h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My club chapter is hosting a small run on Saturday-Sunday morning. The forecast indicates we're going to be wet and miserable. Especially as we're insisting everyone leave their RVs and campers at home and ride. I pull a trailer behind my bike so I'll be snug in my Tent Cot up off the ground.

Well, this is turning out to be more like a British November than a Texan one. Another hard freeze is forecast now, for Monday night, although the last one turned out to be a bit of a damp squib - 28F was forecast, dire predictions of sensitive plants being annihilated were sent out, and we barely dipped below zero, so we'll see what happens with Monday's forecast of an overnight 27F.

A few days ago the forecast for Thursday was a perfectly seasonable 72F. That's now gone down to 66 (hardly unpleasant), and we shan't see the 70s again until next Saturday. Unless that one also gets downgraded.

Thursday's forecast is back up to 70/21 now

Now, bearing in mind that the average maximum/minimum temperatures for mid-November are 71F/50F and that for several days now we haven't even made it out of the 40s F...

Today (Monday) - maximum forecast 50F (could be October in the UK)
Tonight - minimum forecast 27F (Dec/Jan/Feb in the UK)

Next Sunday - maximum forecast 79F (a hot August day in the UK)

I will never, ever get the hang of Texas weather

A-a-a-n-d Thursday's forecast is back down to 67

That's the second time in four days the forecasters have told me to bring in my plants (no easy thing to do with big cacti) because there's going to be a hard freeze (27F/-2.8C), and the second time we haven't had one (see post 5783 above) In fact, it's just gone below freezing, an hour ago or so, and now the sun's up in a cloudless blue sky it'll begin to warm pretty quickly.

Thursday's forecast is still sitting at 67, but Sunday's up to 80 now, after having gone down to 75 yesterday

And as if to prove how quickly it warms up when the sun's shining, I've just been to the co-op in a short-sleeved shirt and feeling quite comfortable despite the air temperature only being 48/8.9

I really don't mind your having whatever weather you like in Austin, but could you please stop sending it on across the Gulf? I had to dig out my heavy coat and have heaters running in both the living room and bed room

70F is cool, but I can deal with it, when they start talking about hard freezes it ceases to be funny.



F S

I reckon you'll have to take that one up with Mother Nature

Good job you went home, when you did...

In Nodnol
Today low 8C / 46F High 11C / 52F outside.
Quite a nice day with intermittent sunny bits.

Sitting indoors it's a comfortable 15C / 60F

I second Florida Sailor, please keep firmer hold of your weather, I think it's heading this way too now, cos we have a weather warning for a three day Atlantic storm.

And, Gosho, have you tried layering those big cactus with horticultural fleece? and or bubble wrap? it might be easier than lifting them inside - or maybe the fleece would get ripped to shreds on the spines perhaps?

Yes, some of them are very, very spiney. They're different shapes too - some are round, some are columnar, and the succulents have leaves that be pulled off. If the fleece/bubble wrap didn't get torn by the spines it'd get caught up and then damage the plant when I'm trying to remove it.

I don't mind bringing them in if it's genuinely going to be cold. Despite us getting plenty of 100°+ temperatures in the summer, it can get pretty damn taters here in the winter - far too cold for a lot of cacti, even the ones used to chilly desert nights.

On the USDA plant hardiness map, which measures the average extreme winter temperatures over the last 35 years, Austin is in band 8b (15 to 20F, -9.4 to -6.7C), which is roughly the same band as most of the UK. But although it can get as cold (or colder) than the UK, the winter season is so much shorter, and usually far warmer, than the UK, which is why the plants can stay outdoors for all but a few days.

Any road up. We're back in the 60s today, which is nice but still below the average, then the mid to upper 70s, maybe even 80 at the weekend, which is well *above* average

Oh, one other thing, and this is one reason why news media is one of the worst and most evil inventions of humankind.

What we're experiencing right now is nothing more than a winter cold front. Once or twice a year the jet stream pushes one as far south as the Gulf Coast. Several winters ago we had a few of them back-to-back and it was one of the coldest cold snaps I can remember, even having lived through the winter of '63.

So, given that this is a normal winter weather phenomenon, what are some parts of the news media screaming?

OH MY GOD!!! POLAR VORTEX!!!

Well, there might be something to it. It could be yet another aspect of climate change; polar instability. But it's too early to call it a trend. And yeah, the so called meteorologists just love that they have a new splashy term to throw about.



We managed to just stay above freezing this whole week, so our plants stayed outside uncovered. I need to look into how cold resistant my new weed is. This is the loquat tree that spontaneously sprouted in the planter with my ficus last year. The ficus died in a freeze along with my pencil plant next to it. Both of those I got back in '98. They were gifts from mourners for my sisters funeral. The pencil plant in particular was getting way too tall and unwieldy to bring in to the apartment. I need to find a place in the yard to permanently plant the loquat. Wind direction may be a factor. I might put it on the south side of my garage apartment to protect it a bit from north winds. Although its likely parent plant is on the north side of the house across the corner and it's doing fine.

True, climate change, whether made by us or part of the natural cycle, or both, is happening. What I was trying to get across though is how the trashier (and sometimes not so trashy) parts of the news media will spread misinformation and fear by, as you rightly say, finding a sensationalistic new term to throw around and doing so whether it's factual or not. Now every cold snap is going to be a polar vortex for people who believe everything they read or hear. And it's Ambrosia for the conspiracy theorists

Heh... This was posted on reddit today:

Title: "You guys in Buffalo think you have it bad? Just look at what we're dealing with in Austin!"

IMGur link: http://i.imgur.com/UcosbnP.jpg

Oh the humanity

Well, I'm very happy to say that it's warm again I've never liked the cold, and after 14 short, mild central Texas winters, I simply don't do cold any more. I've become a thin-blooded wuss and I don't care. I might even be described, by a Lancastrian or a Yorkshireman, as a namby pamby southerner

"I don't NEED to wear this heavy coat. It's just that it's finally cool enough that I CAN wear this coat without sweating. We get so few opportunities to wear winter clothes in Texas."


That usually works.

I don't actually have a winter coat any more. Not that I can get into, anyway. The coat I bought at Marshall's Brand Names For Less in 1990 finally gave up the ghost last year (well, more like disintegrated really), and although I still have the C and A Crombie I got when I was 17, and can just about get into as long as I have nothing more than a single thin layer on underneath, I can no longer fasten the buttons Which rather renders it useless as anything more than a fashion statement.

The *minimum* temperature (lower 60s) tonight and tomorrow (Thursday and Friday) is going to be 20°F warmer than some of the *maximum* temperatures we've been having during the past week (lower 40s)