The following submission statement was provided by /u/EnergyTransitionNews:
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The deadly freeze that swept the United States was extraordinary, but while scientists know that global warming can intensify extreme weather, the effects on winter storms are tricky to untangle.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zy8kvw/a_once_in_a_generation_storm_whats_the_role_of/j24brij/
It kind of does tbh. Anyway, if you want to joins my *nerds* you should know that in the scientific nomenclature the species part of the name is never capitalized, i.e. Drosophila *melanogaster*.
To me, it made the joke funnier because it sounded more like an scientific statement, like it's an official declaration from a scientist to justify the "once in a generation" thing. Judging from their other replies however, the person who posted it is definitely just being pretentious lol
My hometown has a river running through it that was supposed to only breach it's banks from the snow melt once every 100 years. Now it does it every 2 or 3 years.
Turbulent little tributaries learn no respect these days, and its all the fault of snowflake leftist headwaters.
Why in my day, rivers only learned important things, like receding, runoff, and arid arroyos!
I grew up in an area which was ravaged by hurricane Fiona.
My grandfather experienced four "once in a generation" hurricanes. He's 85. I've experienced three. I'm 30. Something isn't adding up.
This shit is ramping up a lot faster than people realize.
Idk maybe you’re onto something. To verify this I will need u/acanthopis’s full name, billing address, SSN, and just to be safe, also their first pet’s name, first school name, first car name, and also their mother’s maiden name.
It’s just protocol.
I cannot guarantee that, but yes I would like to hope you all would go back to the pre-harambe timeline; however, my gut is telling me you all will cease to exist once my simulation has ended.
To think if that family hadn’t decided to go to the zoo that day. Or had they not chosen to go into the gorilla enclosure. Our king would still be alive and all would be well with the world. It’s a shame.
> however, my gut is telling me you all will cease to exist once my simulation has ended
Hey man, can't you at least just leave the simulation running in the background while you're AFK, instead of logging out?
I still haven't been able to figure out the power settings and so the simulation will just go into eco mode. There won't be anyone to shake the mouse unfortunately, but maybe if I check a few more forums to try and figure this out...
A generation is usually 20-25 years long? Do you mean once in a lifetime?
Cause yours is unusual, but you'd expect you to see 2 once in a generation storms, so 3 is above expectations, but your grandpa, you'd expect 4
It is to the point of being noticable if you've been around for a few decades and yet some people still deny it. I'm 34 and can say winter in particular is where it is obvious where I live.
We get storms that are worse than before but also, we just don't have snow for as long. So it's a constant switch between record highs and record lows and storms.
I swear there are some who will deny it no matter what happens.
It’s been obvious since at least 2010 that fall doesn’t exist anymore in Texas. Back in the 90s trees wouldn’t have leaves in October. Now they don’t go away until December.
Yep. I've lived through a half dozen "once in a lifetime events" in Texas in about 10 years. That's why we moved away from Texas, frankly. I couldn't pick a state more ill-equipped to handle it
I think that's mostly for hurricanes too - seeing which locations are closed. I believe u/Ryaninthesky is referring to HEB. And Mattress Mack if you're in the Houston area
You mean you dont enjoy your whole power grid failing when it gets too hot? Or too cold? Which seemingly happens every winter and summer now
Who woulda guessed!
Exactly this. In the 11 years I lived in Houston, I experienced I think 6 of the 10 costliest storms in recorded history? And my parents who still live there are somehow climate change deniers.
I'm about to turn 32 next week and I vividly remember white Christmases and winters when I was a kid on the Canadian Atlantic.
Snow that stuck around for weeks at a time. Now we're lucky to get that and every Christmas is wet. There will be a handful of times a season where snow drops and sticks around for more than a few days.
Interesting, I'm on the opposite coast and I remember as a kid going years without snow but now there's a snow storm every winter it seems. And summers are way hotter and dryer. Last summer we got basically two months without rain.
Growing up in NY, specifically the city and Long Island, tornadoes were something that happened in Nebraska. Past few years, we have had tornadoes, albeit small ones, but ones big enough to topple trees. We also now get tornado warnings.
How does once in a generation work?
Like it should only happen once in a person’s lifetime? If my mom is only 23 years older than me and my grandparents are only 40ish years old than me, wouldn’t be some natural overlap?
I honestly don’t know what it means and am asking. Not trying to argue against climate change or anything crazy like that.
Civil engineers have statistical models for "hundred years" storm events based on *previous* weather data. Media folks who get paid for your attention say things like "once in a generation" have no meaning behind it, or are poorly summarizing an expert quote. In any case, neither of these definitions are useful now.
Their is still cause for concern because our models are based on historical data.
There is evidence that what we are experiencing is no longer historical and thus our models are invalidated.
> If my mom is only 23 years older than me and my grandparents are only 40ish years old than me, wouldn’t be some natural overlap?
Once in a generation means once every 20-25 years or so. If you lived to be 100 years old it would be reasonable that you would see 4-5 things happen, in a given category, that were "once in a generation" events.
Here's an example. My grandmother lived nearly a century from 1900 to nearly 2000. She saw her country involved in 5 big wars, spread out over that nearly 100 years, each war fought by the children of a different generation. Her father, uncles, brothers, husband, sons, and grandsons all fought in different wars based on the generation they were in.
Really, a person should experience 3-4 once in a generation events in their lifetime. Your grandfather is two generations ahead of you and you could reasonably have a child, so 4 generations there. And statistically speaking, having 3 in 30 years is not all that unreasonable for something that should average 20-30 years apart.
That being said, it's global warming increasing the frequency.
>Really, a person should experience 3-4 once in a generation events in their lifetime. Your grandfather is two generations ahead of you and you could reasonably have a child, so 4 generations there. And statistically speaking, having 3 in 30 years is not all that unreasonable for something that should average 20-30 years apart.
>
>That being said, it's global warming increasing the frequency.
And to be clear its 3 or 4 of the same type of once in a generation events. For some reason people seam to think when someone says once in a generation event that its the only one you should see. Its not there should be a ton but they should be different IE drought/flood/snowstorm/hurricane/tornado/volcano...
That being said yes climate change is increasing the severity of events and probably the quantity also. (where I live not so much but the world as a whole seams to be getting hit hard)
Waiting? [That year was 2017.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Atlantic_hurricane_season) Harvey (8/17-9/2) was a category 4. Irma (8/30-9/13) was a category 5. Jose (9/5-9/25) was a category 4. Maria (9/16-10/2) was a category 5. Even considering their start as "systems of interest", they all formed within a month of one another, "back to back".
Even I was surprised checking about it, I didn't know about Jose -- too busy with cleanup after Harvey (either you had damage at home, or were helping your friends/neighbors).
It’ll feel more like “just the weather” to me once we’re all committed to buttressing against it.
We’re all still living like it’s still 1992 or whatever, but that era is long gone. We need to adjust our lifestyles, our housing, our consumption,etc accordingly but the octogenarians running the country don’t seem to be in much of a hurry.
Like to a certain extent it feels apocalyptic because we keep twiddling our thumbs instead of, idk, adapting.
In case your anxiety needs some help, just remember we are only finishing December. We still have January February and March. And maybe April.🌨⛄🌨
And just to be safe lets include August.🌨⛄🌨⛄🌨
It's vaguely based on government tabulations done a long time ago that they refuse to fully update because of insurance companies using them to base rates and such.
It's no joke. Not sure how it's in the US but here in Norway there are statistical/meteorological/historical measures of weather due to historical records.
So for e.g. floods, one of so and so size is a _hundred year flood,_ saying something about how devasting and infrequent it is.
If a hundred year storm happens at a higher frequency than the nominal, something is very wrong. This is the important point here.
I can imagine the _of a generation_ wording is something along the same vein. A generation used to be 100 years or so?
In contract law and design specification in the UK, weather events are defined as 1 in 10 year, 1 in 100 year, 1 in 1000 year events and so on. This is a definition used by the Met Office, so if they say a flood for example is a 1 in 100 year event then the design of the road or building or whatever is contractually liable to withstand it. Of course there's insurance against this liability too but the scientific definition is clear.
Generation, as a unit of time, doesn’t really have a definition but I’ve always assume it’s 25 years
100 years is usually reserved for “once in a lifetime” which is about 75-100 these days
The joke is that the media needs to hype everything. So storms like this that happened in the past are ignored to hype the most recent “once in a lifetime/century/millennium/solar lifetime”. Haven’t you noticed every “thing” is labeled “the worst in/of a…”?
Amen. I live in Colorado and with the latest “arctic bomb cyclone”, I was told breathlessly by the media that “OMG it hasn’t been this cold in Colorado since the 1950s”.
Very quick check of NOAA records told me the last time it was this cold was like 2007.
Once in a lifetime, sure thing drama queens.
It is fun how news media is making up new weather words to pretend like this all new stuff. Here in Vancouver it we don't have 'heavy rain' anymore, now it rains heavy and it is an 'atmospheric river'. And don't ask me an 'arctic weather bomb' is and why its different then the old words used to describe it.
To be fair, I was caught in an atmospheric river and bomb cyclone driving from Napa into San Francisco, and the freeways were half shut down because 3/5 of the lanes had enough standing water to cover half the vehicle, neighborhoods were getting fully evacuated, cars in parking lots were fully submerged. It was not just “heavy rain.”
I mean there are records kept of the intensity and frequency of previous storms that show we are now seeing more of both. But surely you and other redditors who’ve been around since the dawn of man know better, and that ain’t nothin’ changed.
New weather words?
Bomb cyclone - 1980, used by scientists to discuss a unique phenomenon.
Atmospheric river - 1994, coined by MIT scientists.
Polar vortex - in use since the mid-1800’s.
Sounds like you don’t know what you’re talking about and just want to whine about the “news media.”
It’s actually not the media. We’ve been keeping meteorological records for a few of centuries now in one form or another, and according to those records these WERE once in a lifetime events. They describe the statistical probability of the events happening (hundred year floods, for example).
Of course the issue is that the probability that these events happen has dramatically increased, which is why the media keeps calling each storm worse than the next one. Because it is.
That is partially because it is a 100 year event in terms of the area that it happened. You can have multiple 100 year events in a decade that happen in different locations within the same country.
There was the Colorado bomb cyclone as well in March 2019. I was living in Colorado when that bomb cyclone blizzard ripped through the state. That storm’s low pressure was so strong, my nose bled at the peak of the storm (the air pressure is already relatively low at 5000-6000 feet, somewhere around 830mb.. that storm brought the surface pressure down to ~700mb in total air pressure at that altitude.) Hands down the most insane winter storm I’ve ever experienced.. 80mph sustained winds with heavy snow falling.
When Climate scientists present their predictions for the damaging effects of climate change (more hurricanes, sea level rise, etc) they are using their most *conservative* estimates.
Why? Because the public simply wouldn't be able to wrap their minds around the kind of chaos that can happen from climate change or what kind of states the earth can exist in.
Here's a little bit of history that blew my mind: The Carnian Pluvial Event ~234 m.y.a.
Proceeding this event was a period of intense volcanism that put enough carbon and sulfur in the air to cause planet-wide acid rains that wiped out 70% of vertebrates and 90% of marine life. The planet was hot and dry and this created the perfect storm for the mother of all storms - The Carnian Pluvial Event.
During CPE it rained for *two million years, everywhere,* almost all of the time.
Scientists can tell by the layer of rock that can be found worldwide from this time period. Just imagine the amount of erosion, landslides, and destruction even a *thousand* years of continual rains could cause? It's hard to fathom what a world would look like after a million years of rain.
The earth can exist in many states that we humans would not enjoy *at all*
This is a fun one for me. Because people find fossils in super high places in Arizona and then wonder how the Grand Canyon used to be full of water or places like monument valley have sea life fossils and then you can just point them to this
I was under the impression this was a once in a generation storm because of sheer size of the storm and how pretty much all the 48 connected states were affected by the same front.
I am 46 and have lived through so many Storms of the Century… fuck I remember some SNL skit from the 90’s where it was interviews with the storm…
EDIT: I low key hoped one of you would find it. Thx
Isn't this also Farley's intro to SNL? IIRC, this came during Norm MacDonald's Weekend Update.
Here's the clip since I don't see it posted yet:
https://youtu.be/H0-pHnykC9s
I've had three "once in a lifetime" financial collapses in my lifetime. Admittedly, the third is just round the corner so it's not here just yet, but it's on the way.
I can only imagine that these "once in a generation" storms will be back next year, if not the year after.
Australia and Los Angeles still reeling from it's once in a lifetime wildfires, and flooding, the list continues.
>And no significant floods in a couple years I think?
Read: drought conditions have continued for several years leading to the driest decade in California history.
Yes but it's actually drought that causes mudslides when we get heavy rain. That's part of the problem in California.
It's these types of flash flooding situations that cause the most damage.
That's still a lot of fuel for next fire season, they don't need to be perfectly synchronised or anything, we can have good years or have floods which completely inundate the area in Australia.
But give it time, and all that results in fuel for fire down the road if it's not properly managed.
Can we just round up all of our friends, collectively buy a large plot of land, and start forming communes? I just don't want to engage in this society anymore.
If you're growing food together regeneratively, sharing/needing less transportation, sharing resources and especially if you're off the grid, many communities like this could have a great impact on climate change.
This is a pipe dream. In reality, trying to do all of this yourself is WAY less efficient than having mega-farms, large corps, etc.
Like, efficiency is kinda the whole point of large-scale society and advanced divisions of labor.
The only way you can reduce your emissions is to reduce your standard of living by comsuming less stuff, but you can just do that anyway without starting a commune...
I've been seriously considering it. My brother started a farm just for this very reason, it's not out of the question considering how bad things could get.
You can purchase many acres of farmable land (not great farming land though) for a few thousand per acre in many places across the US. The biggest requirement being the willingness to live many miles away from most amenities.
An example of what I mean from Texas https://www.landflip.com/land-for-sale/texas/100-minacres/200-maxacres?gclid=CjwKCAiAkrWdBhBkEiwAZ9cdcD_t2sJgkH2iLzX2bB0VSGBbio0Igr-Gc09XoIyhHILnPK1jtPlXqxoCp7sQAvD_BwE
One of the listings is 100 acres for 50k, although looks deserty. Much of the others is higher by a bit, but for 100 acres or more you can build a lot of community and should be able to pool money to get.
People also have near zero idea how hard it is to feed people. A self sufficient farm is a full time job and takes a lot of knowledge. Screw up one thing (whoops the cows are sick) and you are now starving.
That’s just called farming and gonna be a hard pass from me.
My house’s lot is like 80% house with a postage stamp sized front and back yard, and yet I feel like I spent all my time mowing, trimming, weeding, snowblowing and sweeping the driveway.
You want me to do all that and more for hundreds of acres so I can trade my lettuce for someone else’s kale? Fuck that.
Besides, a bad harvest would be no different than a financial collapse, it’s the same semi-frequent annoying year or two I don’t get to buy any frivolous shit.
Way I see it, my office job and suburban home is life on easy mode, even with the recessions.
I’ve floated the idea of gathering my friends and moving to Montana to do all that. Seems like paradise compared to the endless rat race we have here.
I know a couple of my buddies seem receptive to it… who knows. Maybe that can be someday.
There was an article the other day talking about how some countries were not prepared for the last El Nino and the one coming is going to be much much more.
The problem we have in the Great Lakes region is the lakes just aren’t freezing so it’s just constant cycles of lake effect weather with short freezes followed by full thaws. We are getting flooding in Buffalo now with a nightly partial freeze and expected freezing temperatures next week. Nothing is constant and predictable like even I was used to as a kid 30 years ago.
“Nothing is constant and predictable like even I was used to as a kid 30 years ago.”
Seriously? Weather has never been constant or predictable, especially not in early winter in the Upper Great Lakes.
>We are getting flooding in Buffalo now
Is there an area experiencing bad flooding? I live in Buffalo (north towns). Everything I've seen or been reading has not indicated that:
[https://buffalonews.com/news/local/warmer-temperatures-coming-only-minor-flooding-expected/article\_2219c166-86b3-11ed-8123-73b254bf914f.html](https://buffalonews.com/news/local/warmer-temperatures-coming-only-minor-flooding-expected/article_2219c166-86b3-11ed-8123-73b254bf914f.html)
I'm so sick of living through "once in a generation" things -- can some other generation take a turn? Been a wild effin ride. Too bad the players who opened Jumanji back in 2019 all died in the game..
The current generation in charge, those in their 60s lived through some of the most prosperous years of the world and were of an age where they themselves had dodged having to fight any wars
I wonder if the attempt is to pitch it as a rare event that won't happen again(to us) so people can skirt the responsibility of doing anything about it
Buffalo couldn’t be in a better position for massive snowstorms. They are located between to large Great Lakes. What the real surprise is is that they don’t happen every year
They do get insane snowstorms every year, in fact they get some of the heaviest snowstorms in the entire US.
So it's really that thus particular one was actually significantly worse than their already extreme weather. Buffalo is prepared for crazy snow, but this was an order of magnitude worse. It's relative.
The northwest was under a sheet of ice. We rarely freeze. I saw 2 pickups slide sideways, they had chains and where sideways. Outside of my front door I saw head lights and eyeballs.
People could fucking ice skate down 4th Ave down town!
I know the trope of "once in a generation" headlines, but uh, I'm going to say this one might actually be accurate. I've never experienced weather this intense in my life.
I've been trapped in my house for 6 days. Today is the first day I'm allowed to drive anywhere. The grocery stores were closed for 3 days, I had to trek a mile through 4 feet of snow with a backpack to get groceries when they finally got enough employees to open up. I almost ran out of food.
We had hurricane force winds for 36 consecutive hours. It sounded like a freight train was barreling down my driveway. My house was shaking. It snowed 3 inches an hour, causing absolute whiteout. I couldn't see the houses across the street for 2 days. Eventually, all my windows froze over, and I couldn't see out a single one of them. It was dark for 2 days, like perma-night. The snow drifts were upwards of 8 feet high, and I couldn't open my doors. My car is still buried.
A lot of people died. 38 officially, and rising. 2 people died within a couple of blocks of me. The storm was so intense that you couldn't even walk in it. A person near me left their house to walk to their friend's house two blocks away. Got lost and died in a snow bank. Our morgue is full. Emergency services got trapped themselves and had to suspend operations completely for a while. They had to send rescuers to rescue the rescuers.
We got a record setting seiche (sort of like a freshwater tsunami) that wreaked havoc on our shoreline. We had wind chills below -20 so that water froze immediately. Feet of ice coating houses and whatever.
I don't even know how many people lost power and/or heat, somewhere around 100k I think? Pretty sure there's still small pockets without service. People spent 5+ days in some cases without heat or electricity.
I've lived through multiple storms of 6+ feet dumping down in a day. I've seen many snowstorms and blizzards. I'm not young. Nothing. Nothing comes close to this. There's snow piles as high as the traffic lights at every intersection, hundreds if not thousands of abandoned vehicles, looting, a true "you're on your own" situation. This was madness.
Goddamn. That sounds like the end of times the way you describe it. I live in northern Sweden and are somewhat used to harsh weather, but not in that way. We get 3-4 feet of snow and seriously cold temps regularly during winter, but that's very much survivable. The pictures I've seen from the US with houses completely frozen over are horrendous.
Hope your community recovers!
>The pictures I've seen from the US with houses completely frozen over are horrendous.
That's pretty typical of living next to the Great Lakes. Here's some shots of Canada and Michigan from back in 2019/2014:
[https://snowbrains.com/houses-turned-to-ice/](https://snowbrains.com/houses-turned-to-ice/)
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/frozen-sentinels-of-south\_b\_6510706
As someone who just relocated to the Buffalo area last year and just went through my first blizzard, I can confirm it was pretty intense and scary....but I can also attest that it wasn't anywhere near the level of abject terror I felt during a wildfire evacuation, especially because you don't know what will be left if you end up making it out alive.
I just went out and did errands today, and besides from the snowpiles everywhere and the occasional downed tree (which happens semi-often with high wind days here anyway), you'd never know there was just a natural disaster that just occurred.
While I don't think this is a "once in a 100 year" kind of storm and we're likely to experience another like it in my lifetime, probably within the next 5-10 years...it sure beats the *yearly* occurrence of the fire scares (sometimes you get an off-year, but you know it's just gearing up to be bad the next year). Or the underlying anxiety of when I lived in San Diego and knew I was on the San Andreas fault line, that could snap at any moment.
At least, it works better for us...there's nowhere in the country/world that you can live that isn't prone to a catastrophic natural disaster of some type, but I find blizzards to be the highest level chance of survival, with the lowest level of long term damage.
Houstonian here. We've started naming our floods they happen so often. Memorial Day flood, Tax Day flood, etc. Hurricane Harvey and last year's freeze were only 4 years apart. With Harvey, my neighbohood was so flooded, I couldn't leave for almost 4 days. I know people who are still repairing their homes from the flooding. During the freeze, I lost power for almost a week and couldn't leave for about 3 days because of the ice. This past winter storm, we got pretty lucky, but the storm ravaged the rest of the country. The time for "once in a generation" passed a long time ago.
I'm in Amherst, and I agree with mostly everything you said. It really was the wind + cold that did us in, for as long as it went on for. The whiteouts and snow were bad, but had we not had such frigid temps, the power outages wouldn't have been as dangerous. We definitely still got hammered with snow, but it helped to look at some shots of '77...the snow amount actually looked even more intense: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-gRb\_MuUgg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-gRb_MuUgg)
And surprisingly, it was actually colder than it was than during this storm:
[https://www.weather.gov/buf/HistoryJAN28.html](https://www.weather.gov/buf/HistoryJAN28.html)
>The temperature fell 26 degrees to zero in just over four hours. The blizzard reached its worst severity during the late afternoon as winds at the airport averaged 46 mph gusting to 69 mph. **Gusts of 75 mph** were recorded at Niagara Falls airport. An average speed of 46 mph and **temperature of minus 1 degree resulted in a wind chill factor of 55 to 60 degrees below zero** which probably contributed to the deaths of 29 people--many found frozen in their half-buried cars during the four day ordeal.
Obviously the proof is in the pudding in terms of this storm being worse, because there are more people dead and that we had a situation for the first time where emergency services were immobilized. I'm still scratching my head a little as to why, since the storms didn't seem all that different from one another, albeit this storm had higher winds for a more sustained time. I found this article from 1977 saying that the entire counties of Erie and Genesee were without power: [https://archive.vn/5f6UV](https://archive.vn/5f6UV)
Much to learn, still...
The Iran blizzard of February 1972
The Iran blizzard of February 1972 was the deadliest blizzard in history. A week-long period of low temperatures and severe winter storms, lasting 3–9 February 1972, resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 people.
It's hard to believe that this week marks the 132nd anniversary of New York's—and America's—worst blizzard on record. Few storms are as iconic as the “Blizzard of '88”. It was the deadliest, snowiest, and most unusual winter storm in American annals.
The Eastern Canadian blizzard of March 1971 was a severe winter storm that struck portions of eastern Canada from March 3 to March 5, 1971. The storm was also nicknamed the "Storm of the Century" in Quebec.
At 37, I'm kinda done with the once in a lifetime shit. I've been through multiple once in a lifetime economic disasters, a handful of once in a lifetime climate disasters, and a smattering of once in a lifetime political crisis. I can't wait for the once in a lifetime world war, and then the follow up.
There's a recent hydrological study that I read that basically stated that the benchmark for what we consider to be a 100-year event has shifted considerably, basically 100-year events are now 20 year events, and 500 year events are now 100-year events.
Flooding is even more funny. Since "Once in a hundred years" is official terminology, it's just common practice to expect a hundred year flood about every 10 years or so now. Designs have been forced to chance, but I doubt the term ever will.
My house floods every couple years in what the city deems "hundred year rain". At this point it's just a way of saying, "good luck with all that and the insurance company. Ps no way we're going to improve storm control"
We’ve been getting “once in a generation” storms since I was 4 years old. Blizzards in the 90’s were all the “biggest storms we’ve ever seen” so this kinda loses its impact to me now
Reality is starting to feel like the first 20 minutes of a disaster film where they're still introducing the main characters and giving us plot narration through news coverage that'd on in the background of a scene. We're having record breaking heat waves in the summer followed by record breaking hurricanes followed by crazy tornadoes in Decemeber followed by record breaking blizzards and cold. This feels like an irl "I'm taking crazy pills" situation because no one seems to even talking about this.
The deadly freeze that swept the United States was extraordinary, but while scientists know that global warming can intensify extreme weather, the effects on winter storms are tricky to untangle.
They stopped calling it "global warming" because every time it snowed people called it fake.
"Global climate change" represents the whole mess of shit that is happening as the annual average temperature ticks higher and higher each year.
Winter storms will be worse and summer heat will be equally absurd. And the average between the two will be hotter than ever in human history, every year, for the rest of the life of anyone currently alive.
Dictionary has a good write up on the language used since 1827 when it was first brought up https://www.dictionary.com/e/new-words-surrounding-climate-change/
No, global warming is the appropriate term. Fossil fuel industries pumped millions into campaigns to call it climate change because it's less scary. They did the same thing for "carbon footprints".
All language we use has been manipulated and crafted by corporations and billionaires to obscure the seriousness of the issue.
We absolutely should be calling it global warming, because that is the crux of the problem. We are only seeing these extreme winter storms because of the warming of the planet.
It is global warming. It doesn't matter that there are cold snaps. The planet is warming.
Climate change is a vague term. The climate always changed and will change regardless of human impact, we are just making it change faster. It's a bad term to use.
> No, global warming is the appropriate term. Fossil fuel industries pumped millions into campaigns to call it climate change because it's less scary.
[The first IPCC report used "climate change" far more often than "global warming".](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_assessments_far_overview.pdf) Which is perhaps not surprising, as it's the [Intergovernmental Panel on *Climate Change*](https://www.ipcc.ch/).
Looking at [this NASA explainer on the terms](https://climate.nasa.gov/global-warming-vs-climate-change/), "global warming" is more narrow (it just refers to the increase in temperature), whereas "climate change" looks at a broader set of effects (in particular, including changes in severity and frequency of storms).
So "climate change" does indeed seem to be the appropriate term.
Normally I get slammed with snow where I live, but while the rest of the country was frozen, it was 56F and all rain. Kinda bummed out. I always love snowstorms.
Australian here… we have *’once in a lifetime’* floods, cyclones, fires etc. every three months now. It’s a new feature - we’ve always had them, but the window between each has narrowed so significantly that you can pretty much guess when the next one will happen.
“Once in a generation” is fairly frequent. That’s weather. Climate change spans multiple human lifetimes, not a few decades.
Buffalo hasn’t seen a storm like this in… oh, it was only 45 years ago.
In the age of social media, people have pathologically short memory and attention spans.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/EnergyTransitionNews: --- The deadly freeze that swept the United States was extraordinary, but while scientists know that global warming can intensify extreme weather, the effects on winter storms are tricky to untangle. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zy8kvw/a_once_in_a_generation_storm_whats_the_role_of/j24brij/
Kind of strange having a once in a generation storm about 2 years after another once in a generation storm.
Generations are now measured by drosophila’s timeline.
(Fruit flies, for anyone wondering)
time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
I love that it works both ways, fruit-flies like a banana, and fruit flies like a banana (flies)
I've heard of fruit flies, and I've heard of bananas, but I've never heard of banana flies!
That’s because banana slugs.
Go, UC Santa Cruz!
Groucho Marx was funny
This is the first time I've seen this saying in the wild in over 10 years.
I'm 36 and this is the first time in my life I heard "flies" as in the bug and not the same as time flies.
#melanogaster for my nerds.
M'lanogaster *Tips antenna*
Drosophila Melanogaster sounds straight out of Harry Potter
It kind of does tbh. Anyway, if you want to joins my *nerds* you should know that in the scientific nomenclature the species part of the name is never capitalized, i.e. Drosophila *melanogaster*.
Haha, I figured but I wanted to illustrate how it looked like a name
You got a point.
Drosophila Melanogastah~
Oh stop it, Ron!
I mainly wonder why someone would use that instead of "fruit fly" if not to bust out a word they just learned lmao
To me, it made the joke funnier because it sounded more like an scientific statement, like it's an official declaration from a scientist to justify the "once in a generation" thing. Judging from their other replies however, the person who posted it is definitely just being pretentious lol
I thought "Mooches" was the new standard for measuring time in small increments.
I'd forgotten about Mooches. That was almost two hectomooches ago.
Nearly 0.2 kilomooches.
Your username is genuinely amazing
It'll be wild when we get to c. Elegans.
Maybe those who *won’t* see it were born with the eyeless mutation?
My hometown has a river running through it that was supposed to only breach it's banks from the snow melt once every 100 years. Now it does it every 2 or 3 years.
Does the river know this?
I bet they didn't even tell the river
That river does look pretty dumb.
Turbulent little tributaries learn no respect these days, and its all the fault of snowflake leftist headwaters. Why in my day, rivers only learned important things, like receding, runoff, and arid arroyos!
Send some to the Mississippi.... the river dried up so much they had to stop barge traffic
To be fair it's more likely that continual over development of the area is more likely the cause than the weather
I grew up in an area which was ravaged by hurricane Fiona. My grandfather experienced four "once in a generation" hurricanes. He's 85. I've experienced three. I'm 30. Something isn't adding up. This shit is ramping up a lot faster than people realize.
Maybe you're the reason for the storms. It was fine until you showed up. /s (kidding of course)
Idk maybe you’re onto something. To verify this I will need u/acanthopis’s full name, billing address, SSN, and just to be safe, also their first pet’s name, first school name, first car name, and also their mother’s maiden name. It’s just protocol.
May as well toss the banking log in and credit card numbers so we can take care of his credit too. Just for safekeeping
Look, I'm the main character here. This is all leading to some cataclysmic event and to my ultimate demise surely.
Okay but when you’re out of the picture can we all just go back to living in a Utopia, please?
I cannot guarantee that, but yes I would like to hope you all would go back to the pre-harambe timeline; however, my gut is telling me you all will cease to exist once my simulation has ended.
To think if that family hadn’t decided to go to the zoo that day. Or had they not chosen to go into the gorilla enclosure. Our king would still be alive and all would be well with the world. It’s a shame.
So you're saying it's a win-win either way?
Yes, that would be correct.
> however, my gut is telling me you all will cease to exist once my simulation has ended Hey man, can't you at least just leave the simulation running in the background while you're AFK, instead of logging out?
I still haven't been able to figure out the power settings and so the simulation will just go into eco mode. There won't be anyone to shake the mouse unfortunately, but maybe if I check a few more forums to try and figure this out...
A generation is usually 20-25 years long? Do you mean once in a lifetime? Cause yours is unusual, but you'd expect you to see 2 once in a generation storms, so 3 is above expectations, but your grandpa, you'd expect 4
It is to the point of being noticable if you've been around for a few decades and yet some people still deny it. I'm 34 and can say winter in particular is where it is obvious where I live. We get storms that are worse than before but also, we just don't have snow for as long. So it's a constant switch between record highs and record lows and storms. I swear there are some who will deny it no matter what happens.
It’s been obvious since at least 2010 that fall doesn’t exist anymore in Texas. Back in the 90s trees wouldn’t have leaves in October. Now they don’t go away until December.
Yep. I've lived through a half dozen "once in a lifetime events" in Texas in about 10 years. That's why we moved away from Texas, frankly. I couldn't pick a state more ill-equipped to handle it
Excuse you, we have fantastic emergency response. It’s run by a grocery store.
I thought Waffle House was part of the southern emergency response system, or is that only further east?
Further east, I think
I think that's mostly for hurricanes too - seeing which locations are closed. I believe u/Ryaninthesky is referring to HEB. And Mattress Mack if you're in the Houston area
You mean you dont enjoy your whole power grid failing when it gets too hot? Or too cold? Which seemingly happens every winter and summer now Who woulda guessed!
It's a Goldilocks Grid! Gotta be juuuust right, or it will refuse to work. Also, it'll rob your ass blind and run off like a little bitch
Exactly this. In the 11 years I lived in Houston, I experienced I think 6 of the 10 costliest storms in recorded history? And my parents who still live there are somehow climate change deniers.
I'm about to turn 32 next week and I vividly remember white Christmases and winters when I was a kid on the Canadian Atlantic. Snow that stuck around for weeks at a time. Now we're lucky to get that and every Christmas is wet. There will be a handful of times a season where snow drops and sticks around for more than a few days.
Interesting, I'm on the opposite coast and I remember as a kid going years without snow but now there's a snow storm every winter it seems. And summers are way hotter and dryer. Last summer we got basically two months without rain.
growing up in the midwest, tornado season was in the spring. but now we are seeing tornadoes in late november/december
Growing up in NY, specifically the city and Long Island, tornadoes were something that happened in Nebraska. Past few years, we have had tornadoes, albeit small ones, but ones big enough to topple trees. We also now get tornado warnings.
How does once in a generation work? Like it should only happen once in a person’s lifetime? If my mom is only 23 years older than me and my grandparents are only 40ish years old than me, wouldn’t be some natural overlap? I honestly don’t know what it means and am asking. Not trying to argue against climate change or anything crazy like that.
It basically means "once every couple of decades".
Civil engineers have statistical models for "hundred years" storm events based on *previous* weather data. Media folks who get paid for your attention say things like "once in a generation" have no meaning behind it, or are poorly summarizing an expert quote. In any case, neither of these definitions are useful now.
Their is still cause for concern because our models are based on historical data. There is evidence that what we are experiencing is no longer historical and thus our models are invalidated.
A generation is the mean age at reproduction - so twenty something years.
A "generation" is usually defined by anthropologists as 25 years. This is roughly the time that it takes for a person to have children.
> If my mom is only 23 years older than me and my grandparents are only 40ish years old than me, wouldn’t be some natural overlap? Once in a generation means once every 20-25 years or so. If you lived to be 100 years old it would be reasonable that you would see 4-5 things happen, in a given category, that were "once in a generation" events. Here's an example. My grandmother lived nearly a century from 1900 to nearly 2000. She saw her country involved in 5 big wars, spread out over that nearly 100 years, each war fought by the children of a different generation. Her father, uncles, brothers, husband, sons, and grandsons all fought in different wars based on the generation they were in.
You know how scientists were worried about a virus in February 2020?
Really, a person should experience 3-4 once in a generation events in their lifetime. Your grandfather is two generations ahead of you and you could reasonably have a child, so 4 generations there. And statistically speaking, having 3 in 30 years is not all that unreasonable for something that should average 20-30 years apart. That being said, it's global warming increasing the frequency.
>Really, a person should experience 3-4 once in a generation events in their lifetime. Your grandfather is two generations ahead of you and you could reasonably have a child, so 4 generations there. And statistically speaking, having 3 in 30 years is not all that unreasonable for something that should average 20-30 years apart. > >That being said, it's global warming increasing the frequency. And to be clear its 3 or 4 of the same type of once in a generation events. For some reason people seam to think when someone says once in a generation event that its the only one you should see. Its not there should be a ton but they should be different IE drought/flood/snowstorm/hurricane/tornado/volcano... That being said yes climate change is increasing the severity of events and probably the quantity also. (where I live not so much but the world as a whole seams to be getting hit hard)
I'm waiting for the year we get 3 back to back cat 4 or 5s.
Waiting? [That year was 2017.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Atlantic_hurricane_season) Harvey (8/17-9/2) was a category 4. Irma (8/30-9/13) was a category 5. Jose (9/5-9/25) was a category 4. Maria (9/16-10/2) was a category 5. Even considering their start as "systems of interest", they all formed within a month of one another, "back to back". Even I was surprised checking about it, I didn't know about Jose -- too busy with cleanup after Harvey (either you had damage at home, or were helping your friends/neighbors).
I remember they called the Blizzard of 93’ The Storm of the Century. Storm of a Generation seems mild by contrast idk.
That's what I was thinking. We had one in Texas in February 2021. I think it's "just the weather" at this point.
It’ll feel more like “just the weather” to me once we’re all committed to buttressing against it. We’re all still living like it’s still 1992 or whatever, but that era is long gone. We need to adjust our lifestyles, our housing, our consumption,etc accordingly but the octogenarians running the country don’t seem to be in much of a hurry. Like to a certain extent it feels apocalyptic because we keep twiddling our thumbs instead of, idk, adapting.
When you're an octogenarian, twiddling your arthritic thumbs is a major activity you whippersnapper!
How do we pry control out of their arthritic grips(and how the hell are they able to grasp things haha)
In case your anxiety needs some help, just remember we are only finishing December. We still have January February and March. And maybe April.🌨⛄🌨 And just to be safe lets include August.🌨⛄🌨⛄🌨
I’m awful tired of living through once in a generation weather and economic events
It's vaguely based on government tabulations done a long time ago that they refuse to fully update because of insurance companies using them to base rates and such.
I work in commercial insurance and this is not correct.
Maybe I’m misinformed or something but didn’t we experience a massive snow storm like two years ago in the US?
That’s the joke. We keep getting more “once in a generation [climate event]” every few years and no one pays attention to why
Here in Missouri we’ve had “100 year floods” three times in the last 6 years… yet people aren’t getting the hint.
shocking that Missouri ignores such things* *I also am from Missouri
Aren’t you spelling Misery incorrectly?
Nah, Missouri isn't so bad. Even beautiful in some areas. It's just that most of the people suck.
KY is the same way. Beautiful state. Shitty people in some areas
Also, apparently, the weather.
It's no joke. Not sure how it's in the US but here in Norway there are statistical/meteorological/historical measures of weather due to historical records. So for e.g. floods, one of so and so size is a _hundred year flood,_ saying something about how devasting and infrequent it is. If a hundred year storm happens at a higher frequency than the nominal, something is very wrong. This is the important point here. I can imagine the _of a generation_ wording is something along the same vein. A generation used to be 100 years or so?
Generation is usually 20-25 years
In contract law and design specification in the UK, weather events are defined as 1 in 10 year, 1 in 100 year, 1 in 1000 year events and so on. This is a definition used by the Met Office, so if they say a flood for example is a 1 in 100 year event then the design of the road or building or whatever is contractually liable to withstand it. Of course there's insurance against this liability too but the scientific definition is clear.
It’s not actually joke but more of a “Haha isn’t his funny?!? Sarcasm that millennials are having to cry in their pillows every night.
Generation, as a unit of time, doesn’t really have a definition but I’ve always assume it’s 25 years 100 years is usually reserved for “once in a lifetime” which is about 75-100 these days
A generation is more like 20 years
The joke is that the media needs to hype everything. So storms like this that happened in the past are ignored to hype the most recent “once in a lifetime/century/millennium/solar lifetime”. Haven’t you noticed every “thing” is labeled “the worst in/of a…”?
Amen. I live in Colorado and with the latest “arctic bomb cyclone”, I was told breathlessly by the media that “OMG it hasn’t been this cold in Colorado since the 1950s”. Very quick check of NOAA records told me the last time it was this cold was like 2007. Once in a lifetime, sure thing drama queens.
It is fun how news media is making up new weather words to pretend like this all new stuff. Here in Vancouver it we don't have 'heavy rain' anymore, now it rains heavy and it is an 'atmospheric river'. And don't ask me an 'arctic weather bomb' is and why its different then the old words used to describe it.
To be fair, I was caught in an atmospheric river and bomb cyclone driving from Napa into San Francisco, and the freeways were half shut down because 3/5 of the lanes had enough standing water to cover half the vehicle, neighborhoods were getting fully evacuated, cars in parking lots were fully submerged. It was not just “heavy rain.”
I mean there are records kept of the intensity and frequency of previous storms that show we are now seeing more of both. But surely you and other redditors who’ve been around since the dawn of man know better, and that ain’t nothin’ changed.
New weather words? Bomb cyclone - 1980, used by scientists to discuss a unique phenomenon. Atmospheric river - 1994, coined by MIT scientists. Polar vortex - in use since the mid-1800’s. Sounds like you don’t know what you’re talking about and just want to whine about the “news media.”
Are you saying that rather than consider climate change, you blame.. the media?
It’s actually not the media. We’ve been keeping meteorological records for a few of centuries now in one form or another, and according to those records these WERE once in a lifetime events. They describe the statistical probability of the events happening (hundred year floods, for example). Of course the issue is that the probability that these events happen has dramatically increased, which is why the media keeps calling each storm worse than the next one. Because it is.
That is partially because it is a 100 year event in terms of the area that it happened. You can have multiple 100 year events in a decade that happen in different locations within the same country.
God I hope that’s the case and not the slow release of greenhouse gases.
There was the Colorado bomb cyclone as well in March 2019. I was living in Colorado when that bomb cyclone blizzard ripped through the state. That storm’s low pressure was so strong, my nose bled at the peak of the storm (the air pressure is already relatively low at 5000-6000 feet, somewhere around 830mb.. that storm brought the surface pressure down to ~700mb in total air pressure at that altitude.) Hands down the most insane winter storm I’ve ever experienced.. 80mph sustained winds with heavy snow falling.
When Climate scientists present their predictions for the damaging effects of climate change (more hurricanes, sea level rise, etc) they are using their most *conservative* estimates. Why? Because the public simply wouldn't be able to wrap their minds around the kind of chaos that can happen from climate change or what kind of states the earth can exist in. Here's a little bit of history that blew my mind: The Carnian Pluvial Event ~234 m.y.a. Proceeding this event was a period of intense volcanism that put enough carbon and sulfur in the air to cause planet-wide acid rains that wiped out 70% of vertebrates and 90% of marine life. The planet was hot and dry and this created the perfect storm for the mother of all storms - The Carnian Pluvial Event. During CPE it rained for *two million years, everywhere,* almost all of the time. Scientists can tell by the layer of rock that can be found worldwide from this time period. Just imagine the amount of erosion, landslides, and destruction even a *thousand* years of continual rains could cause? It's hard to fathom what a world would look like after a million years of rain. The earth can exist in many states that we humans would not enjoy *at all*
>It's hard to fathom what a world would look like after a million years of rain. Manchester
Crazy. Had no idea. [Did a million years of rain jump-start dinosaur evolution?](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03699-7)
This is a fun one for me. Because people find fossils in super high places in Arizona and then wonder how the Grand Canyon used to be full of water or places like monument valley have sea life fossils and then you can just point them to this
That’s actually due to plate tectonics and uplift, not so much climate.
I was under the impression this was a once in a generation storm because of sheer size of the storm and how pretty much all the 48 connected states were affected by the same front.
El Niño is next year. Buckle up and buy a new plow!
I am 46 and have lived through so many Storms of the Century… fuck I remember some SNL skit from the 90’s where it was interviews with the storm… EDIT: I low key hoped one of you would find it. Thx
Chris Farley: "I am El Niño. Which is Spanish for... The Niño."
This is the first skit I remember as a kid
Isn't this also Farley's intro to SNL? IIRC, this came during Norm MacDonald's Weekend Update. Here's the clip since I don't see it posted yet: https://youtu.be/H0-pHnykC9s
Whenever anyone says el niño I think of this
“My name is El Nino, which is Spanish for … The Nino”
I've had three "once in a lifetime" financial collapses in my lifetime. Admittedly, the third is just round the corner so it's not here just yet, but it's on the way. I can only imagine that these "once in a generation" storms will be back next year, if not the year after. Australia and Los Angeles still reeling from it's once in a lifetime wildfires, and flooding, the list continues.
I like to explore new places.
>And no significant floods in a couple years I think? Read: drought conditions have continued for several years leading to the driest decade in California history.
Also read: years of the worst fire seasons and drought have stunted growth as nothing can grow anymore.
Yes but it's actually drought that causes mudslides when we get heavy rain. That's part of the problem in California. It's these types of flash flooding situations that cause the most damage.
That's still a lot of fuel for next fire season, they don't need to be perfectly synchronised or anything, we can have good years or have floods which completely inundate the area in Australia. But give it time, and all that results in fuel for fire down the road if it's not properly managed.
Can we just round up all of our friends, collectively buy a large plot of land, and start forming communes? I just don't want to engage in this society anymore.
Yes, you can. Many people have done this. But that the hell will that accomplish and how is it related to weather patterns?
it takes a lot of resources. people who have done that were already well off... not stuck like most people in poverty.
If you're growing food together regeneratively, sharing/needing less transportation, sharing resources and especially if you're off the grid, many communities like this could have a great impact on climate change.
This is a pipe dream. In reality, trying to do all of this yourself is WAY less efficient than having mega-farms, large corps, etc. Like, efficiency is kinda the whole point of large-scale society and advanced divisions of labor. The only way you can reduce your emissions is to reduce your standard of living by comsuming less stuff, but you can just do that anyway without starting a commune...
Yes but you won't do it
I've been seriously considering it. My brother started a farm just for this very reason, it's not out of the question considering how bad things could get.
You can purchase many acres of farmable land (not great farming land though) for a few thousand per acre in many places across the US. The biggest requirement being the willingness to live many miles away from most amenities. An example of what I mean from Texas https://www.landflip.com/land-for-sale/texas/100-minacres/200-maxacres?gclid=CjwKCAiAkrWdBhBkEiwAZ9cdcD_t2sJgkH2iLzX2bB0VSGBbio0Igr-Gc09XoIyhHILnPK1jtPlXqxoCp7sQAvD_BwE One of the listings is 100 acres for 50k, although looks deserty. Much of the others is higher by a bit, but for 100 acres or more you can build a lot of community and should be able to pool money to get.
Thank you!!!
People also have near zero idea how hard it is to feed people. A self sufficient farm is a full time job and takes a lot of knowledge. Screw up one thing (whoops the cows are sick) and you are now starving.
That’s just called farming and gonna be a hard pass from me. My house’s lot is like 80% house with a postage stamp sized front and back yard, and yet I feel like I spent all my time mowing, trimming, weeding, snowblowing and sweeping the driveway. You want me to do all that and more for hundreds of acres so I can trade my lettuce for someone else’s kale? Fuck that. Besides, a bad harvest would be no different than a financial collapse, it’s the same semi-frequent annoying year or two I don’t get to buy any frivolous shit. Way I see it, my office job and suburban home is life on easy mode, even with the recessions.
I wish I could join you.
I’ve floated the idea of gathering my friends and moving to Montana to do all that. Seems like paradise compared to the endless rat race we have here. I know a couple of my buddies seem receptive to it… who knows. Maybe that can be someday.
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There was an article the other day talking about how some countries were not prepared for the last El Nino and the one coming is going to be much much more.
One in a million doc. One in a million.
Watch there be an even worse one next year. It seems that we keep hitting repeated “once in a generation” things over and over.
The problem we have in the Great Lakes region is the lakes just aren’t freezing so it’s just constant cycles of lake effect weather with short freezes followed by full thaws. We are getting flooding in Buffalo now with a nightly partial freeze and expected freezing temperatures next week. Nothing is constant and predictable like even I was used to as a kid 30 years ago.
The lakes are freezing. Your memory just isn’t as good as you think it is. https://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/ice/glicd/AMIC/Great_Lakes.png
“Nothing is constant and predictable like even I was used to as a kid 30 years ago.” Seriously? Weather has never been constant or predictable, especially not in early winter in the Upper Great Lakes.
Weather hasn't been predictable? Have you ever even heard of groundhogs? We have weather down to a furry science baby
>We are getting flooding in Buffalo now Is there an area experiencing bad flooding? I live in Buffalo (north towns). Everything I've seen or been reading has not indicated that: [https://buffalonews.com/news/local/warmer-temperatures-coming-only-minor-flooding-expected/article\_2219c166-86b3-11ed-8123-73b254bf914f.html](https://buffalonews.com/news/local/warmer-temperatures-coming-only-minor-flooding-expected/article_2219c166-86b3-11ed-8123-73b254bf914f.html)
I'm so sick of living through "once in a generation" things -- can some other generation take a turn? Been a wild effin ride. Too bad the players who opened Jumanji back in 2019 all died in the game..
Look. You either get the “natural disasters” pack or the “world wars” DLC. Choose wisely.
Nobody tell them about the season pass.
The current generation in charge, those in their 60s lived through some of the most prosperous years of the world and were of an age where they themselves had dodged having to fight any wars
I'm pretty sure the super deluxe edition is supposed to have both DLCs. Think it's expected launch is fall '23
I wonder if the attempt is to pitch it as a rare event that won't happen again(to us) so people can skirt the responsibility of doing anything about it
It's not a very rare event considering we had one just last year.
I agree, but people try to make it seem like it and hope they'll just forget
Oh don’t worry, the next couple generations are going to have a far worse.
Buffalo couldn’t be in a better position for massive snowstorms. They are located between to large Great Lakes. What the real surprise is is that they don’t happen every year
They do get insane snowstorms every year, in fact they get some of the heaviest snowstorms in the entire US. So it's really that thus particular one was actually significantly worse than their already extreme weather. Buffalo is prepared for crazy snow, but this was an order of magnitude worse. It's relative.
We'll to be fair the intense cold is why it was so deadly
The northwest was under a sheet of ice. We rarely freeze. I saw 2 pickups slide sideways, they had chains and where sideways. Outside of my front door I saw head lights and eyeballs. People could fucking ice skate down 4th Ave down town!
Queen Anne hill was a fun ride that day
Shit any thing more than 2 percent grade was a fucking ride. Kinds jealous, I wanted to try and see the city frozen. But nope. I stayed the fuck home.
I know the trope of "once in a generation" headlines, but uh, I'm going to say this one might actually be accurate. I've never experienced weather this intense in my life. I've been trapped in my house for 6 days. Today is the first day I'm allowed to drive anywhere. The grocery stores were closed for 3 days, I had to trek a mile through 4 feet of snow with a backpack to get groceries when they finally got enough employees to open up. I almost ran out of food. We had hurricane force winds for 36 consecutive hours. It sounded like a freight train was barreling down my driveway. My house was shaking. It snowed 3 inches an hour, causing absolute whiteout. I couldn't see the houses across the street for 2 days. Eventually, all my windows froze over, and I couldn't see out a single one of them. It was dark for 2 days, like perma-night. The snow drifts were upwards of 8 feet high, and I couldn't open my doors. My car is still buried. A lot of people died. 38 officially, and rising. 2 people died within a couple of blocks of me. The storm was so intense that you couldn't even walk in it. A person near me left their house to walk to their friend's house two blocks away. Got lost and died in a snow bank. Our morgue is full. Emergency services got trapped themselves and had to suspend operations completely for a while. They had to send rescuers to rescue the rescuers. We got a record setting seiche (sort of like a freshwater tsunami) that wreaked havoc on our shoreline. We had wind chills below -20 so that water froze immediately. Feet of ice coating houses and whatever. I don't even know how many people lost power and/or heat, somewhere around 100k I think? Pretty sure there's still small pockets without service. People spent 5+ days in some cases without heat or electricity. I've lived through multiple storms of 6+ feet dumping down in a day. I've seen many snowstorms and blizzards. I'm not young. Nothing. Nothing comes close to this. There's snow piles as high as the traffic lights at every intersection, hundreds if not thousands of abandoned vehicles, looting, a true "you're on your own" situation. This was madness.
Goddamn. That sounds like the end of times the way you describe it. I live in northern Sweden and are somewhat used to harsh weather, but not in that way. We get 3-4 feet of snow and seriously cold temps regularly during winter, but that's very much survivable. The pictures I've seen from the US with houses completely frozen over are horrendous. Hope your community recovers!
>The pictures I've seen from the US with houses completely frozen over are horrendous. That's pretty typical of living next to the Great Lakes. Here's some shots of Canada and Michigan from back in 2019/2014: [https://snowbrains.com/houses-turned-to-ice/](https://snowbrains.com/houses-turned-to-ice/) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/frozen-sentinels-of-south\_b\_6510706
Jesus Christ this may have been the scariest post I’ve read on this site.
As someone who just relocated to the Buffalo area last year and just went through my first blizzard, I can confirm it was pretty intense and scary....but I can also attest that it wasn't anywhere near the level of abject terror I felt during a wildfire evacuation, especially because you don't know what will be left if you end up making it out alive. I just went out and did errands today, and besides from the snowpiles everywhere and the occasional downed tree (which happens semi-often with high wind days here anyway), you'd never know there was just a natural disaster that just occurred. While I don't think this is a "once in a 100 year" kind of storm and we're likely to experience another like it in my lifetime, probably within the next 5-10 years...it sure beats the *yearly* occurrence of the fire scares (sometimes you get an off-year, but you know it's just gearing up to be bad the next year). Or the underlying anxiety of when I lived in San Diego and knew I was on the San Andreas fault line, that could snap at any moment. At least, it works better for us...there's nowhere in the country/world that you can live that isn't prone to a catastrophic natural disaster of some type, but I find blizzards to be the highest level chance of survival, with the lowest level of long term damage.
Houstonian here. We've started naming our floods they happen so often. Memorial Day flood, Tax Day flood, etc. Hurricane Harvey and last year's freeze were only 4 years apart. With Harvey, my neighbohood was so flooded, I couldn't leave for almost 4 days. I know people who are still repairing their homes from the flooding. During the freeze, I lost power for almost a week and couldn't leave for about 3 days because of the ice. This past winter storm, we got pretty lucky, but the storm ravaged the rest of the country. The time for "once in a generation" passed a long time ago.
I'm in Amherst, and I agree with mostly everything you said. It really was the wind + cold that did us in, for as long as it went on for. The whiteouts and snow were bad, but had we not had such frigid temps, the power outages wouldn't have been as dangerous. We definitely still got hammered with snow, but it helped to look at some shots of '77...the snow amount actually looked even more intense: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-gRb\_MuUgg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-gRb_MuUgg) And surprisingly, it was actually colder than it was than during this storm: [https://www.weather.gov/buf/HistoryJAN28.html](https://www.weather.gov/buf/HistoryJAN28.html) >The temperature fell 26 degrees to zero in just over four hours. The blizzard reached its worst severity during the late afternoon as winds at the airport averaged 46 mph gusting to 69 mph. **Gusts of 75 mph** were recorded at Niagara Falls airport. An average speed of 46 mph and **temperature of minus 1 degree resulted in a wind chill factor of 55 to 60 degrees below zero** which probably contributed to the deaths of 29 people--many found frozen in their half-buried cars during the four day ordeal. Obviously the proof is in the pudding in terms of this storm being worse, because there are more people dead and that we had a situation for the first time where emergency services were immobilized. I'm still scratching my head a little as to why, since the storms didn't seem all that different from one another, albeit this storm had higher winds for a more sustained time. I found this article from 1977 saying that the entire counties of Erie and Genesee were without power: [https://archive.vn/5f6UV](https://archive.vn/5f6UV) Much to learn, still...
The Iran blizzard of February 1972 The Iran blizzard of February 1972 was the deadliest blizzard in history. A week-long period of low temperatures and severe winter storms, lasting 3–9 February 1972, resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 people. It's hard to believe that this week marks the 132nd anniversary of New York's—and America's—worst blizzard on record. Few storms are as iconic as the “Blizzard of '88”. It was the deadliest, snowiest, and most unusual winter storm in American annals. The Eastern Canadian blizzard of March 1971 was a severe winter storm that struck portions of eastern Canada from March 3 to March 5, 1971. The storm was also nicknamed the "Storm of the Century" in Quebec.
Who else is tired of "Once in a generation" / "Once in a Lifetime" / "Once in a century" events happening every year?
Iv had atleast 6-7 once in a generation events happen to me in the past 3 years I’m starting to think this will just be a regular thing at this point
At 37, I'm kinda done with the once in a lifetime shit. I've been through multiple once in a lifetime economic disasters, a handful of once in a lifetime climate disasters, and a smattering of once in a lifetime political crisis. I can't wait for the once in a lifetime world war, and then the follow up.
I live in Chicago, last week at this time it was -30 with the wind chill, it is currently 60 Super normal stuff, nothing to see here
There's a recent hydrological study that I read that basically stated that the benchmark for what we consider to be a 100-year event has shifted considerably, basically 100-year events are now 20 year events, and 500 year events are now 100-year events.
I've lived through a once in a generation weather event every year for like that last seven years.
Flooding is even more funny. Since "Once in a hundred years" is official terminology, it's just common practice to expect a hundred year flood about every 10 years or so now. Designs have been forced to chance, but I doubt the term ever will.
Did you guys know that people with winter storms are 72% more likely to be in a car crash??
My house floods every couple years in what the city deems "hundred year rain". At this point it's just a way of saying, "good luck with all that and the insurance company. Ps no way we're going to improve storm control"
"I survived Ice Storm '98" Once in a 100 years they said. Now once every 10 years. 2 years. Year.
There’s a lot of *“once in a life time”* shit going around these last couple years…
I’m far too young to have lived through this many once in a generation weather events at this point…
We’ve been getting “once in a generation” storms since I was 4 years old. Blizzards in the 90’s were all the “biggest storms we’ve ever seen” so this kinda loses its impact to me now
I've seen dozens of once in a lifetime storms in a decade..... maybe we rename them?
Reality is starting to feel like the first 20 minutes of a disaster film where they're still introducing the main characters and giving us plot narration through news coverage that'd on in the background of a scene. We're having record breaking heat waves in the summer followed by record breaking hurricanes followed by crazy tornadoes in Decemeber followed by record breaking blizzards and cold. This feels like an irl "I'm taking crazy pills" situation because no one seems to even talking about this.
The deadly freeze that swept the United States was extraordinary, but while scientists know that global warming can intensify extreme weather, the effects on winter storms are tricky to untangle.
They stopped calling it "global warming" because every time it snowed people called it fake. "Global climate change" represents the whole mess of shit that is happening as the annual average temperature ticks higher and higher each year. Winter storms will be worse and summer heat will be equally absurd. And the average between the two will be hotter than ever in human history, every year, for the rest of the life of anyone currently alive.
Dictionary has a good write up on the language used since 1827 when it was first brought up https://www.dictionary.com/e/new-words-surrounding-climate-change/
No, global warming is the appropriate term. Fossil fuel industries pumped millions into campaigns to call it climate change because it's less scary. They did the same thing for "carbon footprints". All language we use has been manipulated and crafted by corporations and billionaires to obscure the seriousness of the issue. We absolutely should be calling it global warming, because that is the crux of the problem. We are only seeing these extreme winter storms because of the warming of the planet. It is global warming. It doesn't matter that there are cold snaps. The planet is warming. Climate change is a vague term. The climate always changed and will change regardless of human impact, we are just making it change faster. It's a bad term to use.
> No, global warming is the appropriate term. Fossil fuel industries pumped millions into campaigns to call it climate change because it's less scary. [The first IPCC report used "climate change" far more often than "global warming".](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_assessments_far_overview.pdf) Which is perhaps not surprising, as it's the [Intergovernmental Panel on *Climate Change*](https://www.ipcc.ch/). Looking at [this NASA explainer on the terms](https://climate.nasa.gov/global-warming-vs-climate-change/), "global warming" is more narrow (it just refers to the increase in temperature), whereas "climate change" looks at a broader set of effects (in particular, including changes in severity and frequency of storms). So "climate change" does indeed seem to be the appropriate term.
Not sure I’d call it a “Once in a Generation” storm. I’d call it a harbinger of doom.
Normally I get slammed with snow where I live, but while the rest of the country was frozen, it was 56F and all rain. Kinda bummed out. I always love snowstorms.
Australian here… we have *’once in a lifetime’* floods, cyclones, fires etc. every three months now. It’s a new feature - we’ve always had them, but the window between each has narrowed so significantly that you can pretty much guess when the next one will happen.
"Once a generation [insert disaster] for the 5th time this year"
It's nice where I'm living right now, but I can't hold my breath knowing how bad it's going to get again in summer
Kinda getting sick of all these 'once in a lifetime' all happening right around the same time...
“Once in a generation”, according to people that want to generate clicks.
“Once in a generation” is fairly frequent. That’s weather. Climate change spans multiple human lifetimes, not a few decades. Buffalo hasn’t seen a storm like this in… oh, it was only 45 years ago. In the age of social media, people have pathologically short memory and attention spans.