When one has been totally absorbed with the repercussions of severe drought for three years, with the added bonus of two full months of record-breaking, triple-digit temperatures this year, one tends to assume that the rest of the planet is suffering a similar fate. Thus, it was almost surreal to read this morning that Vermont has been suffering, not from heat or drought, but quite the opposite. The temps have been at least twenty degrees lower than average all summer, it has rained almost every single day for weeks, and they've had three tornados and horrendous, livestock-killing hail storms, which is just unheard of in that area. What the blue blazes is going on here?
Have we fallen through a wormhole? Slipped through a tear in the space-time continuum? Or did we just wake up, and find that we had somehow entered The Twilight Zone! I am beginning to empathize with that lady in the episode where she believes the world is getting closer and closer to the sun, and they are all fixin' to be fried to a crisp! Of course, up in Vermont, they are probably feeling like the part after she wakes from her fevered delirium to discover it was all a dream, for the world has actually been flung out of its orbit, is getting further and further from the sun, and they are actually going to turn into ice sculptures.
Just answer me this: how can we have both scenarios, going on simultaneously, on this one continent?
While you are ruminating on that, don't forget to leave a comment between now and Sunday night, to be entered in this week's MIND-STRETCHING GIVE-AWAY!
P.S. Many thanks to trashotron.com for the above image.
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6 comments:
South Carolina has been going through much the same thing. I tend to go batty if we don't get rain for long stretches of time -- thank Indonesia for that. Pretty much from the time we moved here in 2007 until March of this year, we got next to nothing in the way of rainfall. I'd look at the weather map and see upstate NY having the wettest, coolest summers in centuries and wish I was there. It's hard to look at the map and not think "why me?"
As for your question, the climate is not so predictable, so cut and dry (har har, weather pun!) as we've been led to believe.
Any more jokes like that and I get to start calling you Tom Junior!
And look what's happening in Washington and Oregon---Whole Foods in Portland is giving out free water!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/weather/07/29/washington.oregon.heat/
P.S. Your tank is **huge**, but the water price was surprisingly lower than I'd have expected. Hopefully all the rain dances going on in our region will mitigate the need for a fillup.
Just google "rain dances in central Texas"---it's a whoop!
We humans have a tendency to put things in perspective as it relates to our own life span -- if it's out of the norm for the past, say 35 or 40 years that we can remember, then we feel it's an anomoly. But, in reality, it's just a small piece of time and one year of weird weather doesn't amount to much in the grand scheme of things. But yes, it's been very weird -- we've been running on the low side of temps now since before July 4. Nice, but strange nonetheless.
I'll send you some of our rain from Pittsburgh. I can't remember a wetter summer, or a cooler one. We have not had the AC on since May, and only twice then. The good news is that we are saving $$$ on power bills.
My theory is that weather zones are being stabilized. Some Force built invisible fences and walls in the stratosphere that prevents weather from circulating widely as it used to. Maybe they follow state boundaries, but it seems more regional.
It's part of SHIFT. Has to be.
We did get a wee bit of rain - 1/2 inch - the very next day, and best of all, the temps dropped down in the 70's for a short while! But now we're back around 100.
So Ritergal, what is this "SHIFT" you are referring to?
By the way, I have tossed all of your names into the hat for Monday's drawing!
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