My ever-empty rain gauge
The high temperature here today was 94 degrees. The normal for this date is 86. In the last month, I’ve had half an inch of rain. Lots of things are turning brown. Even the squash are wilting. High temperatures alone wouldn’t be so frightening, if there was rain. It’s the combination of hot and dry that is life-threatening. Crops will grow in hot and wet. Crops won’t grow in hot and dry.
Under these circumstances it’s a depressing time to read this roundup of extreme weather by Jeff Masters at Weather Underground. These are not climate predictions that right-wingers can say are lies. It’s just real, measurable weather, compared with the weather we used to have. Last year, remember, tied with 2005 for the hottest year on record.
From Masters’ post:
“The pace of incredible extreme weather events in the U.S. over the past few months have kept me so busy that I’ve been unable to write-up a retrospective look at the weather events of 2010. But I’ve finally managed to finish, so fasten your seat belts for a tour through the top twenty most remarkable weather events of 2010. At the end, I’ll reflect on what the wild weather events of 2010 and 2011 imply for our future.”
2 Comments
WOW… I just read Jeff Masters info on the weather…. Scary stuff.. Basically the Earth is on fire and flooding…. Mother Nature is pissed!! We have been getting a fair amount of rain in South Florida but the lightning is so intense and frequent.. Almost always setting a fire where it strikes… My building was hit on Monday and fried my fire alarm panel for the whole building… At least there was not a fire.. It struck in the parking lot… It doesnt help that I’m right next to the Everglades where most of the storms blow in from…LOL I’ll pray for some NC rain!!!
Your reports from Florida make me realize that the media don’t give us a full picture of weather abnormalities. Floods and tornados, which make dramatic video, get much more coverage that droughts, no doubt because droughts are drawn out and don’t make good video. Texas, apparently, is about to dry up and blow back to Mexico, but there haven’t been all that many stories about it.
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