How Not to Internet

So, apparently, I follow the Reno division of the National Weather Service on Twitter. Or they follow me. I’m not really sure. All I know is that I get alerts about their posts now, which I don’t mind this winter, because I’m interested in how many more damned feet of snow are going to fall in the Sierras before we can finally go back up to snowboard. The current answer is, “A lot more.”

I swear, if anyone even so much as whispers the word “drought” this summer, I’m going to lose it. But I digress…

The other day, the NWS Reno feed (Check out all the exciting weather action on Twitter @NWSReno) had a tweet about the “atmospheric river” headed our way tomorrow. We’ve been hearing that term a lot lately around here in the news. It’s an exciting and fancy weather term, so no one in the weather reporting business misses an opportunity to throw it out there.

While “atmospheric river” is getting the feel of being overplayed, one follower of the NWS Reno feed put on a clinic on how not to respond in these types of term overuse situations.

Howard Smith replied: Talking about an atmospheric river is kinda like the Sahara desert ( desert desert). If you remember your fluid dynamics the entire atmosphere acts as a river!!!!

This is a fabulous example of how not to internet. What Howard is really saying here, to the tens of people who also follow NWS Reno, is this – “Hello, my name is Howard, and I don’t have many people in my life who validate me. I think I am very smart, and I want you to think I’m smart also, even if my boss never tells me I’m smart, even though I’m way smarter than him and should have his job, and I would have his job if it wasn’t for all the bs office politics and Brenda in HR who definitely has it out for me ever since I pointed out that she shouldn’t feed her cat so much because it looks really fat in all the pictures on her desk, and that maybe she should think about cutting back on the treats herself while she’s at it.”

Howard is obviously interneting wrong. I read Howard’s tweet and just shook my head. That’s an example of interneting correctly.

If I was interneting like Howard, I would have responded: “Gosh, Howard, for such an obviously intelligent guy such as yourself, your grammar is as bad as your need to feel smart! I’ll let the “kinda” slide since tweets are informal, but if you remember your third-grade punctuation lessons, informality doesn’t excuse the glaringly obvious missing comma after “dynamics.” Also, what’s with the space between your opening round bracket (you probably call it a parenthesis, but that’s actually the term for the word or phrase inside the brackets) for your parenthetical phrase and the first word of said parenthetical phrase? That’s not supposed to be there, brainiac. And four exclamation points? Bro. And bagging on saying, “Sahara desert?” Really? The Arabic word for desert is “sahra,” and “sahara” is its pluralization. So, if you’re going to be all cutesy and pretend that we should all be using Arabic words in our everyday English communications, you really should have said “Sahara Deserts.” That would have actually been grammatically correct. It still wouldn’t have made you seem smart to anyone, or morally superior in any way, but at least it wouldn’t have been so sadly, sadly wrong.”

You can see the obvious difference between the correct interneting reaction and this incorrect, desperate cry for help style.

NWS Reno took an intermediate approach with Captain Smart Guy. They didn’t internet poorly, necessarily, but they did respond, which I would have counseled against, had they asked.

They referred Howard to a helpful article from noaa.gov on what an atmospheric river actually is: a flowing column of condensed water vapor in the atmosphere responsible for significant levels of rain and snow, especially in the western United States.

Take that, Super Guy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which employs people that surely understand fluid dynamics slightly better than you (even though you should obviously be running NOAA, and probably would be if your boss and Brenda didn’t have it out for you), thinks that an atmospheric river is not only a real thing, but also grammatically correct. I’ll bet they even call it the Sahara Desert.

Internet better in the future, Howard.

Regarding NOAA’s definition, I’m not sure why the western United States gets to have all the atmospheric fun, but if you’ll excuse me, I need to contact them and ask if they can do anything to divert the river.

I want to go snowboarding!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Snowmageddon - Part II

Our February 23^rd major weather event in Rocklin, California was one for the record books! Frozen precipitation of some kind fell from the sky onto our town for minutes. (We have incredibly low standards for our record books.)

While the storm was no doubt unusual, it was also very confusing. You notice I didn’t say that snow fell from the sky, although, many people swear that’s what happened. Others aren’t so sure. They say the Inuit people have more than fifty terms for different kinds of snow. Rocklin is currently giving the Inuit a run for their money.

Almost immediately after the minutes of winter wildness, we began to hear the term “graupel” pop up in our various news feeds. Graupel is, of course, when a snowflake falls through a layer of air containing supercooled water droplets. This causes those water droplets to “rime,” or instantly freeze onto the snowflakes.

“What the hail are you talking about?” you might be asking. No, I’m not talking about hail. That particular phenomenon occurs when rain drops get carried upward by crazy-ass weather inside thunder clouds, to a higher, colder elevation, where they freeze and grow until they are too heavy for the updraft, then fall to the earth and destroy your car, if you live in Texas.

Graupel – which rimes with either “apple,” “topple,” “lapel,” or “Inuit.” No one is sure – is not solid ice and dangerous as hail. It’s crunchy and fun. If you are having trouble envisioning what graupel looks like, it might help to know that the name comes from the German word for pearl barley, so that should clear it up.

But, I’m not at all convinced that what we experienced wasn’t just regular old snow. When I ran outside to enjoy the frozen water of some variety falling from the sky, it was definitely mixed with rain. I was wearing a black long-sleeve shirt, so it was very easy to tell that half of what was falling on my arm was plain old rain, and the other half was frozen water.

I could not readily distinguish if the snowflakes had been rimed into graupel or not, but they did look a little weird. We were told in no uncertain terms, however, that it was not sleet. That’s because no one knows what sleet is. Not even the Inuit.

One thing was for sure. It wasn’t cold enough at ground level for any of it to stick. And it certainly didn’t get cold enough overnight for any of our atmospheric water droplets to rime into hoar frost, so that was also a win.

Since our exciting hoarless rimed graupel morning here in Rocklin, another slightly more significant weather event has developed. Winter storm Quest, already in a state near you, has since deposited somewhere in the neighborhood of seven feet of new snow in the Sierra Nevadas.

About an hour east of here, the main interstate highways have been closed down for the better part of three days now with near-constant blizzard conditions. If your online order is delayed, you no longer need to wonder what happened to it. Your Amazon package has been flash-frozen in a 55-foot trailer on the side of I-80 somewhere. Please be patient.

It has been wild up there. The power had been knocked out by the storm, but I finally got a call through to our favorite ski resort yesterday, because I was very curious. I asked them to go out in the blizzard for me and see if they were experiencing any graupel with the other types of snow.

They told me to go to hail.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

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Snowmageddon

Look, I don’t want to alarm anyone, but we may have a catastrophic situation brewing here. My sleepy little town of Rocklin, California – elevation 249 feet above sea level – is about to get hit with a sizeable weather event.

We are currently bracing for a major winter storm. The grim forecast is calling for as many as fifteen, to possibly even twenty, minutes of snow, scheduled to slam into our unsuspecting hamlet tomorrow morning at 7:00 am.

Do you have any idea what that means? This has the potential for total chaos. We would be staring down the barrel of massive school closures, if we were in school right now. Ironically, the kids are currently off for “ski week.” They’ll probably be skiing down main street tomorrow morning.

Stores may or may not be selling out of Gatorade and AAA batteries as we speak. All I can tell you is the one I went to the other day had very questionable stocking levels.

Hundreds of families probably Googled “Tesla Solar Batteries” in just the last few hours, all of them coming to the same conclusion – they still don’t make financial sense.

But what does it matter? Our solar panels will soon be covered with God-only-knows how many individual flakes of snow, possibly even forming a layer. How in the hell are those things supposed to produce energy for us when they’re virtually frozen solid??

How will we get to work? How will we get our expensive drive-thru coffee? How will we even get out of our houses? Not a single one of us owns a snow shovel.

On the plus side, hundreds of family pets will see snow for the first time. Some children may even get to make snowmen in their front yards. They could be up to five or maybe even six inches in height. (The snowmen, not the children.)

By the way, is it still snowman? I mean, it’s 2023, so is it officially snowperson now? Or snowfigure? I’m really not sure, but I guess it might all depend on where you put the carrot?

Anyway… Amid the ensuing chaos, at least the kids and their pets will be having a good time. That is, if they can even make it from the front door to the lawn through the blowing drifts of sno… Oh, wait, hang on. Nope. The forecast has changed. Looks like it’s just going to be just rain now instead of snow.

Well, that’s a relief. Do you think I can return all this Gatorade and these AAA’s? Or maybe I should donate them to the folks up in the Sierras, about an hour east of here. They’re scheduled for three feet of snow and 70 mph winds.

Nah, they’ll be fine. They’re used to that sort of thing…

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Surfing Lake Tahoe

My three boys have not had very much contact with snow. That’s mostly due to my wife’s natural allergic reaction to any temperature below 83 degrees Fahrenheit. She gets cold watching snow on TV. But like me, she grew up skiing, and she didn’t want to completely deny her children the experience, no matter how much she might suffer in the process – from the front seat of the running car, sipping hot chocolate with the heater blowing full bore.

The best we can do for them is to let them play in the snow. They won’t grow up skiing or snowboarding with any regularity, because going skiing as a family of five these days literally costs a thousand dollars - four hundred dollars for lift tickets and six hundred for five cheeseburgers and a small water at the lodge. Since a skiing scholarship is a tenuous gamble at best - and only one of the boys is displaying any real coordination - we’re just going to go ahead and save for college instead. We’re actually trying to save for four tuitions – three for the boys and one for me. I want to go back with them. I had a blast in college! That might have been because my dad didn’t tag along, though, but who knows?

We live in California, in the Central Valley that sits next to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Sierra Nevada is an old Spanish term that means “steep road to casino covered in ice.” It never snows down where we live, but we can visit the snow like tourists in under an hour, any time we feel like it. Sorry, Wisconsin... and almost every other state.

Not too many people are aware of this, but the California side of the Sierras usually receives some of the highest snowfall totals of anywhere in the U.S., and way more than anywhere in Southeast Asia. I say usually, because in the recent few years we’ve received about half an inch of snow in the spots that normally get thirty feet. As a result, all of our lawns are brown and we can only shower every other week, and only if we pair up.

We’re having our first wet year in a long while this winter, and the snow is once again piled high where we keep it, a convenient fifty-minute drive from our house. Again, sorry, Wisconsin. It was time to head for the snow, so my wife put on twenty-seven layers of clothing and we headed up the hill.  

We are a little light on snow gear and toys, though - again, due to my wife’s severe temperature allergy, and our financial aversion to ski resorts. We go to the beach a lot because it’s free. I never have to pay $185 to get a “beach pass.” The flipside – there are no sharks on the ski slopes. It’s a give and take.

So, we own wetsuits and boogie boards for the kids, but not sleds and skis. Or snow pants. Or snow boots. Or good gloves... nothing, really. So, we borrowed some snow clothes for the boys, conveniently omitting the information that Son Number Three’s snow pants were really owned by a girl in his class, and off we went for a weekend in Tahoe.

The boys had a blast the first day of sledding, zooming down the small hills and flying off the jumps we made. On the second day, we got a little more adventurous and headed up the side of Mt. Rose to the public “snow play area,” which is an enormous steep hill that rockets you out onto a highway if you fail to stop in time. It would have been great, but the weather was not exactly cooperating.

While my wife watched in shock from the car, the three boys and I battled thirty to forty-mile per hour winds across the slope, along with the rest of the other idiots who decided to get out of their cars.

You know, those plastic saucers people have can really get moving through the air in a strong wind, like a sheet of plywood in a hurricane, nearly decapitating you as you hit the deck and watch them travel a quarter mile off into the trees.

We watched one lady, who obviously also favored the non-frozen water sports, chase her inflatable pool mattress all the way across the highway, where it had lodged itself under someone’s pickup truck.

Such rookies! We beach people had the upper hand that day. Boogie boards have leashes on them that attach to your wrist. Sure, the board is almost as big and heavy as the kid, so when the gale-force wind catches it, the kid gets pulled off his feet and his arm almost gets pulled out of the socket, but at least you don’t lose the board.

Those other people are probably still looking for their saucers.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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