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Chemical-Gammas t1_jdpff7w wrote

Neat visual, but you can’t really tell how the data relates to the z-axis. It would be much easier to tell scale if you had a color-coded legend for the depth.

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdpg2d5 wrote

That is some good feedback - I mainly just liked seeing the snow fall and melt a little and then fall some more

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Porsche928dude t1_jdpvxbn wrote

Okay so is all the snow a good thing considering California’s recent Drought issues or no?

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winterfresh0 t1_jdpzx05 wrote

Not claiming this will happen here, but just going to mention this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862

>The event was capped by a warm intense storm that melted the high snow load. The resulting snow-melt flooded valleys, inundated or swept away towns, mills, dams, flumes, houses, fences, and domestic animals, and ruined fields. It has been described as the worst disaster ever to strike California.

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KDII t1_jdq57py wrote

A significant change between then and now is the dams we built to protect against exactly that.

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Jolly_Scholar7367 t1_jdt0vab wrote

Would have been easier and more informative to just make a colored contour map

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kbeks t1_jdqcoyp wrote

Important caveat is that since then, we’ve damned many rivers and built many reservoirs to capture the runoff. Those were also at historic lows thanks to the drought, so it would take a lot to overcome that deficit and produce such terrible flooding again. Not saying it can’t happen, but it would take a lot. Also, the Dollop did a great episode on the great flood.

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IrishMosaic t1_jdqksup wrote

Over 100 dams have been removed in California in the last 30 years. Resulting in historic flooding, mudslides, and the inability to capture the snow runoff before it reaches the pacific.

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Lance_E_T_Compte t1_jdqwf5s wrote

You neglected to mention WHY they were removed...

They made countless fish and wildlife extinct or nearly so.

The vast majority of those hundred you mention were very small.

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Toothmouth7921 t1_jdtsn91 wrote

Not to mention several were filled with silt and we’re becoming useless

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mexicanitch t1_jdqexfh wrote

I remember learning that as a lil kid in Ca. Huh. Cool beans. Thanks for the random memory pop up.

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brfoo t1_jdrelkh wrote

It will happen again. Just a matter of when

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webbitor t1_jdpytt8 wrote

My understanding is that it can reduce the drought, but it will take more than one wet year to fix it.

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slyjay505 t1_jdq00fq wrote

Here is the current drought monitor. One wet year did in fact lift a significant portion of California completely out of the drought. Comparison from 3 months ago.

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SWatersmith t1_jdqdxee wrote

shame honestly, I feel like this will allow people to kick the can down the road and not face reality

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millenniumpianist t1_jdqlstx wrote

As a Californian how the fuck is this a shame, I don't think you understand how badly we needed this water. Don't 3000 IQ yourself here.

Californians have been living in drought conditions since maybe early-mid 2010s. At this point I'm pretty sure we're wired to be concerned about water levels. Especially since groundwater levels are still low. I assure you Californians and public agencies are still thinking about droughts, everyone knows we will eventually have some dry winters. That's just Californian climate. It's just a matter of when.

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amanamongbotss t1_jdre8r3 wrote

While I agree that many don’t see this as a solve, in speaking to my friends that still live in California, 3/6 definitely think that the drought is solved.

Of those 3, 2 are basically totally uninformed about climate change and uninterested in the subject. The other is liberal and understands climate change but is convinced the drought is done and it’s all good from here.

All 3 just keep bringing up how there’s 60ft of snow in the mountains and it’s basically been raining non-stop for 3 months.

I’m probably more pessimistic than they are, but this feels like an extreme weather event (albeit in the other direction from the drought, which was also extreme) and that CA will swing between the two extremes increasingly as time goes on.

But I just wanted to chime in that my anecdotal experience of Californians not being so dumb as to think water issues are over- I think there’s a larger group than you want to admit that truly does.

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Porsche928dude t1_jdrgr3w wrote

Fair enough but from what I understand The whole point of all the damn structures you built was to help Control the water and mediate the highs and lows. So at least you have that I guess?

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Toothmouth7921 t1_jdtuot3 wrote

It’s complicated and certainly political, especially in the Central Valley where most of the water is used. Crops which are water intensive such as Rice , Cotton and yes Almonds are a huge user of water and building a bunch more little dams are not the answer. I am a 66 year old native and have lived in the Central Valley where some legacy( old timers) ranchers and farmers have almost bulletproof water rights, which means they can choose to grow crops which don’t make since in a semi arid place like California. There is a lot of cattle ranching, in central California and is extremely water intensive as well. Climate change is here to stay and the State is going to have to adapt. It can but will take time and $$

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amanamongbotss t1_jdrhd68 wrote

I hope so! I mean I’m definitely not rooting for the demise of CA, I like seeing them thrive economically and politically (even when it’s not all perfect).

My main concern is exactly that- I get have to basically be able to hold onto water for up to decades and it feels like no one in America, let alone California, is turning the boat fast enough to adjust our practices in the light of climate change.

My fear is all this freshwater just runs into the ocean and they’re in a severe drought again in 2-3 years, and this cycle keeps repeating…

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Porsche928dude t1_jdrput4 wrote

Well considering how low some of your Reservoirs and lakes are I would be very surprised if for nothing else the engineers and officials in charge of water management don’t use all that flood water to fill them back up some. But hey hopefully this isn’t a one off thing and the drought breaks some what. At the very least this should give CA some breathing room to organize better water management practices for the future. Assuming the politicians have the balls and the foresight to go through with it regardless of the short term grumbling.

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whydigettwoaccounts t1_jdskm3t wrote

Fun Fact: reservoirs in CA also feed western Nevada. Homes and businesses in Reno have had green lawns, very few water restrictions, and water features/parks/etc going this whole time. There are also very few water conservation requirements on buildings and homes. So Yea, a desert state wastes way more CA water than actual Californians.

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SWatersmith t1_jdqoepg wrote

It isn't "just Californian climate", it's Californian climate since you guys fucked it up and diverted all of the water for agriculture.

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Nalemag t1_jdrjo73 wrote

as a native Californian, yes, this is a shame and you are absolutely correct. they are already talking about lifting water restrictions and i'm like no, wtf, keep them in place! (yeah, yeah, yeah, but the excess can't be used anyway. doesn't matter, teach people lessons now for the future)

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adolphtitler t1_jdrwjsj wrote

I'm no scientologist but I think they ought to do zig zags... That's right zig zags... when the snow melts if it can't go straight down you make it zigzag. That's going to slow it quite a bit and I think it's going to fix your problem.

Alternatively... mountain freezers... snow can melt if you keep it frozen 🌬️

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdphmp1 wrote

implemented a colorbar scale here if interested:
https://imgur.com/a/tRm3iEn

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Leuvedo t1_jdqj7m5 wrote

One thing you could consider:

The dark purple is kind of hard to distinguish from the black "0 snow" value. For instance, it took watching a couple times through to see the snow total change in Southern California. You changed the color for 0 to white, and include an outline of the state, or perhaps some other light color that's not already used in your snow depth palette.

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdqu9cw wrote

That is a great idea! will implement for sure

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ZanyWayney t1_jdqlg6b wrote

That's great, now scrap the "sheet" or "layer" like scale and we are getting beautifuler!

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RnotSPECIALorUNIQUE t1_jdqoxfi wrote

Coupled with multiple angles from the perspective of each axis and a fourth isometric view.

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Airrows t1_jdpkdvx wrote

This is the opposite of beautiful

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twisted_cistern t1_jdpugp6 wrote

I see why zero is black but it makes it difficult to see small amounts

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BigMax t1_jdqyrrh wrote

Yeah it needs a lot more color gradients.

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phdoofus t1_jdpk9er wrote

Would have been easier and more informative to just make a colored contour map

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdpkxf2 wrote

Thanks for your feedback, I actually have contour plots I just liked how this looked better

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KatanaDelNacht t1_jdqmvvc wrote

Why is this guy being down voted? He did the work and this was his preference.

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BadBunnyYonaguni t1_jdr45c3 wrote

Because this is data is beautiful not data is whatever the OP thinks. If people don’t like it they’ll downvote, simple as that.

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adolphtitler t1_jdrx3gi wrote

I mean he's third in the sub today so he did something people liked. He's also open to ideas.

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[deleted] t1_jds77dz wrote

[removed]

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CommieLover69 t1_jdss7rf wrote

bro chill out... it's just a data subreddit. no need to call anyone "Hitler."

op tried something new, and was just providing explanation in the comment... I don't see how that makes what he said "stupid" lol

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iTrigg t1_jdqnmxd wrote

Reddit man, there's no explaining 90% of it.

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magog7 t1_jdpowd5 wrote

so many things wrong. Tho I luv the idea.

The black 'baseline' makes the data hard to see

what are the 'vertical' lines on the left side .. very distracting and disorienting

etc

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pm_me_your_amphibian t1_jdq2bc2 wrote

Well it is data. It sure isn’t beautiful though.

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Bennito_bh t1_jdqzkun wrote

Not sure how you can call this data. The isometric view coupled with the placement of the meter makes the information impossible to retrieve.

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notexecutive t1_jdq95hd wrote

this is a terrible graph. the z axis doesn't line up with anything south of northern california.

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chomerics t1_jdqfqfd wrote

Beautiful? This is a poor visualization.

This should be a top view map, contour, not 3D. I have no idea what the totals are, where they are, no legend, bad colors etc.

What does the news show when explaining snowfall totals? Not this. Reproduce what others do, while this may look cool, it’s a bad visualization for understanding data.

The ONLY time I saw a 3D isometric work was when it was showing real time by minute #of tweets based on location during the World Cup. When a goal was scored, the bars shot up like cheering. This was the ONLY time this map ever made sense to use.

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Clemario t1_jdpkjib wrote

This reminds me of one of those After Dark screensavers on my 1994 Macintosh

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ColonelPaper t1_jdq932e wrote

Why would you not make the background black/dark blue so that the visual representing the snow could be white and off-white?

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ItDontMather t1_jdqedvv wrote

I’m confused- the starting point for each line is at a different height but all the rest of the measurements are at equal heights- it makes any information under the 0 line impossible to interpret

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Curious_Chemist_9386 t1_jdqfbl6 wrote

My takeaway from the comment section is that the people who are complaining that it doesn't effectively convey information are correct, but I also agree with OP that it looks kind of cool.

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inno7 t1_jdqi7y7 wrote

The colours are pretty hard to read. At about 2 seconds in, the graph has some dark colour and the base is dark as well.

I had to crank up my display brightness

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdqiqx8 wrote

yeah other people have been saying that as well. I’m gonna try another state with a custom color scale with more range at the 0-5ft level

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdpe010 wrote

This is my first post here! Data source was NOAA Rapid Refresh model Grid 130, processed with XArray, Numpy, Pandas, and Matplotlib in Python

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JasonBob t1_jdpixfi wrote

Is there a reason nothing appears in southern California? Even San Diego's mountains got a few feet of snow this year

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jessejamess t1_jdppxbq wrote

According to the X axis they only reached about -20ft of snow

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdpkg6b wrote

if you look closely at the beginning of march, you can see the socal storms roll through - I think they don't show up as strongly due to the color scale being shifted way up by the Sierra snowfall. one way to address it would be to make a custom color scale that has more range in the lower end of the spectrum, but I am just using the built in 'inferno' colormap from matplotlib

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Bryanupton t1_jdpu15h wrote

Could you point me in some direction to learn how to create some visuals from data sources like you’ve done here? I would like to explore and learn.

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Astr0n0mican t1_jdqyxsp wrote

Good work on your first post! I know a lot of people have been pretty critical already, but improvements aside, it’s kinda cool with the pixely style. I’m sure you already have ideas to make the next one better, and if you make another one, can you do Washington State?

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdr0hfh wrote

For sure thank you! And yea I did not expect that type of reaction lol, there are a lot of things that could be improved though. I can definitely do WA, I rewrote the script as a class so its really easy to do any state now

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wanted_to_upvote t1_jdrssgx wrote

Using color in the graph but not on the label axis?

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Stiggalicious t1_jdpwmog wrote

I assume this is water-equivalent snowpack, essentially if the square foot of snow melted into water and stayed within that square foot, that would be the number represented in this graph?

The Sierras have an absolute shitload of snow this year, and it's pretty incredible. Looking forward to all that snow melting and being used to recharge our aquifers and reservoirs and growing insane amounts of food.

It's also incredible that over 70 million acre-feet of runoff from rain and snow is expected this water year in California alone. That's almost 6 times the entire Colorado River Basin's flow over the past 20 years (~12 million acre-feet). Of course we can only capture a fraction of it, but it's still enough to bring the state back into a good spot (though aquifers take many years to recharge).

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das_Keks t1_jdpzrj2 wrote

What are the x and y axis?

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Hsinats t1_jdqgsr0 wrote

How does the height of the bar go above the back axis? It seems like you are really dedicated to not communicating the data with this visualization.

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdqiy5n wrote

haha thank you 😘 it’s the 3d viewing angle - could definitely be done as 2d contour plot i just think it’s neat looking this way.

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dml997 t1_jdqhcdq wrote

3D just obscures the depth. 2D color chart would be more comprehensible.

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DepartmentNatural t1_jdqhdkp wrote

So negative 1foot of snow depth?

I have no idea how to read this

Edit. Nevermind it's a video that takes 10 seconds to load on my phone, sorry

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missmaxalot t1_jdql8ly wrote

This is beautiful. Yes I saw the comments about the z axis but this isn’t about quants for me. As someone who doesn’t get to hear about northern Cali as much as southern Cali, I love it. I would have also loved if there was a sudden glitch and San Diego or LA got 2 inches.

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trlrnnrallday t1_jdqp0ek wrote

Now make it on a computer that doesn’t run windows 95

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[deleted] t1_jdqpi0a wrote

This data would be better shown with a heat map

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Witty_Success t1_jdqpubb wrote

What is the name of this type of viz?

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Softrawkrenegade t1_jdqq8nx wrote

The dark colors don’t work well on a dark background

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cybercuzco t1_jdqqgvd wrote

Serious question: How deep would it need to be to survive to the next winter, aka begin glaciation?

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g3nerallycurious t1_jdqt2r4 wrote

Well, I guess that means a lot of snow melt and water later

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chemolz9 t1_jdr3lyq wrote

I wouldn't call this data representation beautiful nor helpful. But it is interesting.

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DanteJazz t1_jdr5crd wrote

What’s amazing is in 1 pass, they had 50 feet of snow fall! 50!

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j33205 t1_jdr7c94 wrote

Can't see the smaller numbers that should be covering the rest of the state...

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Inevitable_Silver_13 t1_jdrbksg wrote

Got 4 feet of snow where I live and doesn't show up on the map....

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mrsprinkles565 t1_jdsp0r6 wrote

Ya but with 12 feet of snowpack they will still bitch about historic drought just to get the rest of the West to give up more water.

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Dr_Equinox101 t1_jdt57kb wrote

I’m gonna hate when summer comes and the rivers flood…

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TheMoonflow t1_jdtc8pn wrote

Very cool. How did you make this?

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ROBOTVRD t1_jdtm3ym wrote

I live by the goldenrod bits and didn’t get a lift pass this season… 🤪fml🤪

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Shcrews t1_jdurhfx wrote

we were snowed in for 2 weeks here near yosemite

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ripewildstrawberry t1_jdwz0sn wrote

This is awesome. I follow snow depth almost religiously. Are you visualizing the same dataset as the NOHRSC?

Again, I really like this. Well done.

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdx3q67 wrote

Thank you! this is from the NOAA RAP weather model (so its not collected from actual ground observations like NOHRSC but rather predictions generated across a 14km grid)

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Dr-Luemmler t1_jdq3fww wrote

What monster uses MM-DD-YYYY?

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QWERTYRedditter t1_jdqceed wrote

americans, get over it

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Dr-Luemmler t1_jdqcx4q wrote

As I said, monsters. I mean this is the worst way for writing dates. So thats why this data representation sucks, sorry OP. Horrible job

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HoyAIAG t1_jdqf6rb wrote

350 million people write dates that way. You are going to fight all of them??

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[deleted] t1_jdqgb3w wrote

[removed]

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HoyAIAG t1_jdqgunb wrote

It’s ok that things are different. I’m just letting you know.

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Dr-Luemmler t1_jdqh2o7 wrote

Lmao, good argument.

Arguing about something obviously stupid thing and making much more out of it then necessard... Sorry, I am blocking stupid people.

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Goodkoalie t1_jdr0bfq wrote

Get off an American website/platform if you get so offended over the way Americans write their dates 🤷‍♂️ it’s not rocket science, and living with this amount of stress in your life must really be miserable

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beene282 t1_jdrbirh wrote

Anything on the internet has a global audience. MMDDYY goes from the middle value to the smallest then back to the biggest so when it is clearly illogical and also used by a minority of the world it’s going to get questioned.

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Dr-Luemmler t1_jdrd46q wrote

Oh, yeah, forgot how salty uneducated Americans are.

Uheivriue gEt oFf rEdDIt djvb3kkdb

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cmoibenlepro t1_jdt8zmn wrote

I prefer YYYY-MM-DD the best format, and easily sorted.

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Hellfire242 t1_jdpt6hz wrote

Nice job OP. Anyone else know how this compares to other states? I know nocal gets its share of snow, but don’t other states get way the fuck more? Only asking cause I’m born here(socal) and feel like we just can’t handle weather other states get all the time.

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Autobot_ATrac t1_jdptapx wrote

Damn… the data is beautiful crowd sure do have strong ideas of what is acceptable beauty.

Thanks for the work on this. Yeah, I’m sure there were other ways to present it, but I learned a lot. What a crazy winter they’ve had. Gave at least a pause to the gnarly drought.

Thanks for sharing!

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shescarkedit t1_jdq1940 wrote

From the sidebar: "DataIsBeautiful is for visualizations that effectively convey information"

This plot doesnt do that, even though it might look cool.

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Autobot_ATrac t1_jdtodkn wrote

Damn… the upvote and downvote ratings say a lot about this sub.

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Autobot_ATrac t1_jdu7kno wrote

A handful of you really took this comment personally. Note that most of it is me complimenting the creator. And the first part isn’t some hard insult to you, it’s just an observation.

Weird ass subreddit.

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BeebleBopp t1_jdq0nc9 wrote

Great data capture, but little connection to the people in the state. There's no y axis limit indicator of where the Democrat Machine in power will stop screaming about drought conditions. Admonishment of CA citizens for their lack of consideration for 'drought' conditions' were on LA freeway's as recently 3 months ago, and I bet will be returned in 5 months. And it is for this reason the population will be struck with detachment from reality and the Dems might likely lose their power in office since their party has killed all reasonable new rainfall reclamation efforts and infrastructure in the state for the last 40 years, totally, and completely, unnecessarily. (If you ignore the Dem's grab for emotion-driven attainment of power in the name of caring about... fish that will survive...anything.).

So, great graph! But it should connect to the people in some way, as to what they are experiencing.

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drfsupercenter t1_jdq2kej wrote

I like how you made a non-political post political for no reason. Tell me who you voted for in 2020 without telling me.

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squirlz333 t1_jdq7g9a wrote

Surprised you can even interpret that this is a graph of California most people that whine like you do can't! Good job kiddo!

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