it's those Russians shooting rockets up in the air.

Or, just maybe, it's climate change. In any case, it's weird and wacky, from my experience.

We're going to get rain and a little snow here in St. Paul, Minnesota this weekend. It's the end of December. It should be all snow. I mean, I'm not disappointed, but...

Meanwhile, folks in California are at a standstill, with major Interstates closed due to snowstorms. Wacky.

But, never mind, January is almost here. Our snow is a'comin'.

It seems that the greatest, most widely-spread talent among human beings, is the destruction of the one planet we (currently) have to live on.

It has been above 70°F all day here. When we left Germany yesterday, it was the equivalent of 35° and raining.

For now, we'll take it.

However, things are changing. We may well not like what they're changing to in the long run, I suspect.

People at home are suddenly buying air conditioners, something unheard of ten years ago. Across the border in France were the first recorded heat deaths recently.

Where we vacation (in the USA), on Cape Cod, the hermit crabs, horseshoe crabs and starfish are gone. There is an overabundance of seals and great white sharks, something also not seen ten years ago. Last year saw the first shark attack fatality in 80 years, and this year saw the first beach closings due to shark sightings.

Mind you, we aren't known for harsh winters, but that was well above average.

Perhaps we have not seen evidence of other technological civilizations in the universe because they all kill themselves off just as soon as they acquire the ability to do so.

This has been predicted for a long time. So, I opted not to subject my offspring or theirs to it. I'm 74. I won't see it.

I started studying the near future predictions in 1965, starting with global population. It looked very grim to me, even then. So, I decided. The warnings were there. We ignored them. Humans do that, it seems. It's too damned bad, for sure. I wish it weren't so.

I've gone from complete disagreement to complete agreement with what you just said. No truer words have never been said than "We have become very clever, but not yet wise." All living species on this planet are threatened by our very existence. From elephants and whales, lions and tigers, insects, small animals and birds in a woods about to be mcmansioned, all have reason to tremble at our approach.

We're not going to colonize other worlds. That's complete science fantasy. Not gonna live on mars and we're never going to another solar system. This is our only world and fucking it up is our modus operandi. It's what we do. Each of us, myself included, consume an astounding amount of stuff, our numbers are growing and we're gonna need more and more. The climate is warming (worsening) and I don't think our feeble attempts, when actually taken, will do much of anything to stop it. And then there's the little issue of nuclear bombs. Does anyone seriously think 1945 will be the last time in human history these things are used? In an increasingly agitated world it's going to happen again and there'll be more than 2.

The way I see it, and I could be dead wrong, we're not going to have a thriving civilization on Earth in the year 3020. Somewhere along the line we're going to cause a catastrophe that will reset us back to a Walking Dead sort of world. After that, it might take a long time, but eventually we'll get to the point where we can kill ourselves again. And we'll do it.

Maybe, somewhere in the universe, there is, was, or will be, a civilization able to be good stewards of their peaceful home planet and also achieve interstellar travel. They'll be different than us. Something in their dna will enable this kind of benevolent progress. Something we don't have in our dna.

We have developed a truly amazing world wide information storage and sharing system that would enable us to magnify our collective intellects a thousand fold and we use it to spread gossip, share photos of what we had for lunch, and send cute cat videos to everyone of our "friends" (A word which, itself, has been made meaningless by social media).

A very few of us are capable of amazing accomplishments. People like Mozart, Einstein, Gandhi, and a long list of others. A very few of us are capable of staggering violence and cruelty, and there's no need to list those. But the vast majority of us are concerned only with the comforts of the moment and, myself included, will never be anything more than mediocre.

61 forecast hi for Monday.

Everyone will get slammed at some point or another.

but highs persist in the 40s at least til Jan. 10 when 'wintry mix' forecast, and rain on and off starting Dec. 29.

Way out of the ordinary. Christmas is so much prettier when there is snow everywhere.

a foot of snow in mid-month. Almost all of it is gone now. Very strange. I've only been in MN for 15 years, but this is the first time I've seen that happen. There's a huge trough in the jet stream in the Southwestern US right now. Very unusual for this time of year.

More severe storms have been seen in the past couple of years. More erratic weather patterns, too. It's a little scary, really.

lime disease in Ontario. Not good.

Very unusual for this time of year. Going to be in the mid-40's for the next week. Usually it is freezing this time of year, which is why I never go out to First Night - way too cold. It's going to rain on NYE/NYD so I still probably won't go since I am still sick and I don't think going out in cold wet weather is going to be helpful, but if it was dry I would consider it.

I can't remember ever seeing that here.

I live in Vegas and my family is in Michigan. The past few days I have been shivering to daily high temps barely making it to the mid 40s while my family has enjoyed temps and rain that are normal for April and May.


Sometimes, just to scare myself, I check out the jet stream here:

https://www.ventusky.com/?p=36.0;-90.2;4&l=wind-500hpa

It has been wobbling all over the place lately.

Uh-oh!

Since the NOAA and NWS sites have been reconstructed I haven't been able to find a good jet stream mapping tool.

To be honest, I got the link from somebody else here on DU, but I've forgotten who (very sorry!).

The important thing is to share knowledge. Since many people (like me) are likely to open a thread when they see your name as the OP, knowledge is shared more and more.

It's open again, but with CHP escorts. My son will be punching through tonight, but the storm has moved on so it should be clear.

well into Florida all too often. What professionals sometimes describe as arctic air.

As for snow in SoCal, though, that's a flashback to the good old days. Upper reaches of the San Gabriel Mountains separating the LA basin from the inland desert were always white each winter, and a couple inches of snow playing hell with traffic in the pass through the mountains to the Central Valley to the north was not uncommon. Every winter 40 years ago we'd have snowflakes without accumulation on our street of tiny lots (carved into a mountain slope near Pasadena overlooking a little normally planting zone 9 valley between the snowless Verdugo Mountains in this picture and the San Gabriels behind, and a couple times there was enough cold and accumulation for our children to make a snowman out of what they could roll from ours and perhaps 2 neighbors' yards.