We're going to die this winter

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They're saying the damaging typhoons in the Philippines is heading towards BRITAIN, as I knew it would . Not only we're all going to have our homes and lives destroyed and half of us dead, it's also bringing heavy snow laying like 50 inches on the ground so we're all going to freeze to death and die as well. Either that or be clustered up with lots of people in hostel things until the snow melts in February and our homes get re-built.

I don't think I can emotionally cope with this, WHAT AM I GOING TO f*****g DO??????????????????????????????????????! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

All my f*****g life is stress stress stress stress stress stress worry worry worry worry worry worry worry worry worry worry worry dread dread dread dread dread dread dread dread dread dread dread fret fret fret fret fret fret fret fret fret I might as well f*****g go and commit suicide right now rather than have the f*****g snow and no home to kill me off I f*****g HATE life!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

Umm, most of that storm is already dissipated and will never make it to England. There is far, far to much land and cold water between that area and England for any imaginable storm to reach you.

Notice that the only newspaper talking about that is a Tabloid. Go look at a radar map of the world or a satellite map. You'll see your in no danger.

Who are "they" and why are you paying any attention to such idiots?

How exactly shall an typhoon, whose existence highly depends on the existence of water below him, and that gets slowed down, when meeting land, get from the phillipines until UK? Will he take the Suez Kanal, or go around the cup of south africa?

I'm sorry to hear you are stressed. If I remember correctly, you have worried about other "world ending" scenarios in the past. Those catastrophes have not happened and while climate change may indeed create problems in the UK, the chances of them being at the extremes you are worried about is fairly unlikely.

First of all it is important to remember that "news" often tries to paint an extreme picture, implying future disasters, in order to draw your attention. Television news especially, but even internet and print rely on advertizing that requires that you stay on the same channel or click on links. The way they get you to do that is they make things out to be far more terrifying than they likely will be. They try to make you afraid so you'll stick around long enough to watch the ads. News can be useful, but a lot of it is exaggerated and unreliable.

The reality is that events rarely turn out like you expect. Problems happen. People adapt. Things are rarely as awful as the predictions suggest. The devastation that the Philippines has experienced is certainly far greater than typhoons of recent history, and I suspect many places around the world will experience more extreme forms of their conventional weather. The UK has had colder winters in recent years. That may be the kind of climate change you will experience, but it is unlikely you will get the kind of storms common in the tropics. I suppose if there are warm currents in the Atlantic you may see hurricane type storms, but even still, they are not likely to be even as strong as the ones we get in the US.

I don't know if this will help you or annoy you... When I was your age, I tended to worry a lot more about potential disasters. That was because I lacked the experience to know that I would survive. At over twice your age, I've been through these kinds of panics often enough that I realize the sort of anxiety you are experiencing is mostly fear of an uncertain future rather than fear grounded in likely events.

The future is uncertain. I can't say for certain that there will not be disasters. But even with the changes in climate, the problems that will happen are more likely to be relatively minor on an individual level. (It's the long term problems - mostly beyond your lifetime - where people will have to worry.)

I wish I could say there is nothing to fear. There are unknowns that may indeed cause serious problems. But they are less likely to be of the sudden variety like a freak storm. The UK is more likely to experience slower moving problems that, to some extent, you can see coming and you can prepare for.

While in the Navy, I spent four years traveling all over the north Atlantic. While it is warmed by the Gulf Stream, and while the Norlant is the roughest body of water on earth, it is just not warm enough to sustain storms of extreme intensity, much less create them.

I have also lived on the Texas gulf coast, where the blast furnace-type heat creates the Gulf Stream. The reason we have hurricanes down here is that intense heat, which Britain lacks. So, while hurricanes do occasionally drift up that far north, the lack of intense heat weakens them considerably. Even so-called Superstorm Sandy, which hit NYC about this time last year, wasn't a bad hurricane, but rather the convergence of several weather systems that resulted in extremely heavy rains.

Bottom line: As a Brit you have a lot to be worried about. But a category five storm is not one of them. On this matter you can set your mind at ease.

Joe90, STOP. Freeze, right where you're at.

*hug*

Take a deep breath. Now-- go look at a map.

The typhoon that hit the Philippines was already greatly weakened and falling apart by the time it made it to the coast of Vietnam a couple of days ago. Heard any typhoon horror stories coming out of Vietnam??

That's because there aren't any. It rained. The wind blew. The monsoon happened. That's what the monsoon IS (I think-- I might be off-season, but I don't think so).

Furthermore-- said typhoon would have to either be guided around the Horn of Africa or through the Persian Gulf-- and then the Mediterranean Sea-- to make it to England. Look at global ocean currents and wind patterns-- ain't happening. Someone would have to actually harness it and drag it there-- and we don't have the technology to do that.

It could, in theory, blow across Asia and Europe and get there...

...except that it would have lost all its moisture before it got halfway there, and then broken up over land and gone away-- why, when a hurricane hits the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans gets devastated (it's on the coast, and low-lying), the rest of Louisana gets soaked, Arkansas gets wet, Missouri gets damp, and Iowa gets a few scattered showers. Minnesota-- well, they watch it on the news and be thankful it isn't happening to them.

If you're not familiar with US geography, all these states are in a line going North from the Gulf of Mexico.

You're falling victim to scare-mongering and media hype. The "Global Warming Is Going To Kill Us ALLLLL" crowd loves scare-mongering and media hype, and the media eats it up because it's sensational. I used to do it too. It SUCKS.

*hug*

You need to become a survivalist. Or at least a prepper. You don't have to be like those crazy people on TV-- we laugh at them, and get mildly offended (sort of like autistic people get offended by media stereotypes of us-- sort of exactly like that).

Did my anxiety levels a WORLD of good.

Come over to www.survivalistboards.com. Ghost the Ladies' Section for a while-- find out what it's all about. You'll know me when you read me-- I'm the one who talks about her Asperger's, her Aspie kid, and types with lots of "--"s.

Just ignore the radical-right conspiracy theories. They're (probably) just as off-base as the Global Warming Radical Alarmists. Actually, they think the GWRA crowd are actually all out to get us...

PS-- There are A LOT of Aspies over there. Just-- don't tell them that. The American Right is kind of in the Dark Ages about developmental disability.

Also-- I do believe that climate change is real. I do believe that anthropogenic climate change is real. I do believe we need to do something about it-- stop being filthy and wasteful and greedy and gen'rally pooping in the spring we drink from.

But-- the catastrophists are doing exactly what you're doing. Catastrophizing. They're probably Aspies too. I'll bet climate science attracts a lot of Aspies-- I know weather is a common special interest.

OK-- Britain is going to see stuff from climate change. Different weather patterns-- wetter, or drier; warmer, or colder. Stuff is going to happen...

...but devastating hurricanes (they're called hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons in the Pacific, but they're in essence the same sort of storm) probably aren't, as thelibrarian said, on the list.

50 inches of snow?? Honey, I'm from West Virginia. We occasionally got 50 inches of snow when I was a child and a teenager. We called it "a week off school" and built wonderful memories of tunneling in the snow. The coal company HAD to let our dads miss work during a declared State of Emergency-- which basically just means that only essential personnel are supposed to be out on the roads, so no scampering to the office or running out after milk-- and so they sat around and drank wine and taught us to play poker. Sometimes the power went out-- lucky ones like us lit the oil lamps and heated with wood anyway; unlucky ones lit candles, wrapped up in blankets, and spent a few days reading to each other.

We prayed it wouldn't get warm and melt. Very few people died-- and if they did, it was pretty much uniformly because they did something infernally stupid (like me-- I let my aunt send me out overdressed to walk up and check on me and Daddy's place and feed the dogs, and I almost collapsed from heat exhaustion).

I have good memories of 50 inches of snow-- and, however much I might like to think we're specially wonderful people, West Virginians aren't any smarter than Brits.

Not gonna happen. No way the banks are going to let me off that easily on the mortgage and student loans.

I'm strongly in favor of Global Warming. If Global Warming is real, there will certainly be some downside, but the benefits will be far greater.

In any event, the odds of a storm in the Pacific making it to the UK, Global Warming or not, is about the same as the likelihood that the island of Guam is going to tip over from too many people on it.

Try anti anxiety meds.

Thanks for all the replies, all of you was helpful and I have learnt a few things by reading through your posts too.

I have read up about two different predictions: one says Britain will have severely below average temperatures from December to February with lots of snow. The other one says Britain will have a mild winter with lots of severe warnings of rain and floods. The latter does not worry me at all, I love the rain, and I don't even mind if it caused disruptions. With rain and flooding, you can get prepared easier, and it mostly only affects lower down areas where water gathers. But like I said, floods don't just cause within the first few drops of rain, so there's plenty of time to get prepared, where as typhoon winds can be damaging wherever you could be, and could damage within the first hour, killing a lot of people. Of course floods are devastating too, but....I don't know, rain just doesn't seem to bother me. I love the rain.

Oh, when I said about 50 inches of snow, I was exaggerating. I'm no good with measurements.

Dear Joe90,

Try not to worry.

Kind regards,

Molly
(an epic worrier).

That's not going to happen!

I'd love to spend one winter at Michigan Tech in Houghton, Michigan. Or at least a winter in Houghton, Michigan, anyway.

They reportedly get about 180 inches of snow, on average, per year. I'd love to see that much snow in one year. On the other hand, I suspect I wouldn't want to see that much snow more than once.

At the end of last winter, you had quite a snow over there in the UK, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. They were reporting it as the worst snow since the early 60s on the Isle of Man. I also read a number of stories about livestock buried in the snow in various parts of the UK.

Nobody really knows the future. For all they know England could end up being like tha Bahamas. Mon.