Winter?
 

We have a saying in Utah: "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes - it'll change."

I once joked with my dad that Los Angeles and Salt Lake City should get together. They don't have summer or winter and we don't have spring or fall.

Here in Salt Lake we have fairly hot summers and fairly cold winters, but with rare exceptions neither is ever too extreme. The transitions, though, are sometimes strange. It will be warm and then it will be cold and then it will be warm again, seemingly without rhyme nor reason. It was mostly hot right up until October, when we had a series of storms. After they passed it remained at least 20 degrees fahrenheit cooler than it had been, dropping from the 90s to the 70s. Then we had another set of storms and it dropped to the 50s and stayed there. Then it slowly warmed up again. The nights were cold but the days were still very nice. Yesterday it reached a high of 66. I was out walking around wearing a t-shirt.

Right now it's 37 degrees and snowing. Expected high of 42. I'm not complaining - I like the snow or I wouldn't stay here. I just find it entertaining how variable our weather can be.

Seriously. The only thing predictable about our weather is that it is unpredictable. Or should i say predictably unpredictable?

The LA basin roughly has three seasons. Summer, rain (brefily, just enough to turn some of the vegetation from brown to green), and fire season. I think in Utah, we have, "almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction." (Jeff foxworthy quote)

I'm looking forward to winter, and I wish it would just get here already. Lately, I think it's been unseasonably warm. I enjoy all the seasons though, It keeps variety in life.

Good one! :rotfl2: That's a good thing. LA has construction (read "obstruction") year-round.

I've been here 42 years now, and I've seen "winters" were it never snowed at all. I also remember one February when the low in Park City was -44, and at noon it sometimes got all the way up to 0. In Utah you just never know.

Sounds interesting. Even more so when I try to imagine the surroundings. I imagine you have beautiful mountains in the background. At least a "quickie" at Google presents most pics around SLC showing snowy mountain tops.
I do miss the snow even though I almost never drove out of town while in Pittsburgh at the time. Snow creates a very special kind of environment. The streets become strangely silent, the snow acts as a sound absorber. Getting into the warmth of a store becomes sweeter, particularly if there is hot coffee available :03:.
I like contrasts. Just like with food, contrasts enhance our perception of the different flavours. If I lived in LA, I'd have to drive up to the mountains every once in a while, just for the change. Besides, I love the wilderness, and enjoy being able to commute between the wild and the urban. Had my life been the way I had wished, I'd live somewhere on the North American west coast and drive a four-wheeler.

The Summer feeling is finaly gone. Weather here has been in the 60's now, with some passing clouds, and some rainy days. Seldom anything special happens weather wise around here. I guess that is one of the reasons Brits come here for their summer holidays, and retirement. It's not The Bahamas, but it's close to their homeland.

Yes Steve, your post made me travel in my mind.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ckyardLeft.jpg

That was December 2011. No snow on the ground then. :sunny:

We are about 4000 feet above sea level. The mountains are just a few miles away. The ones in the picture are just foothills. From elsewhere in the city you can see mountains 11,000 feet high.

[edit] Here's the same shot right now.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...ps057c216e.jpg

I can see why you like it there. Very nice. And one can take pleasant walks in the neighbourhood.
Question: are those Pine trees to the left? They sure look like it.

Either pine or fir - some kind of evergreen. The buildings in the background are on the other side of the river that runs the length of the Salt Lake Valley. I walk up and around the path there almost every sunny day.
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When I was living in Utah, I got a chance to see a Thunder and Lightening storm during a snow storm. That is quite the sight.

I remember the weather while I was living in Washington State. It would be cloudy about 95% of the year, about 2-3 weeks worth of rain every other month, five minutes worth of sun, and summer weather starting on the 4th of July and about 60 degrees year round. If the temp ever got into the 70s you'd see people wearing shorts and a t-shirt.
As for winter it seemed like everywhere else in Washington State got snow and where I lived we got rain, rain, more rain, high winds, constant power outages and very rarely snow. One wouldn't think snow would be rare in a place that's 500 feet above sea level but it is because of how close to Puget Sound it is. The Port of Tacoma is about 20 miles from where I used to live.
It seems that this year Washington State is getting its normal winter storms a bit earlier then normal with 60mph winds and the usual ton of rain, but in a report I read the other day it stated that altitudes of 2,500ft or higher could expect 6-11 inches of snow in a 12 hour period and that's a bit odd.

Where it rains it can snow if it gets cold enough. The reality in Utah is that the Wasatch Front (Utah's three main population centers, Ogden, Salt Lake City and Provo-Orem, are within 40 miles of each other) marks the end of a desert that stretches 500 miles west to the Sierra Nevada mountains at the border between Nevada and California. Storms coming to Utah are almost always dry, and only pick up moisture as they pass over the Great Salt Lake. Even with that, the cities don't get more than 50" of snow per year on average, with a total rainfall of about 15". If not for the lake we wouldn't have any water to drink.

Only ever come across that once in my life and that was back in the late 1980s during a snowstorm in Kent, scared the living daylights out of me that a clap of thunder should suddenly happen in the middle of a snowstorm. Just the one clap of thunder but still a surprise. Not witnessed it again since.


In our neck of the woods you know it's winter when the wind goes from being slightly cold to 'imported from Norway' cold, oh, and the rain stops being warm. :yep:

That's the ideal weather for us northerners to hang out our washing to dry :)

Seems weather has changed since I was a kid. Now, winters are more mild, we don't get much snow. Seems as a kid, we got several nice snows a year, now maybe one....

Strange, my memory of summers as as kid are that they stretched on for ever, without a cloud in the sky and were boiling hot every day. Now it's rain, gloom, more rain which we complain about and if we do get a spell of decent weather all people do is complain it's too hot! Us bloody English can't seem to make up our minds!:doh:

Indeed.
Where I live the most noticeable difference is during Summer time. We used to have really warm Summers, we'd wear T-shirts and shorts from June to September, August giving us the temperature pinnacle.
Today, we get some Summer warmth during June, and from July to September we get chilly nights and moderately warm days. Come October and we get a heat wave, as if the Summer warmth was holding back and piling up during the previous 3 months.
In Winter we recently started to (quoting Oberon :03:) import really cold wind spells from Norway, that last for a week or two.

Weather patterns are indeed changing, partly because of human intervention, but also because weather patterns do change over time, regardless. The Earth wobbles, continental plates drift, etc.