State of the weather, Jan 2012

Mark Twain said “We all grumble about the weather….but nothing is done about it”. We have been having a very sunny, but cold, winter. My grandmother Ruby always said that, “A dry winter is a cold winter”. The weather has been a sure topic to get a response lately. Try saying something like, “wow, what a beautiful day”. If you are in a crowd, everybody will have a different remark. I was by a person the other day when the thought that we were having wonderful weather was mentioned, he actually got angry. He said that “if we don’t start getting some rain, it is going to be a disaster.” Than he went on to ramble something about fish runs and gardens and not to mention drinking water. Most people are slightly worried, but they don’t let it ruin an otherwise nice day.

Justt for the record, (if I had access to records) we’ve had dry winters before. Sometime in the early ‘70s, we had 22 inches of rain, shortly thereafter we had over 100 inches. In 1964 we had snow in May, the river dried up that summer to the lowest flow that the south fork ever recorded, then that winter we had the worse flood in recorded history.

In the early ‘70s we had temperatures so cold that it froze and broke the fire hydrants in Redway. Every exposed pipe, and some not so exposed, froze and broke. It was a plumbers nightmare. So be careful what you ask for, you might get it.

Back in history the world weather got so warm that people moved from Europe to Greenland. Greenland was so warn and fertile that they grew produce and grain there. They had many years of competition free prosperity. Then the mini ice-age hit. Greenland froze over. Most people starved, the rest made it back to Europe.

Ten thousand years ago the Great Lakes of America were covered with a glacier. The British Isles were also covered with ice. Global warming happened very rapidly between then and now. The only reason that I mentioned that is because I don’t think that mankind had anything to do with the global warming that melted the Great Lakes and defrosted England. But it did happen. As I said, it got so warm that they farmed Greenland. But, for some strange reason it all reversed and the world got cold again. We are on a warming cycle again, the world weather is changing. I think that we are just too comfortable taking all the blame for the weather warming.

I was looking at a chart of Antarctica the other day. The chart showed areas in brilliant red shade, that were melting, and the ice was disappearing. In the same chart, in a very faint light blue color it showed the areas where the ice was gaining and getting deeper. I thought at the time, if the colors were exchanged, and the light blue was change to brilliant red and the red was changed to light blue, it would have looked like a very dramatic increase in the ice thickness.

When I was a kid I used to pick mussels on a rock at shelter cove. We would take a twelve foot long board with us as a bridge to get out on that rock. When I go out to that same rock today. I never have any trouble getting out to it. So, either the sea level hasn’t risen, or the world has raised it out of the ocean. The sea seems to have dropped at least a foot. Shelter Cove may have lifted in elevation from some of the earthquakes. Plus, I don’t think that Shelter Cove is in the subduction zone of plate tectonics. If it is, it is on the side of the San Andreas fault that would be diving, because the fault line is east of the cove at the base of the mountain.

So, there is just a lot about the weather that I just don’t know. But like Mark Twain said. Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.