When Do We Stop Thinking It’s Just Bad Weather?
- Posted by: Siobhan O'Connor
- on June 18, 2009 at 12:16 pm
It’s been a comparatively unpleasant summer so far in New York City: tons of humidity, raining every other day for months, grey, kind of cold. And it’s not going to get any better in the next month and a half at least. In the last few years, heavy rains have hit the middle of the country. Now it’s the northeast’s turn to get pummeled.
My question is, do we really think this is just a fluke cold front (or whatever), that will pass, at which point summers in the northeast will go back to being uncomfortably hot and sticky like they’ve been every other summer I can remember from the past 30 years?
Two autumns ago, a coworker said to me “When are we going to stop wondering why it’s 100 degrees in October and start realizing the weather will be erratic for good?”
So, has it? Are we destined to experience unpredictable and unseasonable weather form here on in? Looks like probably. The Obama Administration issued a report the other day projecting what climate change looks like in the next century in the States. (You can read about it here.)
For New York, it’s not looking awesome. While it is looking very hot, it also looks like a century of rain and flood:
You can check out your part of the country here.
Image via
DISCUSSION: 8 Comments
Thanks for finally talking about this, Siobhan. It’s been cool and rainy here in Chicago this spring/summer. Following a rather brutal winter. Everyone keeps looking at each other and saying, “isn’t it odd?”. I think this is something we should start getting used to. It might be odd now, but it’s a sign of things to come, I’m sure.
On the other side of the country here in Seattle it sprinkled yesterday for the first precipitation in 29 days. Things are definitely changing.
Looks like the tables have turned for Chicago and New York for making fun of Seattle being the wettest city in the US. As a matter of fact We haven’t had any accumulation of rain for the past 29 days! It’s beautiful around here these days. Maybe climate change is taking it’s toll in New York… Who knows
Have any of you geniuses noted that they’re screaming about global WARMING … and its FREEZING outside in NY? I guess even total contradictions don’t phase people when they have an irrational belief. Let’s talk about that. And get me a real meteorologist to explain why its so cold when we’ve been warned its supposed to be so hot.
I believe that climate change is occurring, however…. Several of you are dealing with skewed perceptions. It is not summer yet and remembered weather is always always rosy, otherwise you wouldn’t keep living in new york and chicago (I live in Chicago). Irrational beliefs work both ways and you should look to data before saying that this year is any different than the last 10 years. Junes are notoriously erratic: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lot/?n=ordmonthly weather is erratic, and lack of a pattern is not necessarily a pattern. So yes the climate is changing but no its not getting drastically different YET, so its an interesting hypothesis but I would hope a publication as esteemed as GOOD would make their authors fact check brain blips like these and do us all a service and provide better data to coincide with their obviously well researched hypotheses ( maybe even an infographic
)
yes the geniuses HAVE noted the freezing weather. the geniuses also don’t get caught up in semantics. Global Warming describes the general trend of climate change globally, not specific events in specific regions.
Down here in Texas it just seems that the seasons have been shifted 2 months later than they used to be, for about the past 5 years or so. This perhaps makes them seem harsher and more erratic than they were based on a comparison to the same month you remember, but generally not when comparing, say, today’s June to what you think April should be like.
The link “not going to get better” takes the reader to the Farmer’s Almanac where predictions for June have proven to be totally WRONG. Prediction: less rain than average and higher temperatures than average…