100 Year Storms

Do they still talk about 100 year storms? Once in a lifetime storms? Storms of the millennium? 

Maybe nobody wants to use those terms when those storms start to hit every few years. At some point all the “weird”weather becomes normal weather. If weird weather goes on long enough it’s no longer weather. It’s climate. 

Weather forecasts rely heavily on what happened in the past. The weather guys and their big computers crunch a lot of numbers. The problem is that the models are no longer good when basic conditions change. The planet is leaving what had been a particularly stable weather period. 

There’s plenty of debate on the reasons for the change. Some of it has to be man made. If a butterfly’s wing flap can change the course of hurricanes, then billions of tons of pollutants has to have an effect. Of course, stopping pollution should be a goal anyway as this is the planet we live on. 

There’s also scientific evidence that huge cyclical effects are happening to the climate. The sun’s energy is changing and that’s got have an effect. One can debate how much is natural climate change and how much is man made. In the end we should deal with the man made stuff as that’s something we have control over. 

That happens on a macro policy level. What does the average Joe do in the face of weird weather? You deal with it as it comes. That might involve how and what you plant in your garden. It might even be a sign it’s time to move somewhere else. If nothing else prepare for storm damage. Power will come down. Water will be unsafe to drink or unavailable. Roads and bridges could be destroyed. 

The last thing you want to do is to ignore the weird weather and assume it’ll never happen again. 

-Sixbears