MSNBC (About blizzard in North Dakota): "Visibility will be AT or BELOW ZERO!"

[TahitiNut]

:wtf: That's amazing! How will the weather there allow people to see through the backs of their heads? I think this is truly newsworthy. "Negative visibility"?? People are going to actually be able to see behind them? I've heard of myopia ... but that's astonishing.

:wow:

[DonEBrook]

1. There is a teevee "weather"man here who often talks about hail as being nickel or even dime-sized.

shrug:

[TahitiNut]

7. Yup... because "dime-sized" is obviously twice as big as "nickel-sized."

:rofl:

It's a wonder that anyone listens to people who don't even listen to themselves. :silly:

[Liberal_in_LA]

16. lol!

[Schema Thing]

2. well it's worse than being blind

cuz you'll be cold too.

[Orangepeel]

20. *snort*

:rofl:

[livetohike]

3. Guess all the interns are at work this morning. The weekends

are the funniest time to watch the news :-).

[Mari333]

4. I think it means your face freezes off

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM2gLjfE_3Y

[madokie]

5. Here its 63 and heading for a balmy mid 70s

I guess I can look at it like its one less day that it'll be colder'n hell this winter.

[islandmkl]

6. i think one will be able to see 'inside' oneself...

who would have ever imagined that North Dakota would be the katmandu of 'winter zen'??

[TahitiNut]

8. North Dakota license plates: "Land Of Winter Introspection"

:rofl:

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

9. It's called a white-out.

You haven't lived until you've survived one.

They're brutal.

[gristy]

10. Negative visibility, though?

That's the nut's gripe.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

13. In an odd sense, it's accurate.

When you look out the window and see a blank white nothing staring back at you, you may very well think it's a good way to put it.

:shrug:

I DO realize what the OP meant, however...

[Catch22Dem]

11. I think the point of the post is...

You can't have visibility BELOW zero. Zero is as low as it can get.

[Berry Cool]

23. Exactly. It's like that sports cliche that "This team gave 200% today."

It's simply not possible. You could say "This team gave it everything they had" or "They played to the limits of their abilities" or even "This team played twice as well as they ever have before" or "They played twice as well as I thought they ever could," but you can't say they played twice as well as they were, actually, capable of playing. That's impossible.

Visibility is similarly finite. 100% is being able to see everything it's possible to see; 0% is being able to see nothing at all. You can't get "below zero visibility" because it would imply you could see LESS THAN NOTHING.

It's just another example of dumb things people say on newscasts.

[ensho]

24. I was in one driving on the Penn. Turnpike a little E. of Pittsburgh

where the road is curvy. during the whiteout it thundered! by the time I got out of it and to the next pitstop my knees were rubber and I hardly made it inside for some restoring hot tea!

Wow! scary to see nothing but blank white.

[Berry Cool]

26. That's pretty much SOP during snow squalls off the Great Lakes.

Gotta love those whiteouts. Scary thing is, you can drive into one and never see it coming except as a kind of smoky image on the horizon. Then you go into it and all of a sudden you're surrounded by snow and then it's a complete whiteout. No visibility inside it, but on either side of the band, it's as clear as a bell.

[stubtoe]

27. Glad you made it OK.

Nothing scarier than driving when you can't see! And you have no choice but to keep going. *shiver*

[ensho]

30. yes, I one point I stopped but then thought of the 18 wheelers on

the road behind me. I had been following a snow plow and figured I could feel the piled up snow on my right and would run into the truck in front. my kids and dogs were in the car, coming home to Md. from a dog show. driving blind is awful.

[TahitiNut]

31. When I lived in Rochester (NY) and drove either to Detroit (MI) or Columbus (OH) for the holidays ..

... there was ALWAYS the part of the trip that was white-out. My in-laws were in Columbus, so I drove Rochester-Columbus, Detroit-Columbus, and Rochester-Detroit multiple times each year. INVARIABLY I'd have to drive through low visibility and low traction on those routes - on the QE Way in Ontario, crossing flat Ohio with lateral blowing snow, along the Erie route with lake-effect, through Buffalo with lake-effect, or the NY Turnpike. The things I did when I was younger that I'd NEVER do as I'm older and wiser ... every holiday was life-threatening.

:scared: :scared:

[myrna minx]

28. They're really scary and very dangerous.

Too many people have died due to becoming disorientated and thus dying from exposure from white outs. Scary. I hope people heed the warnings and stay off of I-94 and the like.

[Qanisqineq]

12. Ah, how I miss my homestate

Really, I do! But negative visibility? That is just crazy! What part of ND is having the blizzard? My family lives in the southeastern part mostly.

[TahitiNut]

18. From the map they showed, all the counties in North Dakota have blizzard warnings.

... and over 3/4ths of the counties in South Dakota. (It didn't look good.)

[carlyhippy]

35. The whole state has a no travel advisory, it's blowing snow all over the state

but it's worse in the NE part right now, as well as in NW MN where I am

[rurallib]

14. You can see Russia from Bismarck by looking toward New York

Take that Sarah Palin!

[Jackpine Radical]

15. Visibility blow zero happens a lot in the Dakotas.

That's just a way of describing the situation when you see things that aren't there. Hallucinate, in other words. That explains a lot about Dakota politics, if you think about it.

[Are_grits_groceries]

17. Maybe they can see into parallel universes? nt

[laststeamtrain]

19. It's when you can't see anything & you can't believe what you do see. n/t

[chelsea0011]

21. North Dakota entering a new dimension?

[hedgehog]

22. What about the time the announcer referred to snowfall in the center of

Kansas as being due to "lake effect"?

And while we're at it, not just any heavy snowfall is a blizzard! A blizzard occurs when the wind speed exceeds 35MPH and the temperature is below 20 degrees for more than 3 hours.

[Berry Cool]

25. "Lake effect"? That's a good one.

Of course, the most annoying thing about weathercasters is their tendency to refer to all forms of weather as "activity." That and their references to temperatures being "colder" or "hotter" as opposed to rising or falling.

"The temperatures are gonna get colder." No, they are not. The temperature is a measurement of heat. It can't "get colder" or "get hotter." It can only "rise" or "fall." The AIR can get colder or warmer, the WEATHER can get colder or warmer, but the TEMPERATURES cannot.

[scarletwoman]

29. It means the snow is blowing so hard it gouges your eyeballs out.

Nasty weather, man.

[Blues Heron]

32. It's a blackout wrapped in a whiteout surrounded by a massive black hole!

No light can escape!

[lumberjack_jeff]

33. How does one see less than nothing?

Maybe they'll be rendered deaf. :shrug:

[carlyhippy]

34. People here are used to it, tahitinut, it happens nearly every winter

blizzard going on right now, most people who have any sense stay inside. just for a weather update, it's a blizzard, visability is about that of a dense foggy morning, -15 degrees with a wind chill of -45...I am hoping school is cancelled tomorrow, kids have no business being out waiting for the bus in this mess.

ND is whole other dimension....where else do people have to plug in their cars for 4 months out of the year?? I would go out and try the "toss the hot water into the air and watch it turn to snow" trick, but I would be afraid the cup would freeze to my hand....

[Qanisqineq]

37. funny story about plugging in cars

I lived in Illinois while I was in grad school. I still had the same car I had while in college in ND. One day my car wouldn't start. The university had a service where they sent someone out to help you with car problems. The people they sent out looked around under the hood and said, "here's the problem, this isn't plugged in". LOL! They had no idea what a block heater was!

[carlyhippy]

38. LOL! When I drive to Texas in the summer I have had people ask

me "why do you have an electric plug hanging out of your grill?! Is that some sort of homemade hybrid?" haha....until I moved up here, I had no idea that it could get cold enough here in the US to have to plug in a car.

[originalpckelly]

36. So the surrounding environment will suck your sight out?

That's fucked.

[Odin2005]

39. The weather is F-ing NASTY here in Fargo.

-10F, wind chill -45F, zero visibillity, snowing like crazy. They are saying this is the worst bizzard around here since the winter of 1996/1997.

[TahitiNut]

40. Well, isn't that why it's called Fargo?

:dunce:

[old mark]

41. I love this!

My favorite is a "50% chance of rain", which must mean it will either rain or it won't.

Thanks for the post.

mark

[Lydia Leftcoast]

42. I suppose if the visibility is BELOW zero, you can't even see the snow

:-)