Athens, Greece, this week. (Getty Images via The Hill) our hi yesterday warmed up
to 28 f (“normal” 46); lo 0 ( norm 24) things are looking up! we’ve got maybe 3” of snow, while my hometown, memphis, got 10, in a city that shuts down when they get 1 . . . & now it’s boil orders for 260k homes; & jackson, miss. totally w/o clean h2o “there has been some research suggesting that arctic warming is weakening the jet stream, which might change the kinds of air that come down to the u.s. does that seem to be happening?” asks the radio dude, & the atmospheric scientist sez: “yeah . . . there are science papers that suggest that that causes a much wavier jet stream pattern w/more hi amplitude waves, if you think back to high school physics.” acropolis covered in snow; several feet in the kremlin; seattle & portland (!) blanketed; snow in places where it doesn’t snow normally: s. lebanon, syria, israel, libya “and so we get these really cold events, but we also get these really warm events during the warm season as well.” (such as 7-8 x more “flash droughts” pre- dicted for india; such that another round of locusts chaws w. queensland up & mosquito-borne illnessses spike in new south wales) “but . . . these things used to happen less frequently. it seems that they’re happening yearly now . . .” & the effects you don’t anticipate: polar temps = power grid strained = rolling blackouts = boil orders & water shortages for 7 m humans; even microchips affected! -- plants near austin tx shut down, adding to global shortage “. . . which is something to keep an eye on.” not to mention the floods floods floods everywhere: this week, mozambique, where rising waters from yet another cyclone cut 27k humans off from help from outside; while yet another cyclone hovers off the coast; even as almost 3” rain pummeled afriski, lesotho in 30 min; & even gainesville, fla. got .55 in five “& because our winters have been so warm, when we do get x-treme cold, it feels that much worse . . .” record cold in latvia record cold in greece lowest windchills ever in kansas city delays in covid vaccines “what if often say these days is hope or waiting & seeing is no longer an acceptable weather risk mitigation plan” 38 dead from u.s. storms so far “& so i wd ask these power companies to build in more resiliency . . . b/c, from a weather perspective, we can pretty much tell you what’s going to happen now”
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |