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

https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/getprod.php?new&prod=XXXAFDMTR&wfo=mtr

by apsec112 • 6 years ago

125 128 6 years ago

wrh.noaa.gov

swayvil• 6 years ago

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.

112358132134552• 6 years ago

It's called (human-induced) climate changes

ed25519FUUU2• 6 years ago

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?

Izkata2• 6 years ago

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...

unemphysbro2• 6 years ago

I recently moved from champaign to the bay area.

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

huy-nguyen• 6 years ago

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

ak217• 6 years ago

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

40four4• 6 years ago

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?

samdixon• 6 years ago

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.

unemphysbro2• 6 years ago

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

The storm was a welcome surprise.

vikramkr2• 6 years ago

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?

rriepe2• 6 years ago

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

vikramkr2• 6 years ago

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?

jml7c5• 6 years ago

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...

vitaflo• 6 years ago

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.

mjrpes• 6 years ago

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!"

sizzle2• 6 years ago

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

craftinator• 6 years ago

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.

jonwinstanley• 6 years ago

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.

simonbarker87• 6 years ago

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!!!

seizethecheese3• 6 years ago

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

aaomidi2• 6 years ago

MILD SUMMER?

We've been breaking records...

And we don't have AC either really

gvjddbnvdrbv3• 6 years ago

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.

verst3• 6 years ago

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

sci_prog• 6 years ago

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

TomVDB• 6 years ago

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.

SirYandi• 6 years ago

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.

pmontra2• 6 years ago

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.)

Aeolun• 6 years ago

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.

FuckButtons• 6 years ago

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.

fastball• 6 years ago

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.

ghouse3• 6 years ago

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.

plorkyeran• 6 years ago

The median number of lightning strikes per year is zero.

samcheng3• 6 years ago

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.

vmception• 6 years ago

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.

Redoubts• 6 years ago

Yeah seriously. This gave me flashbacks to Boston.

kurthr2• 6 years ago

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...

samcheng3• 6 years ago

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?

ianai• 6 years ago

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.

dehrmann4• 6 years ago

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

Fishysoup2• 6 years ago

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.

WarOnPrivacy• 6 years ago

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?

detaro• 6 years ago

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

stonogo• 6 years ago

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?

wolfgang42• 6 years ago

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”.

chrisamiller• 6 years ago

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...

ghouse3• 6 years ago

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.

jeffbee• 6 years ago

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.

gvjddbnvdrbv3• 6 years ago

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.

gretch• 6 years ago

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"

verst3• 6 years ago

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.

WalterBright2• 6 years ago

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?

p1mrx• 6 years ago

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

booi• 6 years ago

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

ed25519FUUU2• 6 years ago

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...

ghouse3• 6 years ago

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.

lawguy• 6 years ago

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.

dehrmann4• 6 years ago

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

sliken3• 6 years ago

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.

beamatronic3• 6 years ago

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

bleepblorp• 6 years ago

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.

WalterBright2• 6 years ago

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.

40four4• 6 years ago

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.

noncoml• 6 years ago

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

HN is so SF Bay centric sometimes

verst3• 6 years ago

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.

trimbo• 6 years ago

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...

kurthr2• 6 years ago

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...

btilly3• 6 years ago

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.

40four4• 6 years ago

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!

Thorrez2• 6 years ago

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

pmontra2• 6 years ago

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

yummypaint• 6 years ago

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...

SubiculumCode• 6 years ago

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

Fishysoup2• 6 years ago

I think it was the unpredictable turns in weather.

neilv3• 6 years ago

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).

dmoy2• 6 years ago

Language evolves

Linguistic prescriptivism is usually a losing endeavor.

meroes• 6 years ago

since at least 2002

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

taeric• 6 years ago

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

nickysielicki• 6 years ago

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.

dahart4• 6 years ago

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.

dahart4• 6 years ago

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.

neilv3• 6 years ago

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.

b34r• 6 years ago

Gusty wind gusts

ChuckMcM• 6 years ago

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.

samcheng3• 6 years ago

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...

rediguanayum• 6 years ago

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)

booleanbetrayal• 6 years ago

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...

IAmGraydon2• 6 years ago

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.

spacephysics• 6 years ago

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

eXpl0it3r• 6 years ago

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.

sliken3• 6 years ago

Normal passenger planes provide significant data collection for weather predictions?

IAmGraydon2• 6 years ago

Interesting! Thanks for that.

LargoLasskhyfv2• 6 years ago

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.

supernova87a• 6 years ago

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.

sizzle2• 6 years ago

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.

LargoLasskhyfv2• 6 years ago

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?

stunt• 6 years ago

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.

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

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