Posted on 03/06/2022 5:05:26 PM PST by Peter ODonnell
First of all, your correspondent is a trained forecaster and provides daily forecasts to various users. Also, I have specific past experience with air quality forecasting which may assist with the questions raised by limited or not so limited nuclear exchanges.
The weather situation for the conflict zone looks grim for embattled civilians. It may not play well for the Russian forces either. Much colder air is moving southwest from the Urals region and has already begun to spread into northeast Ukraine overnight. Temperatures have fallen to -10 C (14 F) in some of the conflict zones and will fall further the next few nights with limited recovery in the daytime.
From now until late Tuesday this colder air will be held back slightly by weak low pressure moving south from around Moscow towards the eastern Black Sea. This will bring some light snowfalls with it, 1 to 3 inches of snow could fall in quite a few places in Ukraine, less so in the southwest and west. Then with that out of the way, the coldest air will be able to move in and overnight lows could fall even further to around -15 C (5 F) in Ukraine and -25 to -30 C in nearby parts of Russia. Daytime readings will be well below freezing. There will be the odd bit of snow for the next two weeks and a continuation of this cold east to northeast flow out of west Siberia into the conflict zone (and most of eastern Europe).
This cold regime cuts off over western Europe which has been chilly in recent days but not nearly as cold, but will turn milder in southerly winds. A frontal boundary will set up between Berlin and Warsaw and oscillate east-west for most of the next two weeks, seldom making much progress in either direction.
This is relevant in terms of possible wider military action and any nuclear exchanges even at the lower level of targeted military facility strikes. Fallout over eastern Europe would likely head generally north and then back into northern Russia. Fallout further west would likely head into Scandinavia, so there could be severe impacts there even if the countries were not directly targeted.
Russia could presumably think about the effects of any fallout from their own strikes, but that thinking would be pointless since it would be no doubt guaranteed that retaliatory strikes would come their way and fallout from those would generally not move all that far away from source before eventually spreading back towards Europe in this current pattern.
If it came to a larger exchange and North America was also targeted, many seem to think this means the end of human civilization. I don't think it necessarily even means the end of North America, but on a larger scale, if there wasn't much nuclear targeting south of the equator, only moderate amounts of fallout would spread there, the tendency in the northern hemisphere would be for the massive fallout to spread around in the westerlies and eventually collect the same way greenhouse gases collect, in the subarctic permanent lows like those around Alaska, Iceland and north of Russia.
From what I've seen of likely nuclear targets, your best bet for survival would be to head for Nevada, particularly the northern third of Nevada, or a few other relatively isolated parts of the west. Obviously large cities, power plants and ICBM launch sites should be given a wide berth. While large parts of the power grid would no doubt be destroyed, it is conceivable that electric power could be maintained in regional grids.
There would presumably be very little reliable information about what was going on elsewhere and it would quickly become survival of the fittest.
It would be an odd world that came through such a disaster, obviously Russia would not be part of it at all, and most of Europe and North America might also be gone, China possibly also since my guess is, if we have to lash out, we might as well destroy all potential declared enemies in case anything of value survives here.
Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer and I hope it doesn't come anywhere near this outcome, but if you have any inclination to survive, you might want to scope out the possible ways of doing so, just in case. Various parts of northern Canada might be livable too except that there would be very limited opportunities to grow food, you would need hunting or fishing skills and a lot of blankets. At least the weather is now getting warmer.
Oh and also, good news for environmentalists, you won't need to worry about global warming any longer, nuclear winter should take care of that.
And while I still have a chance to say this, elites of all sides, thanks a lot for totally screwing up our world. It's the one thing you've actually done well at.
Hi.
When my local weather forecast says winds from the west at 10 MPH,
at what altitude are they talking about?
Thanks, in advance.
That usually applies from the ground up to about 1,000 feet with a stronger wind at higher altitudes. Above about 1,000 feet wind patterns may be different. I could add then, if you are trying to factor in where fallout might go after the initial outward directions at blast time, it tends to go with the lower third of the atmosphere but also quite a bit of fallout will elevate above that and go further. Usually recent satellite imagery will give you an idea of the direction of motion of those parts of the atmosphere since water vapour acts in roughly the same way.
Also at a distance from source, fallout will be relatively greater with rainfall as it can then be transported more easily back to the surface. This was the experience after the relatively small fallout clouds from Chernobyl.
At first any massive strikes would “make their own weather” especially if several were close together, but eventually, that effect would fade out and the large amounts of fallout equally distributed around targets would begin to move in some semi-organized way, more than likely from west to east but not always. When Chernobyl blew up, Ukraine was lucky in that the prevailing lower level winds stayed southeast for days and took most of the fallout up over Belarus, the Baltic States and Sweden. As it turned out, even Sweden got more radiation than Kiev just a hundred miles southeast of the plant. It could have turned out very bad for Kiev in a different pattern (or even for Moscow).
Some other interesting questions:
* When will the “mud season” begin when even the best built tanks will have trouble going off road
* When will it get warm enough that Europe no longer needs to buy Russian gas for heating
Personally I am hoping for more mud. The Russians have been constrained in some areas by already muddy fields.
Mud season probably late March into April/May. Europe can probably survive without much heating from now on, it will be uncomfortable but in most cases not unlivable.
I think there’s enough residual moisture in soils at present that heavy military equipment can get bogged down even though it is not muddy without that disruption. But as to more severe mud problems, that appears to be at least 3 weeks away in this pattern.
And I thought I was black-pilled!
so per your forecast will those cold temperatures moving in be enough for the ground to freeze sufficiently hard to move heavy vehicles over it?
Civilian protestors - the ones that still have charged phones (cameras) - will be staying inside.
...limited nuclear exchanges?
My concern is the weather conditions for planting season. Some here say there is a narrow window in Ukraine to get the crops out. Never planted there. So I don’t know. Planting is always a challenge no matter where you are however.
He is ignoring the most important part in terms of the war.
Will the weather be cold enough near Kiev, to freeze the ground and allow armored and vehicular off road travel?
Looks as though it might do so.
On the bright side, it would give the illegals good reason to head back home.
I would imagine it might still be risky, what they really would want is warm, dry weather rather than a freeze. Given enough weight and pressure, the frozen mud can turn back to liquid mud even if perhaps under light pressure it would not be a difficult surface for light vehicles.
On a different point, I would think it is 5-6 weeks away from planting season at least. Late April or early May more likely. Hoping this will be resolved before that.
The radioactivity of fallout declines rapidly.
It is the hottest in the first few hours, and after two weeks you can go back outside.
The main thing is to shelter underground if you are caught in it. A foot or two of concrete, or a meter or two of soil, gives significant shielding.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are bustling cities today.
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