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xkcd #2866: Snow
(imgs.xkcd.com)
Alt text:
For someone who has ostensibly outgrown staying up late waiting for Santa, I do spend an awful lot of time refreshing websites to see if packages are here yet.
That's definitely not the case in my part of the world, particularly in the case of wintery weather predictions and definitely not true down to the hour. So, let US have this enjoyment when it does actually snow, because it could very well be that the weather people didn't even mention the possibility of snow today or they said it would only be a small chance of flurries but we got enough accumulation to actually build a snowman or they said it was going to be sleet but it turned out to be snow or 3 days ago they were predicting that it was going to be unseasonably warm or they said it was not going to snow until after sunset.
Yeah I know, some places are inherently less predictable, especially near mountains or big bodies of water. Just sharing my experience, which may be the exception, or it may be the norm, I don't know enough about weather prediction to know which is which. It has gotten better for the entire globe I think, but in some places the weather will never be predictable.
But don't worry, in about 10-15 years snow will be very rare where I live. It has already become more rare with many winters passing without any snow with staying power. I remember when I was a child going to school on a sled with a big snow pack most every winter. I even remember one time we got snowed in and had to dig out the front door. Now I don't even own a snow shovel any more, whenever there is a bit of snow (which is rare), a broom will do fine to brush it aside. Especially October and November have gotten much warmer than in the past.