The AM Forum

Woke up to the first snow of the season. Yesterday was the first day we had that was below 32 degrees during daylight hours.   I guess I should put the lawn mower away and pull out the snow blower and see if it'll start. Seventeen weeks until spring and about 23 or 24 weeks  to consistent warm weather. 

I hate this white crap...   Yuk.

(http://images.ibsys.com/har/images/weather/auto/brookhaven_radar_640x480.jpg)

About 2 inches here and its still coming down..... :(

YAY SNOW! Will make the GHS football game funner!

Well, don't worry. I won't rub it in.. the fact that it's a beautiful sunny 68 degrees here at the new QTH today... I was just out in the back yard splitting some logs in my tee shirt...Nope, won't rub it in.. I promise!  ::) ::)

 ;D ;D

Well,
We just came home from the beach where there was no snow. Almost nothing until we got to our street we have a couple inches. HMMMM guess it will be the perfect weekend to put up a new 160 meter antenna and the cold wx will guarantee good results. As we all know the best antennas are put up in the worst wx.

You're absolutely right Frank!... I learned that old ham radio folklore back in my JN days.. where the construction difficulty and performance results of an antenna project were directly proportional to the severity of the weather.

I've put up many an ant during snow storms, and in the rain.

So what am I gonna do now that I live in North Carolina?  ??? The worse they get down here is an occasional ice storm!.... Does that mean I'm doomed with crappy antenna performance?  :'( :'(

get everything ready for a freak storm or be pw and warm.

The freak snow must be a good luck charm for RF. I was listening on 3885 at 7PM PST and heard the band suddenly open to the East Coast.....KA1ZGC booming into my Burbank CA QTH, commenting about his snow static QRN, from my old home town of Salem, NH --- a Thanksgiving treat.

Yes, it was snowing in Northern Virginia on Wednesday night.  We've had ice on the ground in the mornings too.  Brrrr, I don't like it at all...

I'm sitting in the solar room at about 75 and sunny. It will be in the 80s by noon. I look outside at the wind and snow at 24 degrees and ask myself to get motivated to work on the 160 antenna. I guess I'll wait a few hours and get the kids to hold the spool while I lay out a couple 125 foot runs. I think I can get the feed line in the back door so the center section can be soldered and taped.

...ABOUT AN INCH IN TORONTO..NOT COLD THO...'SUPPOSED TO BE MELTED BY MONDAY..STILL HAVE LEAVES ON SOME TREES...SK..

Well I HATE, LOATHE and DESPISE snow with a BURNING PASSION !! The very sight of snow makes me sick to my stomach. Snow is nothing but garbage from the sky, a blasted curse on humanity.  I love hot weather though, give me 95+ degrees and 95% humidity and I am happy as hell. For me the hotter the better. This year we had a long hot humid summer down here and I loved every gorgeous minute of it.

This thanksgiving I went up to my brothers place in upstate New York and what I saw made me sick. About an inch of white snow on the ground. It was disgusting. made me want to puke. Fortunately here in the city we got no snow but it was too darned cold.

Well, we've got some warmer weather in store for this coming week.. Sometimes it's good when ytou get the cold junk early in the season. Get it over with. maybe the rest of this winter will be warm.

As for global warming I say bring it on. If it will put an end to snow and cold weather then I welcome global warming. Some like it hot and I am one who likes it HOT.

The only thing snow is good for is making more time for ham radio.
You can't cut the lawn, work in the garden or the outside of the house.
Worst of all nothing to look at on the beach sept the birds and the waves as you freeze.

Yeah, bring on global warming.  Just had the oil tank filled today and puked at the price. $2.50/gal.  Fortunately, I prepaid back in August so I was able to swallow.

Yeah, but there might be a tradeoff. Many people living in the cooler New England areas, the higher elevations, and other areas where it's relatively cool in the summer don;t have to deal with something we deal with here. Constant air conditioning all summer long. This summer the need for air constant conditionaing in virtually every home and business ran from early June right through a good chunk of September. Instead of high fuel bills you end up with electric bills that are through the roof. Not to mention the antiquated electric grids that can barely feed the high demand for summer air conditioning. Get a nice boiling hot day with high ac demands the grid overheats and whammo... everything goes dead. Then the maintenance costs get tacked onto the bill in terms of additional rate increases.  If global warming is for real more people may wind up with the heavy ac use and high electric bills. Bottom line is, hot or cold, they gotcha.
 

Definite trade off John.  Electric demands are much greater during the summer. 

I'm not necessarily for global warming especially if it's supposed to be caused by human activity (though I have a hard time believing that).  I just hate snow. I don't like cleaning it up. I don't like driving in it.  I especially don't like driving in it when I have to share the road with inexperienced and moron drivers.  If push came to shove I can deal with the cold even if it were below zero for a month straight.  I just dislike snow.

Sign me up.  We'd have moved to Florida by now if not for the hurricanes scaring the wife out of it.  I retired in September and I really don't handle the snow or cold well at all.  Sure, some of that is due to my health but this cold stuff just sucks.

I'd be willing to pay the electric bill for cool as needed.  And I'd rather be hot than cold if I had to make the choice.  Besides, cooling season is shorter than heating season.  Folks lived without air conditioning until the past 50 years.  They've had heat (fire) since prehistoric times. 

The comment about the beach in winter is oh so true too.  Who wants to see cold birds on the beach? !

Hot is good.

Don't like the cold? Why do you live in the Northeast USA? Just curious.

Yep I hate it too... finally did something about it... got the hell outta dare!  8) 8) 8)

I love all four seasons in CT.  Take one away and there's a gap.  I lived in Florida during various times of the year and found it like limbo. Nice WX, OM, but too boring. Except for the fun T-storms, of course.

The Northeast is perfect. When the summer gets old, the fall comes. The spring is outstanding. Love Nov - Jan and the snow. The only time of year that gets tough is Feb/Mar. That's when the cabin fever starts everywhere and we gets lots of drive by shootings and stabbings on 75M... :o

T

Having lived a total of 7 years in tropical third world countries, I can see that I am very happy to see snow and cool wx.  You can always dress for the cold, but there's a limit to the amount of clothes you can take off afore you get arrested.

I noticed the same thing while working for skrotorola hot wx was worse.

Well cold and snow on the ground this weekend while putting up the new 160 antenna, should work based on wx. Even threw in a trip up the tower to untangle a hunk of rope I needed for a end support. Can't wait to be back on 160

And while in the northeast we were still talking about the record cold temps and the snow that fell last Thursday and Friday, yesterday in Kansas things got pretty wild.

http://www.violentplains.com/

Actually, I was at Timtron's place on the BC-610-B-as-in-"bastardized" into the wire array pointing right at you. Oddly enough, after I unkeyed from making that transmission, the ant stopped discharging and I was able to hear again.

As great a low-angle ant as the wire array is, it's very prone to building up a charge in the presence of precipitation. Usually snow doesn't bother it that bad, but that storm system was very unusual. My nephew was in my parents' yard making a snowman on Thanksgiving when he was suddenly scared back inside by a clap of thunder. We had a fairly close lightning strike about ten minutes later, and a few more thunderclaps here and there, then eventually it turned back into snow.

The thing I hated about that storm was finding out how totally awful my tires were by having my heart accellerate to UHF several times. The tire places were very busy last weekend!

--Thom
Kilimunjaro Africa One Zulu Goat Cheese

21 right now, supposed to be -7 tonight. Snowed on Saturday more snow on thursday and a low of -10. God, I love it. Keeps people from moving here.

http://www.pinedaleonline.com/

73, Marty WB2RJR

What's amazing is that over the Thanksgiving weekend we had near record cold in the Northeast and now only a few days later we're near record warm. Winters are pretty strange these days. Thunderstorms in december and january, record cold and snow one day and record tropical warmth the next. maybe there is something to this global warming thing. The weather seems extremely unpredictable.

No snow here.

T

Clear here.

Nice necro.

Wow, this thread came back from the dead...

                      "Wow, this thread came back from the dead..."

What do you expect, its hoLolene.......    klc

Not me guys, I love the snow. :D Riding around at night in a blizzard doing some no-heat service calls, makin' money, maybe do a little plowing, bs'ing on the radio (2m CB), then go and bang down a nice breakfast at 4am with the guys, then go home and rattle the yl's chain. ;)

Better not come to Aroostook County (Maine) any time soon, then  ;D

Oddly enough, there hasn't been a flake of snow here in Presque Isle yet! But the other shoe is soon to drop. Once it starts coming, the ground will be white until mid-April at least.
Anything I save on not running a/c in the summer is wiped out by heating on the -20F mornings in Feb.

-Charles

Look out, Easties...One big storm is winding up here in the Rockies.

------------------------------

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DENVER CO
437 AM MDT WED OCT 25 2006

...A POWERFUL WINTER STORM WILL SPREAD HEAVY SNOW INTO COLORADO...

.A STRONG WINTER STORM SYSTEM WILL SPREAD SNOW INTO THE COLORADO
NORTH CENTRAL MOUNTAINS...FRONT RANGE URBAN CORRIDOR...PALMER
DIVIDE AND NORTHEASTERN PLAINS TONIGHT THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING.
SNOW ACCUMULATIONS MAY BE HEAVY OVER THE EASTERN SLOPES OF THE
MOUNTAINS...IN AND NEAR THE EASTERN FOOTHILLS AND OVER THE HIGHER
TERRAIN OF THE PALMER DIVIDE. STRONG AND GUSTY NORTH WINDS MAY
PRODUCE BLIZZARD CONDITIONS IN SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW OVER THE
PALMER DIVIDE.

A BLIZZARD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM THIS EVENING THROUGH
THURSDAY MORNING.

A MIX OF RAIN AND SNOW THIS EVENING WILL CHANGE TO WIDESPREAD SNOW
BY LATE EVENING AND CONTINUE THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING. THE SNOW
WILL BE HEAVY AT TIMES TONIGHT WITH POSSIBLE ACCUMULATIONS OF 3
TO 13 INCHES. THE HIGHEST ACCUMULATIONS WILL BE OVER AND NEAR
HIGHER TERRAIN. NORTH WINDS AT SUSTAINED SPEEDS OF 25 TO 35 MPH
WITH GUSTS AS HIGH AS 50 MPH WILL PRODUCE AREAS OF BLOWING SNOW
AND POSSIBLE BLIZZARD CONDITIONS.

A BLIZZARD WATCH MEANS THERE IS A POTENTIAL FOR BLIZZARD
CONDITIONS TO OCCUR.  THIS MEANS THAT THE FOLLOWING WEATHER MAY
DEVELOP AND LAST FOR A PERIOD OF AT LEAST THREE HOURS...SUSTAINED
WIND AND/OR FREQUENT WIND GUSTS OF 35 MPH OR GREATER...
CONSIDERABLE FALLING AND/OR DRIFTING SNOW FREQUENTLY REDUCING
VISIBILITIES TO BELOW ONE QUARTER OF A MILE.

$$
GARD...WFO BOULDER

Along with a blizzard watch comes a buzzard watch, or more commonly known as "old buzzard watch". A phenomenon in which some radio operators migrate indoors during cold and snowy weather and tend to talk on the radio for hours or possible for the entire duration of the storm.

As I've traveled a bit around this country I've come to appreciate the
Northeast more and more.  The hills, mountains, lakes and natural beauty
with the change of seasons is hard to beat. IMO.  The weather is always changing
and is that X factor that adds a little spice to life.  Mild climate areas and their flat terrain is
boring.
 :-\

One solution to hating winter is to take up skiing or snowboarding...that's an instant attitude-changer.

Besides, as mentioned previously, the worse the wx is when you put up that antenna, the longer it'll last and the better it'll work.  I've proved that a few times.

And Tom, when does Spring happen in New England?  Oh, it's those two or three days between winter and summer, I guess.   ;D  It's so short that, as soon's the skin comes out, it's sweltering (from the wx, not the skin...well, maybe the skin).

Guess that's the real bummer about winter, the skin gets covered up. 

Hah, actually I was probably being a bit sarcastic when i wrote that last year. After a long hot humid summer  I don't mind some cooler or  cold  weather for a while. Even a bit of snow is ok with me. And it's a pleasure not to have to run fans and air conditioning constantly like I did all summer. I will agree, it is a tradeoff however, what you don't spend running the ac you wind up spending in heating. It's a no win situation as far as that goes,

(http://image.weather.com/looper/archive/us_hawaii_radar_plus_usen/1L.jpg?1161798050001)

must be antenna season again

Tom,
I've recorded a couple of 27 and 28 degree nights here recently.  What have you seen up your way recently being out in the sticks where you are?
BW

Error, Error, Wil Robinson!

What happened to that old "delete" post button, anyway?

(BTW, I do like the removal of the edit counter very much!)

I haven't really paid attention to the lows at night, Bob, but generally it's 5-10 degrees cooler here than at sea level in Hartford. Wow, I didn't realize it was below freezing yet.

I still have a few more climbs scheduled before packing it in for the year. It's gotta be 50 or above or my hands stiffen up too much on the rails. I don't wanna be testing out that fall arrest system.  :o

T

I used the window scraper this morning for about the fouth time.

I woke up  to frost over the whole yard last week which was a surprise. Liz wasn't to pleased because I usually watch the temps and protect her plants. Suffice it to say they didn't survive the first freeze. 

With the cool temps I haven't seen any of the asian lady bugs this year.  Hopefully there won't be any.  They seem to find any small opening in the house and get in and they manage to get into the craziest places.  I've found in my rigs and tv.  They drive me nuts.