Snow Falls On the Most Arid Desert On Earth 195
crackspackle writes "The Atacama desert region, a vast expanse of land stretching 600 miles along the Pacific coast of South America from Peru to Chile, is known as the driest region on earth, receiving only .04 inches (1mm) of rain per year. Many weather stations located in the region have no recorded precipitation during their existence. Sterile from the lack of rainfall, sparsely inhabited, and virtually free from electromagnetic interference, the desert hosts several major astronomical observatories. This other-worldly location is also popular among sci-fi film makers, and is a prominent test site for NASA's planned Mars mission. This week, the Atacama received 32 inches of snow, stranding motorists along the Pan-American highway and other roads, prompting numerous rescues. Footage of the snow is available on the BBC."
Worst Snowfall in 20 years (Score:3, Insightful)
So, there was a worse snowfall recorded there 20 years ago? And the story here is that snowfalls happen every 20 years there?
Did I miss something in the story?
Re:Worst Snowfall in 20 years (Score:4, Funny)
Did I miss something in the story?
Not in the story, but I think you missed the part where geography, geology, and climatology are interesting to some nerds.
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the story here is that snowfalls happen every 20 years there?
Evidence suggests that the Atacama may not have had any significant rainfall from 1570 to 1971.
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The Atacama Desert is 600 miles (1,000 km) long and covers over 40,000 square miles in area. I think it's entirely possible that some parts of it got snowed on and other parts have received no precipitation in at least 400 years.
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Oh, and I wonder if there's going to be a spectacular dessert bloom like there was in Death Valley in 2005 or if so long without rain means that there are no viable seeds or spores to take advantage of the moisture.
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However, the claim that 2 storms 20 years apart indicates a 20 year cycle is a bit outlandish, considering the 4 centuries without, eh?
Re:Worst Snowfall in 20 years (Score:4, Insightful)
"I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there."
McGann made a good Doctor.
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"Global Warming" or "Global Climate Change", nowadays, means whatever the fuck the person who's talking about it wants it to mean. If they're a researcher in the AGW field, it's whatever will net them the biggest cash influx.
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"Global Warming" or "Global Climate Change", nowadays, means whatever the fuck the person who's talking about it wants it to mean. If they're a researcher in the AGW field, it's whatever will net them the biggest cash influx.
"Anthropogenic Climate Change" if you please. I hope you include yourself when you say it "means whatever the fuck the person who's talking about it wants it to mean."
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It never rains in Atacama,
but girl, don't they warn ya,
it snows,
man it snows
*Hint* (Score:2, Informative)
When you add more energy to a large system, you don't just get even warming. Things get mixed. It's like heating up an ice-cream cake. Some parts that were warm will get colder than they were, as other parts melt into them.
It's why the term has changed to climate change instead of just global warming.
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The Atacama Desert region in Chile was coated with its heaviest snow cover in nearly two decades, the BBC reported. An estimated 31.5 inches (80 centimeters) piled up in the normally arid region.
If this snowfall was due to 'more energy' being added to the system, what caused the prior snowfalls? You have to include all data. Everytime you hear some claim about 'worst hurricane season in fifty years', or anything similar, you need to realize that means there was a worse event fifty years ago. B
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But: The Atacama Desert region in Chile was coated with its heaviest snow cover in nearly two decades, the BBC reported. An estimated 31.5 inches (80 centimeters) piled up in the normally arid region. If this snowfall was due to 'more energy' being added to the system, what caused the prior snowfalls? You have to include all data.
Fine: "Evidence suggests that the Atacama may not have had any significant rainfall from 1570 to 1971." Is that enough data that something probably happened before 1971 - like "more energy in the system"?
Communication (Score:2)
The problem is that too many weird climate events have been happening in quick succession.
Are you sure? Or in fact is that it's much easier to find out about them now?
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I do worry about our better ability to observe and how that might skew data (e.g., recorded hurricane intensities). But, it would require exceptional stupidity on the part of people who were selected for the intelligence, and then spent years in graduate school, to be unaware of this issue, and to not take the trouble to correct for it. Do you really expect them to be THAT stupid, that nobody would point it out, and that they would not take steps to account for it, once it was? (Problems with improved de
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The corollary to your snark is that if Washington DC gets an extra heavy snowfall that proves Global Warming doesn't exist.
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Another hint (Score:4, Insightful)
People like you do nothing to help bolster the argument of man made climate change.
See any time something happens on a weather level that would seem to be against global warming, like an extra cold winter, if they were related shouts of "Climate is not weather! You can't take something that happened with the weather and apply it to climate!" come up in a hurry.
However when something perceived to be out of the ordinary (or something bad) happens then people like you come and say "See! Look! Strange weather, climate change must be real and it must be people causing it!"
This trying to have it both ways is something that makes the argument look flimsy because it is precisely what people like religious zealots do. When something supports their views, they point to it as evidence. When something doesn't, they claim that sort of thing doesn't matter, even if it is the same sort of thing as they were talking about earlier.
So you can't go and shout down weather as not being climate only to then point at weather when it suits your needs.
Also it shows rather profound ignorance of the Earth's climate and weather systems to think that a rare event must somehow be an indication of something wrong.
Please note, none of this is aimed at trying to disprove or prove man made climate change. It is simply pointing out that this is a stupid argument and doesn't help your position at all.
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You are correct about bad arguments but the specifics are wrong. People who say humans are impacting climate change actually predicted that some areas would be colder and some areas would get more snow, the problem is when you look at global temperatures you realize that Europe and Asia were warmer while people were claiming a cold winter in Maryland as proof that there is no climate change.
Additionally, crazy weather is also predicted in the same models so in reality, all of these events are lining up w
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Er, the models even *hindcast* wilder weather: their variance seems to be substantially greater than what is observed (not to mention they're mostly way off base when it comes to getting absolute temperatures right). See this ensemble graph: http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/temperatures_absolute.jpg
The thing is, we've "observed" about 0.7'C of warming over a century and most of that seems to have happened in Siberia and the Arctic. Given the huge usual temperature variations over a
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People like you do nothing to help bolster the argument of man made climate change.
If the data is clear enough, it won't need any bolstering by people: the argument will stand on its own (as it should).
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Just like it did with smoking.
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A more important point is ... slashdot comments arent the scientific consensus on climate change.
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People like you do nothing to help bolster the argument of man made climate change.
See any time something happens on a weather level that would seem to be against global warming, like an extra cold winter, if they were related shouts of "Climate is not weather! You can't take something that happened with the weather and apply it to climate!" come up in a hurry.
So because he preempts the "snowing means its cooling!!!" cries, his argument isn't good, because you can now pretend he said "it's snowing because its getting warmer". Nice try. You will certainly convince the usual bunch of fools - but they are only looking for confirmation anyway, and will take much weaker straws.
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Outliers are early indicators in any process of discovery.
Agreed. But they, in of themselves, do not create a discovery.
For example, the 9 hottest years on record have occurred in the last ten years. That's a pretty encouraging sign that something is off a bit with the climate. The fact that it snowed someplace for the first time in 20 years is not evidence of climate change. It is a funny weather story. If it snows again next year and the year after, then we're seeing a trend. Until then, equating it with climate change is a bit premature.
The GP is right to
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*Hint* When someone changes their initial theory from something that can be quantified (ie. "global temperature will increase because of man-made greenhouse gases") to something that can't be quantified ("ie. global temperature will get both hotter and colder in different parts of the world") it means they have realized their initial theory was incorrect and they are scrambling to find another theory.
Basically, if you're telling me that the theory of climate change is now "Some places will get hotter and so
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Re:*Hint* (Score:4, Interesting)
*Hint* When someone changes their initial theory from something that can be quantified (ie. "global temperature will increase because of man-made greenhouse gases") to something that can't be quantified ("ie. global temperature will get both hotter and colder in different parts of the world") it means they have realized their initial theory was incorrect and they are scrambling to find another theory.
No, it means the theory is improving and the tools are getting better. They don't throw out one theory and substitute another. They fix the current theory by incorporating the new insights gained. Did Einstein completely replace Newton or just show it was a subset of the overall reality? The increase in computer horsepower over the years means they can do more detailed simulations that may uncover regional differences. A typical GCM simulation runs for about a month and as the computers get faster they just add more detail. So those regional differences can be quantified somewhat and it's getting better all the time.
I think your "Some places will get hotter and some places will get colder" would be better stated as "Most places will get hotter and a few places may get colder". That's closer to what actual climate scientists are saying.
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When you add more energy to a large system, you don't just get even warming. Things get mixed. It's like heating up an ice-cream cake. Some parts that were warm will get colder than they were, as other parts melt into them.
Yep, increased heat means more turbulence, turbulance in the climate is weather.
It's why the term has changed to climate change instead of just global warming.
No, scientists are well aware the two terms have a different meaning, GW is CC in the positive temp direction. It's why the IPCC has had a CC on the end for over 20yrs. CC is actully the older of the two terms (at least back to the 50's), GW was first coined in a scientific paper in the 70's.
As far as changing the terminology for political purposes goes, the only concrete evidence I have of that is when Frank Luntz while work [guardian.co.uk]
Re:bigger *hint* (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and for most of its history, uninhabited by humans; perhaps due to the climate.
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nice you you to overlook the fact that when natural trends happen that cause drops in temperature 1000 years ago are happening again, and yet the temperature hasn't dropped to those levels. at BEST it level out .
We har high peaks during the pleistoicene, but not a higher trend.
Yuo would need to go bak millions of years to see a trend of higher temperatures.
Now you go into the Holocene, there is what maybe be the climate optimum for humans. And we are temperatures are stating to arise beyond that, even thoug
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Man made Climate Change is real, and it's a fact.
Even if it is, so what? It's not the end of the world. Some cities get flooded...people relocate...farmlands dry up...others are created....political/economic power changes. Change is constantly happening. It's not new.
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Even if it is, so what? It's not the end of the world.
Precisely. The world will still be here no matter how drastically the climate changes.
The only question is how badly are we gonna fuck ourselves in the process.
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Believe it or not, we have bigger fish to fry that CO2 and some snow in a desert.
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But the climate alarmists like to take advantage of people's limited memory and lack of knowledge of history.
Nice! My turn:
Whereas those who want so badly to believe climate change isn't happening prefer to take advantage of people's inability to understand complicated things.
"You mean all those coal power plants and gas guzzlers might be having unintended consequences? Oh no, I'm starting to feel guilty! Wait wait wait... no, it has to be natural because it's happened like this before. If it were unnatural, this thing would have NEVER happened before. Alright, time to start bugging my congressman to spe
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the climate has been changing since the earth had an atmosphere. It has been hotter and colder and wetter and drier
The 'climate alarmists' (your term) aren't concerned with the climate changing. As you rightly point out, that has been happening for millennia. The concern is with the *rate* of change, and the ability of the ecosystems to adapt to the change at the pace at which it is happening. The concerns are also around the impacts to human society as economic structures change and break down due
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If I had points I'd mod you up but I would change "more frequent" to "more powerful" hurricanes and tornadoes.
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Repeating a previous reply, the Atacama Desert is 600 miles long and covers over 40,000 square miles. It's entirely possible that it got snowed on part of it and other places have not recorded precipitation for over 400 years.
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Both Global Warming and Climate Change were terms that were first used in the 1950's or earlier. The Bush II administration preferred Climate Change because it didn't sound as scarey.
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Right, cause if any scientist, ever, anywhere is wrong, then every scientist is wrong forever . Fuck your anti-intellectual bullshit. It's not even worthwhile to debunk your lies because they're so goddamn baseless. Do you even know how much a climatologist makes? Do you know how much Rush Limbaugh makes while filling your head with lies about the aforementioned scientists? Do you know how many orders of magnitude the two salaries are apart?
Stop filling your head with poison, and learn something.
anti-intellectual bullshit (Score:2)
You've made a valid point that contradicts what I believe
Out of curiosity, what vaild point do you see in the aforementioned "anti-intellectual bullshit"?
epic fali (Score:2)
Is this a trick question? Obviously none, because it was hidden.
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And, in the middle of the *SUMMER* too! (Score:2)
You should add, all that snow fell during June and early July!
So, where's that global "warming" when we have snow falling in summer!
Not only that, both Australia and New Zealand have had temperatures below freezing, with heavy snow in some areas these days.
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You forgot the /sarcasm tag.
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Slept through geography much? When we have summer no the NORTHERN hemisphere, they have winter on the SOUTHERN hemisphere. Where Peru and Chile are located.
So: Snowfall during WINTER. Because they have WINTER.
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so now they have to change the theory too
No, rather you just learnt something about climte science, "they" have known about the effects of sulphur for more than half a century.
Why do you think it is easy? (Score:2)
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Just because it's all to complex for you to wrap you mind around doesn't mean it's not real. The Chinese sulfur and it's effects are just more data that is added to the mountain of data that already exists.
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It might be related to human activity and it might not be relat
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That's science for you, willing to change when the empirical evidence changes, never an absolute final conclusion for anything.
Let me be the first to say... (Score:3, Funny)
It's global warming's fault!
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Quite likely, in a region subject to permafrost.
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
> It's global warming's fault!
Quite probably. In most really cold places, it is usally to cold to snow as cold air can carry less moisture than warm air.
Back where I grew up we had lots of -20C clear cold days. It was the "warm" days near 0C when it snowed.
Global warming is expected to create much more evaporation from the oceans and lead to more rain. (cf the flooded central US).
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
While that phenomenon certainly exists, it can't be used as a justification for this snowfall. There was a heavier snowfall decades ago, so this snowfall does nothing to establish warming, cooling, change, or static climate. You would have to do an analysis of frequency of snowfalls, etc., before drawing any conclusions about it.
You can draw the conclusion that anybody using this as evidence (a) for, or (b) against, climate change is not going to be somebody you want to take too seriously.
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I haven't been able to find information yet but this is a very mountainous area. The mountains force the wet air up and that cools it off producing rain.. The deserts are there not because of cold but because there are big mountains in the way of the prevailing wind. This snow fall is most likely due to a temporary change in the prevailing wind which brought moist air into the region.
I live in Florida and hurricane landfalls depend on jet streams. We had a few years when those winds seemed to steer every ot
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(cf the flooded central US).
The flooding in the central US is a result of the Army Corps of Engineers failing to release sufficient water before the snow melt. The last time there was a winter with a similar amount of snow, they released enough water from the dams in the early spring before the snow melt started and then held most of the snow melt in the reservoirs.
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The problem I've always had with this theory is that increased evaporation leads to greater cloud cover, which leads to a higher albedo, which leads to cooler temperatures.
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But clouds both reflect sunlight and absorb infrared energy. Have you ever noticed how much warmer it is on a cloudy night than it is on a clear night? That's clouds holding heat in. Near the terminator clouds can even reflect more sunlight down to the Earth. The net effect of clouds appears to be slightly positive for global warming but the error bars stretch from slightly negative to moderately positive.
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This is a complete straw man. Few credible climatologists would say something like this. You can't point to events like this as evidence of climate change. There is not enough data. Even if no snow fell there for all recorded human history, it's not proof or really evidence of anything.
You need far more common events to tease out a change from the background. Once off events are the worst possible examples to use for climate change.
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To conclude the media going off about a particular years weather as 'proof' about climate change. They report sensation. there reporting is not scientific forecast, it's random predicting. You need to look at long term models and data.
The extra energy will create dramatic and more dynamic weather patterns of all kinds.
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You do realize there are probably as many models as there are scientists right? And that your "example" is probably at best two separate and completely independent models?
And you do realize that the point of science is to actually make predictions then improve your prediction ability by monitoring those predictions and adjusting your theory to match physical results?
This isn't religion, they don't know the answer, they can only make predictions then adjust their predictions as more information comes in. Thi
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If you think they predicted no snow in the 2000's you aren't paying attention. The earliest date I've seen for that in the Mid-Atlantic region is maybe in the 2030's and I have my doubts about that. Somewhere between 2050 and 2100 seems likely to me unless we do something about GHG emissions.
Global Warming is apparently expanding the sub-tropical zones, where most of the worlds great desert's (including the Atacama) are located likely due to Hadley cell expansion. [wikipedia.org] That means the southern US, particularly
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Sorry, I keep forgetting (Score:2)
I'll try to keep up with the spinmeisters from now on.
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Which part of the word 'trend' do you not understand?
Which part of all the natural forces the are currently happening that historically lowered the temperature, but the global temperature not returning to those levels do you not understand?
Climate is rising even through the historic patterns would dictate a lowering. This is not opinion, it's a fact. Solid fact. It's one of the reasons their is a consensus that it is happening.
If you don't think climate change is happening, then you might as well believe th
Rain is a big emergency in North Chile! (Score:2)
They had rain a few years ago in Iquique, another town in North Chile that hardly ever gets rain. It caused quite a disruption because many poorer people have cardboard roofs on their houses, which ,obviously, do not work particularly well when it rains.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/21/tiny-drizzle-wreaks-havoc_n_242057.html [huffingtonpost.com]
Easy recovery (Score:2)
Fuck, imagine having to replace all that cardboard.
The losses must have been huge!
No worry, each of them ordered a $0.79 pen from Amazon, who shipped it loose in a refrigerator box.
Oblig. Drudge-dot (Score:2)
Isn't (Score:2)
the Antarctica the driest place on earth?
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ha. ha.
It has the lowest humidity, and the lowest moisture falling from the sky. It fact inland from the cost it gets almost not rainfall... or snowfall.
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There are areas of Antarctica where it hasn't rained for 40,000 years. It is one of the driest places on earth because very cold air can't hold much humidity at all.
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Yeah in fact I wonder about carbon dioxide in the coldest parts of Antarctica too. Wiki says it melts at -78 degrees C. I recall a weather station I was involved with managing reported -75 one day. I wonder if you get CO2 frost in conditions like that?
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I've thought about that too. But if it happens at all it doesn't last for long. I've never heard a report of finding a layer of CO2 ice in the ice cores.
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Not the driest part of the Atacama (Score:5, Informative)
The parts of the Atacama that get less than a millimeter are by the ocean. Counterintuitively, the closer you get to the sea, the drier it is. This snowfall happened in the Dry Andes of Bolivia and Chile, which are very dry, but do receive more regular precip. For example, there are glaciers above 6000m (it basically never gets above freezing there, so it's sublimation balancing precip).
This is a big snowfall, but it's not that bizarre of an event. AGW is happening, but it would be disingenuous to attribute this to climate change.
Will anything grow ? (Score:3)
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Antarctica gets heaps of solid precipitation, to the point where any structure built on the ice will be buried in a few decades. But very little liquid rain.
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Since you find snow mundane, I'll send you all of our snow fall in exchange for consistent, non-flood inducing, rain fall during the year. The only problem is that the insect population would probably explode.
It's all relative (Score:2)
I'd love to see Canadians deal with 20 years of almost no rainfall.
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What the hell are you talking about? We have lake effect snow here in Ontario in excess of 150cm in a day. There's places where 300cm for a weekend snow fall can happen. You know what happens? Life goes on, basic services continue, and people get around doing stuff they still have to do.
In my home town, if we see 100cm overnight, major core streets will be cleared by the following afternoon, and side streets will be clear by the following day, if not sooner. The only time I've things come to a comple
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Why the long and predictable diatribe if you're going to arrive at the obvious conclusion in the end anyway?
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Why the arrogant belief that all things are the same, and the obvious conclusion wasn't at the end. I'll wait for you to figure it out.
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At least you're consistent.
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I can vouch for your statement from down here in the US...
Salt Lake City (at least when I lived there) often got 'ordinary' 26-40cm deep storms that rumbled through during the winter. Sometimes, it combined with lake-effect snow (yes it's a desert... now look for that ginormous patch of blue on the map, immediately to the North and West of town) to give you 60-70cm snow with drifts that got damned impressive, especially on the 'benches'. All that said, the main roads were usually cleared by 7am, and the sid
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Well, it happened now, and 20 years ago... and then 400 years back in time before anything even resembling water (frozen or otherwise) falling from the sky.
It's a pretty dry place.
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I think you will find the snowfall didn't cover all 40,000+ square miles of the Atacama Desert and many places there may still hold their records of no recorded precipitation.