clinton were two of the most qualified people to run. They had to be. Harris ran a great campaign(again not getting into counter factuals.) And a while male repellent, racist, rapist still beats that. I cannot fathom that.
I also cannot fathom that Hatshepsut, was the female king of Egypt (reigned as coregent c. 1479–73 bce and in her own right c. 1473–58 bce) who attained unprecedented power for a woman, adopting the full titles and regalia of a pharaoh. Yes, we are behind Ancient Egypt when it comes to woman and head of state.
NotMax
FYI.
If you happen to reside in or near San Francisco, might want to check this out.
;)
Ohio Mom
@zhena gogolia: When Reagan trounced Mondale, we were too young to be depressed. Back then, if I was broke, no big deal, there’s always more money to be gotten. Now I am old enough to know not everything gets better and that more money may or may not be on its way, best assume it isn’t.
When Trump won the first time, I had a hard time believing it. He was so blatantly unfit. After I digested the fact that he was indeed going to be president, I tried hoping that we could just coast on what Obama left us.
Now I am occupied trying to figure out which of Ohio Family’s hatches can be battened down. It’s discouraging. I feel too old for this.
zhena gogolia
@Ohio Mom:
Me too! I was no spring chicken in 2016, but I had a lot more energy in me.
My God, I just keep thinking how nice it’s been for four years to not have to think about the president constantly. He’s just there doing his job, and his cabinet is filled with good people doing their jobs. Now we’re going to have a lineup of Batman villains without the charm of Cesar Romero and Burgess Meredith.
Ohio Mom
@Lobo: TPM/Josh Marshall and our very own Omnes, the two most level-headed men on the internet.
lowtechcyclist
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
A hearty ‘fuck you’ to anyone who voted against Harris on account of their alleged concern for Palestinians.
@Gretchen:
I wonder for how many years Huckabee has believed the End Times were imminent.
Ohio Mom
@John S.: And right-wing non-Orthodox Jews — they are out-numbered by liberal non-orthodox Jews* but they do exist.
Usually referred to as Liberal Jews but liberal Liberal Jews looks like a typo.
knittingbull
@John S.: I hear ya. Lived in Alaska from 1966 to 2013, now outside Seattle and I love running in shorts in 40 degree weather and not freeze my butt. But five years at UAF is GREAT for aurora watching, but only if your dorm room faces away from the main campus
lowtechcyclist
@Harrison Wesley:
Motto: “who the fuck cares if it’s not an ethos?”
Ohio Mom
When Hillary lost, my favorite aunt lamented that she’d always wanted to see a woman president and now she never would. She was right, she died just before Covid.
There were a few moments during that packed primary four years ago when I thought she’d get her wish posthumously, and then again this year with Harris running.
Now I am pretty sure I won’t get to see a woman president, that I won’t be lifting my glass to my aunt’s memory in celebration of that milestone.
But I’m all right with white men forever more, as long as they are Democrats.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
This should be a map of how each precinct voted in NYC:
https://projects.thecity.nyc/election-results-voter-turnout-Harris-Trump-map/
The red areas are where the Hasidic/Orthodox live, or (for Staten Island and the red neighborhoods at the edge of the city) where the white people who voted for Giuliani back in the day live.
NYC’s very Jewish but only the Hasidic/Orthodox voted for Trump.
Aziz, light!
It rains 8 or 9 months in Portland, but lightly. People walk about mostly without umbrellas; a parka serves to weather the drizzle or occasional light shower. The problem is not rain, it’s the almost relentless gray sky through the winter half of the year. Newcomers who are prone to depression have to survive the wettest, darkest months of November and December. It’s an annual test of their capacity to endure.
One way to escape the gray is to drive over to the dry side, past the crest of the Cascade Range.
Summers are dry and beautiful, but disturbingly hotter than they used to be.
Still a great place to call home, considering. So much scenic beauty.
Aziz, light!
@lowtechcyclist:
God anointed Trump to deliver them.
Harrison Wesley
@lowtechcyclist: They were Nazis, Dude?