AUGUST 22, 2020 – Yesterday afternoon while deep in my “tree garden,” I heard the rumble of distant thunder. When I emerged for a look at the end of our dock, an enormous thunderhead was closing in. I felt like a sailor in one-person dinghy in line with the prow of an aircraft carrier steaming inexorably toward me.
I ran to the cabin—now a large vessel at sea—where I battened down the hatches (closed the windows), then chased to the helm (the front bedroom upstairs) to turn the ship into the waves of the approaching storm. There I stood my ground . . . er, bridge . . . as Captain Courageous.
Lightning flashed, thunder boomed, rain fell, but without wind or hail. I left the helm for the lower aft deck (screened porch) to enjoy a good “soaker.” From the dry comfort of my chair I heard the forest laughing in the rain as it slurped noisily the abundance from heaven.
Soon the sun burst through, forming a rainbow down lake from our little Eden. No trees down, no hail damage, no flooding. Just a good soaking rain. It’d been the perfect storm.
Over the past decade, “perfect” storms have become less the norm in this neck of the woods. Often they bring deluges and destructive winds. Farther afield too, extreme weather has become more commonplace. Recently El Derecho—the “land hurricane”—wreaked catastrophic damage across a wide section of Iowa. Meanwhile, our family’s property manager in NJ, just outside of NYC, reported a “micro-storm” that wreaked more destruction and flash-flooding rain than anything since Hurricane Sandy. My sister in Manhattan, however, just nine miles from the “mini-Sandy,” observed not a hint of rain or wind where she stood.
Today, two tropical storms bear down simultaneously on the Gulf states. Wildfires, ignited by high-frequency lightning and fueled by tinder dry brush, threaten California yet again.
Is this plain “normal aberrational” weather or . . . a pattern of climate change? Consider recent news of Greenland’s melting ice cap—disappearing aster than scientists had realized and now at a rate beyond the tipping point, even if drastic counter-measures are taken now.
So far, all too many Americans have responded to climate change in the same fashion they’ve reacted to Covid-19: “It’s a hoax”; “It’s no worse than the flu”; “I’m 20 and it’s time to party”; “It’s Democrats out to ‘get Trump’”; “Don’t Tread on Me”; and “A lock-down will destroy the economy.”
Soon we’ll be beyond rescue. We’ll no longer “argue” about the cause of climate change. We’ll compete for resources necessary to battle the effects. Instead of carbon industries lobbying Congress and the White House to “go easy” on “going green,” coastal states will elbow each other for federal funds to bail out landowners and inundated infrastructure. Instead of Trump’s wailing to his base about a (fake) border “wall,” Cuomo will be calling for a real seawall below Wall Street.
A perfect storm bears down upon on us. Meanwhile, this evening’s forecast here: (imperfect) Storms with gusty winds.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
