Weather, or Not category archive

The California experiment continues to shrivel in the sun.

On a recent afternoon at Guadalupe River Park in the heart of downtown, a couple strolled hand-in-hand, a mother pushed her toddler in a stroller, and soft breezes rustled the leaves of stately trees near the home of the San Jose Sharks.

But something was missing: the river.

The river that runs through America’s 10th-largest city has dried up, shriveling a source of civic pride that had welcomed back trout, salmon, beavers and other wildlife after years of restoration efforts. Over the past two months, large sections of the Guadalupe have become miles of cracked, arid gray riverbed. Fish and other wildlife are either missing or dead, casualties of California’s relentless drought.

Lake Mead gives up the ghost (towns).

The once brimming reservoir that straddles the Nevada-Arizona state line is now at its lowest point in more than 40 years, . . . .

Vestiges of St. Thomas, which was about 35 miles southeast of Las Vegas, have resurfaced over the decades with the fluctuation of the lake level, according to the park service. The town remained under water in the 1980s and 1990s, resurfacing in 2002. It’s been exposed since then due to the drought, a park service spokeswoman said.

The range wars are heating up in Cali.

Gazing at that canal, (Sacramento Delta area farmer–ed.) Gardemeyer asked: How do you tell the difference between his naturally occurring Delta water and the stored stuff channeled from reservoirs that’s supposed to go to all those people?

Maybe, he said sarcastically, they’ve dyed theirs.

“I don’t know what color their water is,” Gardemeyer said, “but the water I’m looking at out here is the same color it’s been for all the years that I’ve farmed.”

Bonnie McFarlane begs to differ. A highlight:

I wish scientists would stop blaming us humans for causing global warming. This is patently false, since global warming is not real! If the fact that we’ve just experienced the coldest spring on record isn’t enough to sway you, I’ve got other anecdotal evidence that should be plenty convincing. For example: my sister went to Greenland and never saw any polar bears stranded on tiny ice floes. In fact, my sister didn’t see any live polar bears at all, so there.

Read it.

Not to mention that Pope Francis trained as a scientist, though he apparently does not have the equivalent of a U. S. Master’s Degree.

I once went rafting in Lake Powell, which is now Pond Powell.

Watch this Florida state official avoid using the words, “climate change,” which Governor Rick Scott absolutely positively swears on a stack of campaign contributions that he has not forbidden state officials to use.

Via Jacksonville.com, which has commentary.

It’s all downhill from here.

Little new snow on the horizon means Lake Tahoe-area ski resorts will be doing well if they can stay open until the traditional mid-April close of the winter sports season.

On Sunday, Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort announced its decision to close – at least temporarily – becoming the fifth of the Tahoe region’s 14 area resorts to shut early this season due to lack of snow, according to a listing compiled by OnTheSnow.com.

At least one outfit is getting out while the getting’s good.

A real estate investment trust that’s considering getting out of the snow business could sell more than dozen ski resorts from Maine to California that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

CNL Lifestyle Properties owns 16 resorts including Sunday River and Sugarloaf in Maine, Bretton Woods, Loon Mountain and Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire, Okemo Mountain in Vermont, Crested Butte in Colorado, Brighton in Utah, and Northstar-at-Tahoe and Sierra-at-Tahoe in California.

(Personally, I’ve never had a desire to strap boards to my feet and fall off a mountain.)

The temperature today is almost 60 Fahrenheits higher than the temperature seven days ago.

This is not right.

The California experiment–making the desert bloom, as the saying went, by shipping in water from everywhere else–lurches closer to failure.

During the first three years of drought, Bay Area residents have endured brown lawns, shorter showers and dirty cars. Now, as the crisis stretches into the fourth year, they are about to feel it in their wallets.

Three of the largest Bay Area water agencies — the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the East Bay Municipal Utility District and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which runs the Hetch Hetchy system — all are considering water rate hikes of up to 30 percent this year.

The agencies — which serve 5.8 million people, or about 80 percent of the Bay Area’s population — say they need to increase rates because they are selling a lot less water as customers conserve because of the drought.*

_________________

*Catch 22. It’s the best catch there is.

Steven M., in a long post about a different topic:

The Weather Channel loves to terrify people by making weather, especially winter weather, seem as scary as possible.

Bob Molinaro:

You know what’s just as good as most of the pictures of Hampton Roads snowscapes being sent via Twitter? Looking out your window.

Whenever there is a bit of snow, you see stories of panicky persons buying all the snow shovels.

What happened to the snow shovels they bought during their last panic?

Aside:

The region is suffering under four or so whole inches. That’s almost 10 or 11 centimeters. Oh, the humanity!

Video below the fold because it autoplays on some systems.

Read more »

It appears that residents of neither Pennsylvania nor Massachusetts are able to drive in the snow.

Afterthought:

Some years ago, I was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on a training gig. When I arrived, the temperature was lower than the windspeed. (The customer had been sending me pictures of his snowbound parking lot for a week, so as to enhance my anticipation of the trip.)

As he drove me to my hotel after the training class, we were engulfed in snow. Visibility was minimal.

I asked, “Tod, is this a white out?”

“No,” he said, “because you can just barely see that,” as he pointed to a shadowy shape that was likely a tree ten feet from the road. At that point, a pick-up careened past us and slid into the ditch.

“Tod,” I said, “it appears that South Dakotans do not know how to drive in the snow.”

He replied, “Frank, no one knows how to drive in the snow.”

I ended up spending an extra night in Sioux Falls because the airport closed the next day. The airline ticket agent was a transplanted Philadelphian. She comped my extra night in a hotel because I was polite to her (she did not have to, as a snow storm is considered an “Act of God” for reaccommodations purposes). (I have found that nasty does not win friends, but does most certainly influence people.)

She told me that the one thing she missed most about Philly was Butterscotch Crimpets. When I got home, I mailed her a box of Tastycakes.

I used to say, that, once you Tastycake, you will never Hostess again.

Now, you can never Hostess again.