Weather, or Not category archive

From today’s local rag:

Four Virginia landmarks are among the 30 nationwide threatened by climate change-related weather conditions, according to a report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

(snip)

“Jamestown Island is mostly less than 3 feet of elevation,” she said. “If the high projection is correct, then in 50 years, it would be predominantly under water.”

Levees would do nothing to help, she added. “The water’s actually coming up through the ground as well,” Mitchell said. “It’s a very spongy sort of ground. Just building a levee around it won’t keep the water out.”

I have nothing to add. Just read the rest.

The big headline in today’s local rag (pictures at the link) was about the violent rain and severe flooding yesterday. I measured three inches, most of which fell in a three hours, in my rain gauge.

We are klling nature, and nature is preparing to retaliate.

In a troubling new discovery, scientists studying ocean waters off California, Oregon and Washington have found the first evidence that increasing acidity in the ocean is dissolving the shells of a key species of tiny sea creature at the base of the food chain.

(snip)

Until now, the impact on marine species from increasing ocean acidity because of climate change has been something that was tested in tanks in labs, but which was not considered an immediate concern such as forest fires and droughts.

The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a scientific journal based in England, changes that.

Stop it! That’s “a blow,” not “some blow.” Also, winter seems to be back.

A 751-foot ship ran aground, two others collided and about a dozen other ships were dragging anchor in the lower Chesapeake Bay on Tuesday night.

Picture at the link.

(Short commercial that will make you think of this at the beginning.)

Read the accompanying article.

Afterthought:

We were wrong. Cali will not fall into the sea because of an earthquake. It will sink into oblivion because of climate change.

It is likely not a good idea to build farms in a desert.

When tumble weeds attack. . . . .

I remember that, after 1962’s Ash Wednesday Storm, my father drove us to Chincoteague, where we saw commercial fishing boats sitting high and dry in persons’ back yards.

Normal nonsense resumes tomorrow.

Afterthought:

If you have not seen commercial fishing boats, they are not small.

Everything in these parts is canceled.

Via Sampler, an image site (some images NSFW).

It’s February in the Mid-Atlantic States.

Two weeks ago, we had eight inches of snow and temperatures in the Fahrenheit twenties. Yesterday, it was 70 Fahrenheits. And it’s still February. I grew up in these parts and can testify that this is not How It Used To Be.

In the Bangor Daily News, Gwynne Dwyer has a theory.

The standard climate change predictions said that people in the tropics and the sub-tropics would be badly hurt by global warming long before the people living in the temperate zones, farther away from the equator, were feeling much pain at all.

. . . it was the people of the rich countries in the temperate zone – North America, Europe and Japan, mainly – who industrialized early and started burning large amounts of fossil fuel as long as two centuries ago. That’s how they got rich. Their emissions of carbon dioxide over the years account for 80 percent of the greenhouse gases of human origin that are now in the atmosphere, causing the warming, yet they get hurt least and last.

Well, what did you expect? The gods of climate are almost certainly sky gods, and sky gods are never fair. But they have always liked jokes, especially cruel ones, and they have come up with a great one this time. The people of the temperate zones are going to get hurt early after all, but not by gradual warming. Their weather is just going to get more and more extreme: heat waves, blizzards and flooding on an unprecedented scale.

The Charlotte Observer’s Mark Washburn tees off on media’s hysterical reaction to the possible appearance of a random snowflake. A nugget:

. . . I’ve been tuned into the Severe Nostradamas Gompler-Whompler Weather Center of Agonizing Death, also known as my television.

I can assure you that in anticipation of the catastrophe, we at the newspaper have larded up on typographical bullets

• Like this so

• We can reliably deliver

• All sorts of goofy lists on how to survive.

Follow the link for a battery of survival tips.

My local rag rounds up some snowy statistics. A nugget (emphasis in the original):

10,000 – extra megawatts of electricity that Dominion Virginia Power expected to be used on Wednesday.

376 million – cubic feet of natural gas delivered to customers between 10 a.m. Tuesday and 10 a.m. Wednesday by Virginia Natural Gas. That’s a record.

6 – degrees Fahrenheit, Thursday’s record low temperature for that date in history, set at Norfolk International Airport.

Also, they point out, 0 . . . jack-knifed tractor-trailers.

Read the rest.

Headline: The state of Georgia utterly failed Atlanta, and then sought to blame forecasters.

Taxes are the price of living in civilized society.

Image via BartCop.

Somewhere under all this stuff are three dozen assorted pansies.

This is a beach resort that seldom gets much snow, let along 8.5 inches of dry powder. The neighborhood kids were using their boogie boards as sleds.

For a bit of perspective, note that Nevada is having its hottest winter in years . . .

Temperatures in the Las Vegas Valley are expected to reach 70 degrees on Wednesday and 72 degrees on Thursday, according to the National Weather Service.

Highs have the potential to surpass records of 71 degrees for Jan. 29 set in 1976 and 72 degrees for Jan. 30 set in 1971, Weather Service meteorologist Chris Outler said.

. . . and Cali is becoming a dry state.

Seventeen rural communities in drought-stricken California are in danger of running out of water within four months, according to a list compiled by state officials.

Wells are running dry or reservoirs are nearly empty in some communities. Others have long-running problems that predate the drought.

Snow is predicted, perhaps as much as (gasp) four to six inches.

Therefore my telly vision is hysterically showing pictures of no snow falling yet.

We are a stupid society.

In the Las Vegas Sun, Paul VanDevelder argues that the race to dam the rivers of the western United States* has exacerbated the current drought, which geological evidence suggests is the worst in a millenium, by disturbing the balance of nature. A nugget:

The Colorado River has always been a special case. The drought that grips the Southwest today is the worst in 1,250 years, and climate modeling suggests things are likely to get worse. Ironically, the first state in line to lose water from diminishing reserves is Arizona. Suddenly, those 280 golf courses in the greater Phoenix area, not to mention tens of thousands of swimming pools, look kind of ridiculous. And don’t look now, but guess who’s first in line for the water that would otherwise water those golf courses?

The tribes. Dozens of them: the Fort Mojaves, the Shoshones, the Chemehuevi and Quechan, the Hopi and Navajo, et al. Where water flows between a rock and a dry place, tribes get first dibs.

_____________________

*A dam to fill the Grand Canyon was narrowly averted as recently as 1963.

The Weather Channel asked its viewers Saturday to urge Congress to intervene in its business dispute with DirecTV, arguing that it can harm public safety if the satellite system pulls the network off the air for nearly 20 million viewers.

Yeah.

Right.

Speaking of climate change, we ran the AC in the car on the way home from the grocery store today, after bundling up in the Fahrenheit teens and twenties three days ago.

Addendum:

Elsewhere, Bob Cesca looks at the big picture. A nugget:

See, it’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and Summer in the Southern Hemisphere where in Australia, for example, they’re enduring a record-breaking heat wave. The seasons are opposite due to the natural tilt of the Earth’s axis and — well, you know. Science, science, science. But screw that mumbo-jumbo — it’s easier to look outside, see snow on the ground and then to, via confirmation bias, conclude that global warming is a hoax. Easy. And dumb.

Image via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.