Rocky Horror Planet Show
This is a wall cloud-deadly mother of tornadoes. Photo by NOAA
Is the weather changing, or is it just me? It seems like there have been more deadly events the past five years than my previous fifty years on the planet. Starting with the great Tsunami, then Katrina and all the other bad hurricanes in 2005, rising temperatures and melting ice caps. EEEEKKKK! At least in the US, this seems to be a year of violent storms- all kinds.
I have to blog fast! I was telling you about the heat wave the other day. It was yucky; they always are. The weather report called for thunderstorms to break the spell on Tuesday. So when the clouds came rolling in (always dark and ominous!) I was at the front window watching the sky. We had the most HELLACIOUS storm come up right over us. There were so many lightning strikes I couldn’t even do the 1001, 1002 counting the distance thing.
Remembering what happened in Minnesota, I realized I shouldn’t be standing upstairs when the house blew away. So the dogs and I made like Dorothy and Toto and went down to the basement. All clear in 15/20 minutes. I never heard anything about tornadoes; the weather report says the wind gusts were 48 mph. Well, foo- we had more wind than that during the hurricane in 2003. But oh, the lightning.
A lot of trees came down. We didn’t lose any. There’s this big sugar maple right next to the house I wouldn’t mind if it took a direct hit, but no. The Internet was down most of the day yesterday (oh dear!) and it’s not rabbit fast today to be sure. That’s why I’m blogging fast- in case it goes out again! The adapter box for the Vonage phone got fried- too many power surges or something.
As storms go, this is my new personal worst. More than 30 years ago, I was tooling down a county road in Ohio in the ‘69 Valiant and a big storm came on me. I couldn’t see to drive, so I pulled over and let the lightning strike on the fields all around me. That was scary, but for being inside a house with a basement to hide in, Tuesday was worse.
Maybe it’s the people? I believe there is an order to things. I think the Earth is alive, the way a plant is. Things are out of harmony. I think the planet is trying to get rid of some of us. What if all that C02 we exhale affects the weather some way? Makes the ground shake, or stirs up a cyclone? It might not be our cars or the coal fired power plants, what if it’s just us?
This is Thomas Malthus, cool early 19th century dude and considered the father of demography. Before him, it was thought that a country with lots of fat, happy people = prosperity, Divine blessings, even. He just simply pointed out that while food grows arithmetically 1 bushel, 2 bushels, etc., human beings grow geometrically- 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on. Nobody’s really talked about overpopulation since the 60’s. We hold the belief that there is plenty for everyone, it’s just a question of distribution. that’s probably still true, but I wonder if it will be the case fifty years from now.
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