Vyl Vit
Cambio Enterprises
553
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Posted - 2014.02.01 08:38:00 -
[1] - Quote
Not to be unduly alarmist (which is rather fun, actually), a few comments about North American weather. Living in hurricane country tends to make one glue the nose to the weather map. Having grown up in tornado country got me started early on this.
I can say unequivocally, and will argue with anyone who disputes this, that the weather patterns over North America we've come to see as "normal" have NOT been following the normal pattern over the past three years, for certain - two years previous to that (taking into account natural variations we should expect occassionally.)
Several things point to this by way of events, the most significant of which is the long-standing drought in the area once known as "The Breadbasket Of The World" (where we grew scads of wheat and corn, but now where a huge amount of cropland is drying up and blowing away;) tornados appearing as far north as Vermont, but with more frequency in west Pennsylvania and parts of New York state; the absence of hurricanes threatening my house, but finding themselves heading for South Carolina (all the way up to New York - Sandy for a good "instance";) AND - severe storms that normally would hit where I live doing a nice tight curve in the Atlantic and hitting Portugal and Spain (of all places!)
Because the weather (of all things) has been turned into a political hot-button issue (as though there aren't more suitable things to fight about), I've been quietly watching the weather maps, and satellite imagery provided by GOES http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/ . One significant change that is different than (say) 35 years ago is the path and trajectory of the Jet Stream (the high-altitude air current that guides arctic air into, or steers it away from the U.S.) This shift takes rain that historically fell on the mid-western wheat growing region and shifts it northward to fall upon Alberta (and parts thereabouts), where now unprecedented flooding is beginning to occur. (Fancy that!)
Had you been tracking the last two arctic air surges, you'd have seen that rather than coming in from the northwest, and surging in on a southeastern trajectory, both came directly south from over central Canada. You may recall The Alberta Clipper. These two weren't that, and they are so unprecedented we have no cutesy name for them. If this persists, over time we will, of course.
I've been sitting here for the past five years now, waiting to see if my neighbors will get their money's worth from the $10K steel shutters they had placed on their windows (a deal I passed up), or if (as it's now looking) for once I was clever in not doing what everyone else was. Our hurricanes just don't seem to want to show up. Most of these storms coming off the west coast of Africa are finding themselves dissipating in the mid Atlantic Ocean, or as I said, hitting the Eastern Seaboard from South Carolina all the way up to New York City; quite a few hitting Spain and Portugal. Europe is seeing corresponding, unusual flooding from these weather systems that used to head due west from Africa and land on us here in South Florida.
Average temperatures, rainfall amounts, calendar marks for seasonal shifts have all been altered in every state in the U.S. without exception; nothing radical, but noticeably. And, I really don't MISS my hurricanes. They are a royal pain in the butt. However, we're pretty much prepared to deal with them here, which apparently is not the case in the areas they now seem to like. (Fickle tourists. Go figure.)
tl;dr The weather is out of whack everywhere!
Anyone with any sense has already left town. |