# Be honest, now....How many of you.....



## jargey3000 (Jan 25, 2011)

....ever heard the term "atmospheric river" before a week or so ago?
Not me.


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

Nope. Where did you see that term?


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## doctrine (Sep 30, 2011)

We used to call them the "pineapple express" out west, because they typically originated in Hawaii, and they would happen nearly every year (especially Nov and Dec) and sometimes they would last days. It looked like a firehose of warm tropical water, with a nearly unbroken rain band from Vancouver Island to Hawaii, no small distance. But the phenomem has been repeated elsewhere, so it's not the worst description of it. Almost identical setup last week out east, except you could have called it a "Gulf of Mexico express"...


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

The effects of climate change have arrived earlier than projected.


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## newfoundlander61 (Feb 6, 2011)

No, first time hearing this one.


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## damian13ster (Apr 19, 2021)

sags said:


> The effects of climate change have arrived earlier than projected.


Al Gore 20 years ago claimed that majority of arctic ice will be gone by 2013.
Doomsday scenarios were predicted from climate change for last 50 years. 
Most of them claimed world would be uninhabitable by now.

Climate change effects are arriving much later than alarmists predicted


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## ian (Jun 18, 2016)

Never. 

Heard the term Pineapple Express numerous times when we lived on the west coast.


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## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

I first heard the term 'atmospheric river' when my kid in kindergarten was learning about the water lifecycle and the atmosphere. It's the same as 'Pineapple express' and 'water vapor surge'.
I had to admit I was most confuses when my kid came home from school and asked 'Is this big flood due to an 'atom sphere' (atmospheric) river or some fast pineapples?' I had to look up what the heck she was saying. It took a while but this term has been around for a while. I did know what a water vapor surge was.


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## AltaRed (Jun 8, 2009)

ian said:


> Never.
> 
> Heard the term Pineapple Express numerous times when we lived on the west coast.


Ditto.... Been around for years under that name.


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## Mechanic (Oct 29, 2013)

Atmospheric river seems to be the new favourite descriptor for the weather reporters. And yes, haven't heard them mention a pineapple express for a while. Whatever they call it, it's sure causing problems.


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## Mechanic (Oct 29, 2013)

It appears the term atmospheric river is a more general based descriptor for these heavy moisture bands coming from wherever, whereas the pineapple express was more so for a band coming from Hawaii to the west coast. I somehow don't see buying more EV's and paying more taxes changing the weather patterns either.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

ian said:


> Heard the term Pineapple Express numerous times when we lived on the west coast.


Yeah this is the typical term


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## agent99 (Sep 11, 2013)

Seems it is not a new term. But I had never heard of it until the recent events in BC. News mentions it every day, it seems!



> The term was originally coined by researchers Reginald Newell and Yong Zhu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1990s, to reflect the narrowness of the moisture plumes involved.[3][5][9] Atmospheric rivers are typically several thousand kilometers long and only a few hundred kilometers wide, and a single one can carry a greater flux of water than Earth's largest river, the Amazon River.[4] There are typically 3–5 of these narrow plumes present within a hemisphere at any given time.
> 
> In the current research field of atmospheric rivers the length and width factors described above in conjunction with an integrated water vapor depth greater than 2.0 cm are used as standards to categorize atmospheric river events.[8][10][11][12]


Wikipedia!


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## Ponderling (Mar 1, 2013)

Nom du jour, of the Pineapple Express.

Just like a few years ago everyone latched onto a southern swing in the jet stream mid winter over North America becoming the 'polar vortex'.


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## GL from QC (Nov 18, 2021)

I was familiar with the term, but only because of the "Ministry for the Future" novel that Kim Stanley Robinson released a year ago. The novel had some interesting sci-fi concepts for dealing with climate change, but as a work of fiction, it was pretty bad... It got a ton of hype, though: you still need to wait several months to get a library copy lol


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## OptsyEagle (Nov 29, 2009)

I thought it was the river that took the pagans to valhalla when they died. lol


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## RICARDO (Nov 4, 2021)

Pineapple Express was too ho-hum. A lot of people like to eat pineapples so much better to have have an atmospheric river that no one particularly likes. Typical media hype to generate story hype.
Another term for a cold air snap is now and Artic Bomb.
News media wants to hype anything they can for viewer's.
A cold air snap will go away, a bomb sounds more devastating.

RICARDO


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## nathan79 (Feb 21, 2011)

None of those terms are new. They been used in meteorology for decades, but mostly behind the scenes. The reporter on the 6 PM news would not generally need to use such precise terminology. It used to be enough to say "rain storm" or "arctic outbreak". Of course, the media is always looking for something new or catchy, so these terms that were previously reserved for academic use are becoming more mainstream. I think there is also a movement for non-professionals wanting more complex information, even if they can't really understand it.


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## investor65 (Aug 3, 2021)

jargey3000 said:


> ....ever heard the term "atmospheric river" before a week or so ago?
> Not me.


Just another sign of the apocalypse.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)




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## Tostig (Nov 18, 2020)

Once-in-a-hundred year scenarios don't usually stick in people's minds. Take Covid-19. Deniers claim it's only a flu not acknowledging the flu of 1918 was also really devastating.


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## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Tostig said:


> Once-in-a-hundred year scenarios don't usually stick in people's minds. Take Covid-19. Deniers claim it's only a flu not acknowledging the flu of 1918 was also really devastating.


Anyone who claims "it's only a flu" is wrong on the facts, and can safely be discounted.
For those who say "It's only as dangerous as the flu", again, without referencing which one, it's hard to say. 
The seasonal flu? Which year, Avian flu, swine flu, spanish flu? 

Or do they mean "flu" as in "a cold", which is actually more likely to be correct, but again stinks of ignorance and their opinion should again be ignored.

If they mean that they think it is getting down to a comparable risk as a typical seasonal flu, maybe.


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