“MORE than 300 million people in the US and Canada face the growing possibility of electricity shortages beginning as early as this year and continuing to 2028. In a recent report, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation – an international regulatory authority – projected that a majority of regions in the US and Canada will have insufficient electricity supply to reliably meet demand during extreme weather conditions. A few may even see interruptions under normal weather conditions.”
“Let’s return to that first sentence: “MORE than 300 million people in the US and Canada face the growing possibility of electricity shortages beginning as early as this year and continuing to 2028.” Wait, what? Electricity shortages will stop after 2028? How? Naturally, there is no mention of aerosol masking, the best-kept secret in climate science. Professor James E. Hansen has said and written many times that the aerosols will fall out of the atmosphere in about five days. According to a peer-reviewed, open-access paper published on 15 June 2021, the loss of aerosol masking will lead to a substantial increase in planetary warming: 55% globally, and 133% over land. Most of us live on land. As I have indicated previously in this space, we passed the 2 C Rubicon several months ago, according to governmental bodies representing a few countries. These governmental bodies were catching up to Andrew Y. Glikson, who wrote that Earth had surpassed the 2 C mark in his 9 October 2020 book, The Event Horizon. Furthermore, as nearly as I can tell, additional heating of Earth is a one-way street. Once the planet warms, cooling it is a rather challenging task.”
“According to a member of a think tank in Washington, D.C. as published in the paper by United Press International: The report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation found that North America’s peak demand – the highest amount of electricity needed in a given period – is rising faster than at any time in the past five years. The sharp increase also represents a reversal of a decades-long trend involving falling or flat growth in demand.”
All of the above written, slightly edited, and spoken work, is from my friend and colleague Professor Guy McPherson. Subscribers to Guy’s Sub stack posts can comment directly and read the whole embedded script at the following link: Science Snippets: Much of North America Faces Electricity Shortages this Year
After being intrigued by this latest analysis, the electrician in me decided to dive in deeper and have a closer look at the threat.
For the record, I had full electrical registration in Aotearoa NZ and have a High Voltage Switching and Protection Qualification from the London Electricity Board. I worked at the Sun Alliance Computer Centre located at Lennox Wood, West Sussex in 1987, only after working there for 6 months did, I find out the computer centre, one of Britian’s first “Intelligent Buildings”, what an oxymoron, was a backup computer installation for the British Ministry of Defence. All of the Group 4 security guards were supposedly ‘ex’ military but over beers, after long runs together, I realised I was working in the belly of the beast. The entire property was surrounded by a moat, and we had the same electronic gate system that was installed at the US Embassy in Beirut.
One day my pager bleeped, and a message came up saying: “Blocker discharge”. I made my way to the security gate and found a small car with its rear axle and suspension ripped off and hanging form the blade of the ‘blocker’ that was built into the road, anyone following a pre-approved car into the complex without swipe access discharged the blocker and ‘bam’. The poor young woman who was running late for work just had her car ripped in two.
As a result of obtaining that HV qualification, I worked on high voltage substations when rehabilitating the port of Beira in Mozambique in support of the front-line states resisting the Apartheid State to the south.
The point of all of the above Is I have some expertise in this field and feel reasonably qualified to comment.
Delving into the story I discovered:
“Musk also indicates that the growth of generative AI in computing in the form of chatbots has been rapid, allowing users to generate content and images within a moment’s notice. He added that the adoption and rapid growth of the technology in computing is increasing by a factor of ten every six months. “I’ve never seen any technology advance faster than this,” says Musk.”
Can anyone else spot the exponential function here?
“Elon Musk says we’re on the verge of the biggest technology revolution with AI, but there won’t be enough power by 2025.
To my knowledge the energy required to power AI has not been fully incorporated into the paper above that Guy quotes so, as always, it’s worse than previously thought.
Elon Musk Predicts AGI, Self-driving, Unlimited Energy, Robots Coming SOON
Readers of this blog will know I have a long-standing involvement in the anti-nuclear movement. On that note, I’d like to specifically address this aspect of Guy’s blog piece: “As if those challenges are not bad enough, there is also the issue of nuclear facilities as one means of generating electricity. Nuclear power plants require grid-tied electricity to operate. What happens when the grid fails, even locally?”
“Vulnerability to extended power outages stemming from grid collapse triggered by terrorism, technological accident, cyber attack or geomagnetic storms is understood to mean the widest possible spectrum of immediate and downstream consequences for our nations critical infrastructure. Regrettably few realistic plans are in place for dealing with this risk especially as it pertains to three primary energy systems of strategic significance to the United States – nuclear power, chemical manufacturing and natural gas supplies. The author argues that greater sustained attention is needed to upgrade the resilience of these systems, foster greater sharing of remedies among them to offset the worst effects of grid collapse which exceeds 15 consecutive calendar days and build collective avenues of enhanced risk mitigation against such scenarios.”
From the ResearchGate paper: Grid Collapse Security, Stability and Vulnerability Issues: Impactful Issues Affecting Nuclear Power Plants, Chemical Plants and Natural Gas Supply Systems
Feel free to add your comments below and as always, I will update the comments section with additional information as it comes in, until the lights go out, pardon the pun.
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I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
Sorry, double-posted by accident. This is the one I meant to post:
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/tropical-glacier-shrinking-melting-bedrock-research-study
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sealintheSelkirks
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Two shorts having to do with the melting Arctic:
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/mercury-bomb-arctic-ice-melt-yukon-study
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https://weather.com/news/climate/video/why-billions-of-crabs-went-missing-from-this-sea
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Never any good news. As usual.
sealintheSelkirks
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Just another existential threat to face!
Chur bro
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Here’s a new snippet, too small for the Pestilence thread:
Deadly Virus Forces Town To Curfew
https://weather.com/news/video/eee-moquito-virus-massachusetts-town-curfew
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All sorts of virus’ nobody ever heard of before popping up in all sorts of different places it seems. Now it’s brain swelling. Wow.
sealintheSelkirks
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Poor little Texas! Oh wait, didn’t the Colorado River once make it into Mexico? Yes it did, and which country is responsible for that ending, eh? Maybe the US should quit building golf courses, and cease growing cotton in the burning desert south of Phoenix Arizona, and no longer wash leaves off their concrete driveways or grow freaking grass lawns!!!
Mexico falling behind on water commitments to U.S.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB1BAgrrd_s
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sealintheSelkirks
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WTH? link didn’t transfer after I hit enter. Try again:
https://grist.org/science/scientists-want-to-build-a-doomsday-vault-on-the-moon/
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sealintheSelkirks
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From Counterpunch.org, the latest ‘Roaming Charges’ list
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/30/roaming-charges-genocide-with-a-smile/
On Tuesday, southern Iran recorded a heat index of 82.2°C and a dew point of 36.1°C, provisionally the highest ever globally. The extreme “feels like” temperature is not compatible with life…
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Can you say holy shit in Farsi?
sealintheSelkirks
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I don’t know how many days ‘straight’ I’ve seen triple digit temps on my thermometer this year, but the first day was back in March when it should have been snowing…and I’m a thousand miles north!
100 Degrees For 100 Days Straight
https://weather.com/news/weather/video/phoenix-arizona-100-degrees-100-straight-days
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It will, however, be in the 90s F by this afternoon again. Just like yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that…
sealintheSelkirks
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Water water everywhere, more in the atmosphere from the increasing hotter air, but it doesn’t fall where and when it should anymore. So this happens:
Sunken Village Emerges From Shrinking Lake
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/sunken-village-re-emerges-and-could-spell-disaster-in-greece
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That this disappearing man-made reservoir is HALF of Greece’s water supply is…problematic don’t you think? An awful lot of eggs in a disintegrating basket.
Oh wait, Mexico is in the same boat. Haven’t seen much posted on what’s happening in Mexico City lately.
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High of 94’F today. Again. Like every day but at least it wasn’t 102’F like a few days ago. Still under Heat Advisory with a total Burn Ban in place in these mountains. Supposed to be hotter tomorrow. Of course it feels much hotter out in direct sunlight.
sealintheSelkirks
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Wow. Are you in a wooded area at all? Or is all this heat simply from being inland?
It hasn’t been out of the 20s (C) here, even inside. I think it hit 26°C (80°F) yesterday, and the humidity has been above 6%.
But I live in a lovely, 2nd growth forest, so it stays cool. Meanwhile, BC keeps cutting trees…
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Heat is mostly from being on the dry N/E corner of Washington State, the inland mountains/lower Selkirks.
Yes, I am on property that is ‘wooded’ even though surrounded by what is probably tertiary growth, if not worse. I’ve got a few…30 meter trees scattered across it, plus a lot of baby lodgepole and Ponderosa with red fir popping up in the shaded areas.
The loggers are always busy in the surrounding hills, the trucks haul year round and are always on the roads. I’m also just below BC, south/southeast of Kelowna BC that had a huge wildfire last year. I’m 40 air miles below the border. I can see some Canadian Selkirk Range peaks from the top of the ones here…
The ridgeline behind me that continues up (I’m on a flat spot) has been butchered 3 times since I moved here 20 years ago, the first time 4 months after I bought this place. It now has a new owner having gone from being Boise/Cascade to Forest Capital Partners to Hancock Lumber to whoever it is now. When I moved in there was 30-50 years of re-growth on the hill above, and now it’s scrub and dead saplings and dry grasses; in other words typical tinder for a wildfire from over-logging!
I’ve worked on healing these acres ever since, and I actually need to thin some of the new trees that have come up. It really is healing some, I can see it happening.
This property baked hard in the 2021 Heat Dome. Nearly 50’C here, a county record temp at 120’F. Insects & bird species were slaughtered from the heat and haven’t recovered much, and I doubt they will due to the repeated bouts of scorching heat starting earlier and lasting later every year. The first 38’C day was in MARCH this year when it used to be snowing!!
I did see a mated pair of mountain bluebirds take over one of the birdhouses this year and raise babies. First time in 3 years I’ve seen any of that species.
It doesn’t stay all that cool under the tree canopy, though it certain is better than standing out in the blazing sunshine… The air just gets too hot. But the overnight temperatures have been cooler than the last couple years though I don’t expect that to continue with what is happening to the climate.
Enjoy what you are surrounded with now, Jan. The ways things are going….
sealintheSelkirks
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Extreme heat causing power outages around Southern California
Records aren’t just being beaten, they are being shattered, that’s the non-linearity writ large for me.
As the planet broils more people are using aircon, that only works as long as the powers on!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHHlD6lSxq8
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Glad I have solar because the record-breaking heat I’ve been enduring the last few years… It was 100’F/38’C just 7 days ago!
But hey, lookie what I can do! Buy my own nuclear power plant and, if the neighbors gets frisky in ways I don’t like….
Nuclear tech like Bill Gates’ Terra Power can be ‘easily weaponized’
Scientists found that current enrichment levels of HALEU fuels is sufficient to make bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/haleu-fuel-weaponization-risk
Just imagine, my own tiny nuclear bomb all courtesy of Microsoft!
So all I have to do is trust Bill Gates? Hell, I have hated Windows 10 since I was forced to give up Win XP that I actually had an idea how to use, for this awful system. I kept XP, and dial-up internet, for as long as I could until I could no longer access my email or shop website!
sealintheSelkirks
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What Caused Earth To ‘Vibrate’ For Nine Days?
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/a-landslide-mega-tsunami-and-a-mysterious-vibration
So Global Warming can have extraordinary impacts. Ya think?
sealintheSelkirks
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NOAA: August Was 15th Straight Record-Warm Month; 2024 Likely To Be Earth’s Hottest
https://weather.com/news/climate/news/2024-09-12-record-warmest-august-2024-earth
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I guess this is what a countdown feels like, eh?
sealintheSelkirks
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News Wrap: Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Japanese group for work against nuclear weapons 6 minute clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b78fpFLK_qE
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sealintheSelkirks
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Another Billion for Zelensky to pillage as he feeds his country men, women and environment into the Russian meat grinder!!
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“As far back as 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists warned that humanity faced a stark choice between spending its resources on war and violence, or on preventing catastrophic environmental damage. The report was signed by 1,700 scientists, including the majority of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences. In 2017 the warning was reissued, and this time it was signed by more than 15,000 scientists: it concluded that the state of the world was even worse than before. The first UCS report attracted a good deal of attention; the second one passed almost unnoticed.”
– Amitav Ghosh, The Nutmeg’s Curse
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And so it goes…
sealintheSelkirks
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Brilliant quote, how incredibly prescient!
As the late great Hassan Nasrullah said “As long as Imperialism exists, the world, will never know peace”
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A cut from a Medium post ‘Will There Be a Second Stone Age?’
I do not know if this link will work:
https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/will-there-be-a-second-stone-age-4acbe3cfc52c
The author gives ten questions to ponder with answers to both hopium drinkers and pessimists, so I’ll paste the last question:
10. Will we — as a species — able to survive and thrive in the future, given the massive changes in climate and a continuous loss of biodiversity?
A: Sure, it can’t be that bad. We are the cockroaches of this planet, we cannot go extinct!
B: This is one of the biggest questions. We are part of a larger biosphere, and without our technology fueled by rapidly depleting fossil fuel supplies, we will be entirely at Nature’s mercy. If we mess this planet up really bad, there might be no place for us to live. Even if we find a suitable land to live on, and even if we can continue to feed ourselves, we haven’t evolved to tolerate the buildup of microplastics in our testicles, nor phthalates in the air we breathe and the water we drink… At least not any more than digesting radioactive isotopes from our food or surviving 50°C in a highly humid environment. At best we will be forced to leave behind large, previously densely populated areas, to find a sustainable way to live off the rest of our time as a species. At worst, the sixth mass extinction could include us, large, slow breeding hominids, as well; opening up a whole new range of possibilities for those small burrowing creatures to repopulate the planet in the millions of years ahead. Just like they did after the dinosaurs had left the scene.
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sealintheSelkirks
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Another 36 second snippet of bad news:
Why Half The World’s Food Supply Is At Risk
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/global-water-crisis-report-world-food-supply-at-risk
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sealintheSelkirks
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Isn’t this great? So the oceans will have heat-resistant coral. Until the ocean goes completely acidic I guess…
Why Scientists Are Breeding Heat-Resistant Coral
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/climate-change-heat-resistant-coral
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sealintheSelkirks
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The future is now I guess. 1/2 minute long:
Drive Through Piles Of Washed-Away Cars In Spain
https://weather.com/news/weather/video/valencia-spain-scene-damage-pile-cars-toll-flooding
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sealintheSelkirks
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Quick note. I’ve hit a few different updates on the hurricane forming in the Caribbean, Rafael and, out of the 5 or 6 meteorologists that were talking on each, at worse it would be a Cat 2.
It was only when one hurricane specialist from the National Lab (that was actually on the background screen behind them) that told me what I wanted to know; that the waters of the Caribbean are as hot as they are at the hottest time of the year…mid-summer not freaking November!
It’s about to hit Cuba at the narrower west-pointing end as a TS or possibly a Cat 1…and keep going NW.
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Election Day USA, not raining here at the moment with expected clear skies tomorrow.
9pm
Rafael is now a Cat 1 and hitting the islands below Cuba. Intensified VERY damn quickly. See what it is tomorrow, eh?
sealintheSelkirks
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A wildfire in NY City in mid-November?
Prospect Park Ablaze Amid Dry NYC Weather
https://weather.com/news/video/nycs-prospect-park-burns-amid-record-drought-and-heat
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Oh, people say, it’s so nice out for this time of year! Isn’t it lovely? Let’s go walk the dog.
Carlin was entirely correct on his view of the species, and every day continues to prove old George a prophet of doom…
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All around the US we are seeing hurricanes still roiling around in the Gulf and Caribbean, and snowstorm dumping record snowfalls, rain deluges and wildfires burning. All are kicking people’s asses.
California is still burning as my brother down in NorCal on the coast could see a big plume of smoke in the sky to the south when he called the other day. As could David, one of my old Kenpo students, now a bus driver in Redding, when he also called a couple days ago.
Then there is this really big fire called MAGA about to engulf this country because we have only two months left before the Pogroms start. But that’s okay because god don’t you know has chosen Trump to cleanse the country (or as he puts it: “I’m your retribution”). He, too, knows there is no such thing as Global Warming since it’s all made up by the Fascist/Communists/Marxists/Lefties, so he has promised to gut every federal environmental agency and regulation so the oil companies can “Drill Drill Drill.” No Clean Water Act, no Clean Air Act, nothing will be left.
And numbers of his followers are saying publicly that they want to start shooting Democrats:
Trump Supporters Celebrate His Win By Calling For Mass Executions Of Democrats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09_Riz42ELc
We have armed blackshirt thugs like what roamed 1935 Germany supported by the government waiting for the go-ahead. The ‘under-educated’ he is quoted saying he loves so much will do whatever he wants. Or what they think he wants. Killer primates, Kevin, with weapons of war in their hands that run on hate.
History does too repeat I’m afraid. Your descriptions of being in Ireland that was being overrun by armed government thugs shooting at everyone were chilling, and now it’s my turn to be the one afraid because the same thing is about to happen here. Be glad you are not living in this country.
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Even the wealthy are getting the hell out:
Wealthy Americans apply for foreign investment visas & passports at record levels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b93_WijCMoE
When the rats jump ship, best be running yourself.
The USA is now about to find out what it’s like to live in a 3rd world poverty-stricken shit-hole country run by a literal psychopath. But one that is still an ’empire’ with large stockpiles of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons controlled by a group of rightwing Fascists led by a violent narcissist dumbfuck who was the “stupidest student I ever had” according to his Ivy League Wharton School of Business professor. And it only took his multi-millionaire racist father a couple of million to buy him that degree he has.
“Selfish ignorant people elect selfish ignorant leaders.” – George Carlin
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Hartmann speaks about dark billionaire money:
Does America Deserve Trump? 4 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmARfhGq8t8
And the environmental impacts to climate are going to skyrocket, Kevin. What little mitigation has been done the last 30 years are going bye-bye. What he started doing in 2016-2020 is going to massively increase the damage, and that quickly because we’re already into rapid breakdown I’m afraid.
from the country of the mad,
sealintheSelkirks
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Here is some very strange weather that just hit in central California. Don’t see this very damn often except in Arizona:
Storm damage reported all over the Central Valley after haboob
https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/local-news/storm-damage-reported-all-over-the-central-valley/
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And it looks like another quick-intensifying hurricane is about to form in the Caribbean, and with a low pushing down from the US would aim it at Florida… The season ain’t over yet.
sealintheSelkirks
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Ya think Hurricane Helene did a little damage? Oh my!
1 minute short:
How Helene Could Change North Carolina’s Weather
https://weather.com/science/environment/video/how-tree-loss-changes-weather-hurricane-helene-north-carolina
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Unraveling far quicker than the Hopium folk expected, Kevin. A ‘Once in a decade’ Bomb Cyclone is slamming into the West Coast as I type this. As my little brother said last night (Monday) at 1:30am on his KMUD radio show in NorCal; “It’s looking pretty damned intense and the wind is already whipping hard outside.”
Then the power went out here at my place and everything went black. Called him back after I plugged in the touch-tone phone…
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Oh, and the once in a decade remark in the vid? Excuse me but didn’t we have one last year, too? Did they forget that already? Then add in the something like 50 ‘atmospheric rivers’ which slammed in all winter, and practically no snow up here where I am (1st snow was 9Jan before it went to -22’F a few days later).
This storm dropped a couple inches of snow last night that is now being rained on…as it is definitely above freezing here. But it is nice to look at and it does smell really good outside I must admit. Had another couple of inches last Saturday night, too, but it melted off in the morning .
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And not many people are talking about this. Even though all these hurricanes and bomb cyclones and floods have been happening, the reality is the US is in drought (from 9 days ago):
1 minute short
https://weather.com/news/weather/video/nearly-all-us-states-seeing-droughts
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Yep, things are unraveling quick up here in the Northern Hemisphere. But one can’t forget what the Fascist Trump regime is going to do starting in January. I feel like I’m living in the movie ‘Idiocracy’ mixed in with Sinclair Lewis’ book ‘It Can’t Happen Here.’
What the US’ new poopy-pants Dementia-ridden dictator has planned for every environmental regulation, every forest, every wetland, the Arctic… Drill Drill Drill is the least of it I’m afraid. The worldwide CO2 rises every damned year and nobody cares. Money is the only thing that the rich see.
Time for some hot tea that’s been steeping downstairs. I as an individual am completely at the (lack of) mercy (or intelligence) of the insane that have taken total control of a forms of government in this country. It’s never been a democracy anyway, ya know?
sealintheSelkirks
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Great work dude, best of luck to you!
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Here’s another under-a-minute short:
NASA Uncovers Hidden Cold War Base Buried In Ice
https://weather.com/science/environment/video/cold-war-relic-resurfaced-by-nasa-technology
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This makes one wonder just how many of these are scattered all across the planet, doesn’t it? Time bombs with nuclear reactors rotting and wastewater just waiting for the ice to melt…
sealintheSelkirks
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A new snippet from weather.com says 2027 could be the doom date for no sea ice in the Arctic:
Scientists Warn Sea Ice Could Vanish
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/arctic-sea-ice-could-melt-by-summer-2027
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This article has popped up all over the place. It’s in Smithsonian, Nature, Technology Communications… I’m guessing some people are becoming a little more worried, eh? But no problem, Trump will fix it with his DRILL DRILL DRILL attitude.
Besides, he can always slap a tariff on it, too, don’t you think? The morons that follow him haven’t listened yet about who pays for tariff taxes…
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Lower Selkirk Range weather:
Brown frozen ground, green conifer needles, trapped cold overcast inversion layer above my head with little wind movement, no snowpack below 1,500 meters, or with just a dusting in some places one can see from a distance that pretends to look like winter but has a serious lack of accumulation above 2,000 meters.
That’s the top of my snowboarding hill that opened two weekends ago with a grand total of 1.3 meters of accumulation on the PEAK. They are posting warning on their website to stay only on the groomed runs because of a dangerous unbreakable crust that has formed everywhere else. Oh, and around the lodge? They turned on the snow machines and made icy spiky crap that ended up with a grand thickness of 1/3 of a meter. At best. Ugh.
I don’t have any at all on this property. What little I had fall on 20Nov washed away two days later in a rainstorm. Temps have been mostly at or below freezing every day which makes cutting firewood a whole lot easier for this old surfer dude…
sealintheSelkirks
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Hundreds of Sea Turtles With Hypothermia Are Washing Up in Cape Cod, Cold-Stunned as Temperatures Drop
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hundreds-of-sea-turtles-with-hypothermia-are-washing-up-in-cape-cod-cold-stunned-as-temperatures-drop-180985585/
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In oh-so-many small ways not noticed by many, the unraveling is continuing apace.
sealintheSelkirks
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The Arctic Is Releasing Carbon Dioxide
The Arctic is now a carbon source, instead of a carbon sink, according to a new report released by NOAA. Watch to see how the Arctic is changing.
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/arctic-releasing-carbon-dioxide-climate-change-noaa-2024-report-card
More bad news from the weather channel.
sealintheSelkirks
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And again, another snippet of collapse from the weather channel:
Monarchs May Soon Join Endangered Species List
The U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service has proposed to classify monarch butterflies as “threatened with extinction.” Here’s what that means.
https://weather.com/science/nature/video/will-monarchs-join-the-endangered-species-list-in-2025 00.43
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Big sigh. In these mountains the Monarch butterfly population that migrates here every Spring from Mexico has been decimated not just by the logging in Mexico etc etc, but by the overheating climate.
I rarely see a Monarch any longer especially after the June 2021 Heat Dome killed everything with 120’F temperatures. Not only did the bird eggs die in their nests that year, as soon as the babies pecked the first hole in the shell that let in death, but the insect cocoons hanging in the forest around me dehydrated to death also.
The ground baked so hard and dry that there were no insects for the birds to eat. The flying insects of course also disappeared, and the little birds either died or fled down into the valley near the river and creeks. The decades of large, many-yearly-nests robin population has not come back in the last three years but then the ground hasn’t recovered yet, either.
At some point since then I realized I had absolutely just experienced ‘a taste’ of what the future will be like in these northern mountains, and that’s not even mentioning the radical wildfires and dense choking smoke clouds I’ve experienced, too.
Big shuddering sigh.
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sealintheSelkirks
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Listen to how many are owned by Trump who says it’s all a hoax anyway:
Condos And Hotels In Miami Are Sinking 1minute
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/miami-buildings-sinking
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I keep thinking it’s only a matter of time before Mar-a-Loonie gets washed away in a hurricane. Maybe he won’t believe that it’s happening and get his fat ass washed into the ocean never to be seen again….
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sealintheSelkirks
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Late September’s Hurricane Helene, ‘only’ a Category 4 storm, literally wrecked half the state of North Carolina along with everything else along the way to NC.
The local governments are of course broke like always, it’s a very deeply RED part of the country where abject poverty is a way of life. And Biden’s Infrastructure Act dumped enormous amounts of the country’s wealth into those Trump-voting parts of the country to improve life for people that hated him. They voted for Trump. Then they were hit with Helene.
Now with Trump back from his Florida hell-house as Dictator in Chief, there is going to be absolutely nothing coming from the federal government and I’m expecting him (or should I say shadow president Elon Musk?) to cancel all these Biden-backed bills because they ‘cost too much.’ I don’t know if you know much of the history of the US’s ‘Gilded Age’ but it sure does look like we are about to see a repeat of the 1870s to 1910s of Oligarchy by the rich. Trump will burn through whatever surplus Biden leaves just like he did with Obama’s when he left office, but it’ll disappear faster because Biden only had 4 years to try to fix what Wbush and Dick Cheney’ near-bankruptcy of this country.
We’re facing a total economic collapse, Kevin, which the elite wealthy always do better in since they generally engineer them for profit. Half the voting population (which is NOT half the eligible voters who didn’t) deserve exactly what is coming, but the rest of us certainly don’t.
Then there’s the Fascist Police State part of dictatorship…and who the hell knows just how bad that is going to be. Pogroms and disappearances and political dissident camps are likely. Or worse. All empires collapse into burning hell or so says human history…
A 60-foot section of I-40 in North Carolina collapsed recently, delaying its reopening
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1P9h5RCTcA 2:30
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I don’t think ‘delay’ and ‘re-opening’ are the correct words. There really isn’t any solutions to building a road on the side of a hard-rock mountain range that landslides regularly, and a V-shaped river gorge that will continue to be washed away in the climate collapse-generated storms and floods. Some of the comments acknowledged this reality…
sealintheSelkirks
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It’s all falling apart!
Good luck dude.
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And at the end of December 2024 it looks like Tornado season is continuing in the US Deep South where 7 very Red States that voted for Trump had some rather ‘unseasonable’ weather slam into them. Is their god trying to tell them something?
At Least Four Dead As Tornadoes Rip Across South
https://weather.com/storms/severe/news/2024-12-28-severe-tornadoes-texas-louisiana-mississippi-alabama
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Nah! There ain’t no such critter as human-invented gods but one can be sure with the emplacement of the new King this shit ain’t going to get better for the dumb MAGATs that live in those states…
Voting for stupid just isn’t the brightest thing to do but there are an enormous number of people in this country that will deserve everything that’s coming. Unfortunately, there are some really good people that will suffer along with them.
But at least they’ll be able to loudly proclaim “WE TOLD YOU SO!” as their FEMA checks run out and the wealthy running the government tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job.
Can’t fix stupid, Kevin.
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Here in this 49′ Latitude mountain range of N/E Washington State, it continues to freaking rain. There should be feet of snow but that doesn’t seem to happen like it used to. Imagine that!
sealintheSelkirks
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There is a very good article/summary of COP 29 on counterpunch+ but it’s only accessible to subscribers and I don’t know if you are.
It’s the End of the World and I Don’t Feel Fine
Pete Dolack 29Dec’24
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So I’m cutting just one paragraph out of it to showcase the absolute insanity the entire article was literally filled with:
…And there were more “decisions” at COP29. For example — try not to jump out of your seat in excitement upon reading this — the summit leaders will “undertake a special assessment of access to climate finance at the twelfth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (2030) with a view to assessing progress in relation to the matters referred to in paragraphs 21-24 above and identifying further opportunities for enhancing access to climate finance in accordance with the aim of the new collective quantified goal and in line with Article 9, paragraph 9, of the Paris Agreement.” The world’s governments also “Decide to periodically take stock of the implementation of this decision as part of the global stocktake and to initiate deliberations on the way forward prior to 2035, including through a review of this decision in 2030.”Not much of a sense of urgency there. As to the role of finance, it would be useful for us to remember that from 2015, when the Paris Climate Accord was signed, through 2022, 60 of the world’s biggest banks invested US$4.6 trillion in fossil fuel projects. Four United States-based banks were the worst offenders, according to a report by seven environmental organizations, and three Canadian banks are among the top dozen in the world for financing fossil fuels. Each of these are big contributors to fracking and tar sands production. It’s not only companies like Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
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The entire summary is just…rather more than alarming. Is that a good description? Or maybe ‘not unexpected’ would be a better phrase. Dumb-ass greedy psychopathic motherfuckers also comes to mind…
And in 20 days the Dictator King of the US comes into power to mimic the worst of Pinochet’s Regime in Chile…along with DRILL DRILL DRILL all over Alaska and probably off all our coast.
And concentration camps for brown people, and probably dropping out of helicopters into the oceans for non-Trump voters, democrats, liberals, and definitely the lefties just like the General had so much fun doing.
Or maybe do the soccer stadium torture and execution centers like happened in Chile? There’s so many to chose from in this country! Baseball, futball, American football, hell even basketball court can be used to help exterminate those Trump doesn’t like. High school gymnasiums will be useful don’t you think?
And I’m only kind of snarking here. The reality of the future is very scary indeed.
A Call to Arms? Trump’s Pardon Pledge and the Rise of Militant Extremism
The terrifying implications of pardoning insurrectionists who killed and maimed…
https://hartmannreport.com/p/a-call-to-arms-trumps-pardon-pledge-63d
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I guess this is enough for the first day of the year, eh?
sealintheSelkirks
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Wow! This says it’s been 48 years since the planet had a ‘cooler than average’ temperature year.
Globally, 2024 Was The Warmest Year On Record
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/noaa-report-reveals-2024-was-the-warmest-year-on-record
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Being as we are at the end of the more stabilized Holocene Era where temperatures gave our species the time to…build all this in the last 10,000 years since the ice retreated, I’m curious just what the people of the future will call this era? The Anthropocene just doesn’t do it for me. How about the Pyrocene Era? Or maybe the Blowtorch Era with a twist of irony mixed in?
That is dependent on just how many survive I guess. IF any survive and some form of civilization is left…writing may disappear along with any sense of history other than, you know, find something to kill and eat it!
sealintheSelkirks
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The Thwaites starts breaking up, and it does this in the southern US (you know the people who voted for Trump):
Southern Cities Shut Down For Second Day, Winter Storm Leaves At Least Five Dead
https://weather.com/storms/winter/news/2025-01-22-winter-storm-live-blog-new-orleans-florida-snow-atlanta
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Up here…very little snow has fallen this winter, a whole 4 inches on 3Jan and a couple more over the next two days, and then NOTHING. And the air is not really cold like it used to be. Had five days last January that bottomed out at -22’F, then three days later it was freaking raining. Not this year so far and it’s almost February.
But I don’t really expect that anymore. Too aware of my surroundings I guess since I don’t live in a town or city. I see nature falling apart in front of my eyeballs. I think it is easier to ignore when one lives in an artificial environment, and you spend your life on concrete and asphalt and inside buildings or make-believe manicured parks and greenery…unless your fucking home burns down in a 100mph Firestorm because it hasn’t rained since last May!
Holy shit, it’s back to burning in SoCal, in San Diego County this time, too. Santa Ana’s howling through the backcountry desert-type burnable mountains, and I remember the taste of ash out in the water waiting for a wave back in the old days… But nothing like 100mph winds LA had, just..60mph!! And never happened in January, always Sept & Oct.
Weather is really acting broken, isn’t it?
Not only do we have a Fascist government taking over (with the help of South African Nazis and Southern Slavery Sociopath types in the US, but the damage is really starting to be in your face.
Can’t wait until Mar-a-lago washes off the beach in a monster hurricane because, you know, our prez-i-dent doesn’t think much about that kind of stuff. If there was a god…
But he will sell you his special perfume, tennis shoes and $100,000 watches made in China along with his own brand of bible for $60 that costs him $2.85 each also from China. So if you look at it from that perspective, he kinds deserves to have his mansion turned into a reef…
This all sucks. Still try to do something fun every day. Even when the Nazis come banging on your door…Well, I’m not sure about that, dude. This life is temporary and I just turned 70…
sealintheSelkirks
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That monster iceberg just ran aground again:
https://weather.com/science/environment/video/a23a-iceberg-antarctica-penguins-south-georgia-island-atlantic
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Eventually it will do what, melt? All that fresh water could be towed to where it is needed, but it would take an unimaginable big tugboat!!!
sealintheSelkirks
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Tornadoes are ripping through the USA’s Deep South, and up into the Midwest destroying buildings. One I saw this morning was at the top of the destructive signature on Doppler Radar, just a massive thing heading for a town that it was much bigger than. Oops. Mississippi was hit pretty hard as was a number of other states.
Even Florida was hit by an EF-2, but the T-storm front coming across and up from the Gulf all the way to…southern Illinois are all aiming east at those states that really put Trump in office.
Same force was producing massive wildfires through Oklahoma because the gale-force winds were pushing it. Same down in with Texas with enormously powerful windstorms creating blinding dust storms and fanning flames anywhere the touched them.
I’m guessing that all these Trump-loving MAGA governors are on the phone right now with Trump asking desperately for FEMA disaster aid…but WAIT! Isn’t FEMA being disbanded in favor of states taking care of their own problems? Yes it is! And Trump isn’t showing much signs of sympathy I’m betting!
But maybe he’ll show up on Monday (he’s golfing in Florida again this weekend). $18million in tax money spent on that so far…and not even two months into his term! Hey Oklahoma, bet you could use some of that cash about now, eh?
Is your god trying to tell you southern GOP-voting folks something? I understand ‘signs from god’ is big with you people, but it seem that a huge percentage of your population are SO damned hard of hearing that it just isn’t getting through.
I don’t think y’all are going to get the response you expect because you voted for the orange menace…
Maybe you’ll get lucky and he’ll drop in for a photo op and throw out some paper towels like he did after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.
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And the leaden sky above my head is dropping groppel as I type this. After waking up to a bit over 50 mm of fresh snow earlier this morning with above-freezing temperatures that was turning it to mush as I watched it fall, this afternoon there isn’t any white on the conifers or the roofs, and the mud is getting deeper in the road to the gate.
Sure isn’t the snowstorms of March they used to be…
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But wait, let’s get off this deteriorating little mudball and get out into clean clear SPACE…uh-oh!!
Greenhouse Gases Could Lead To Space Collisions
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/climate-change-is-shrinking-space-for-satellites-to-orbit
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sealintheSelkirks
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The time of consequences is upon us!
Good luck dude!
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Industrial civilisation is a gas guzzling, electricity frying monolith, it has its own ‘engine room of consumption’.
I have a High Voltage Switching and Protection Certification from the London Electricity Board, our grids were built for last centuries loads, not this centuries.
Bitcoin alone uses more electricity than Ireland.
Combined with erratic weather these crypto mining and AI loads can combine to create shock loading. When turning regions back on after weather events it has to be staged carefully to mitigate ‘shock loading’.
Remember after an outage everything left on burst into life at that same moment, lights, heaters, fridge and freezer compressors and motors with high start loads all burst into life in factories and processing plants, they all kick it at that same moment.
We all held our breaths when pushing the start button on multiple thousand-amp three phase contactors.
Since I left the industry, it’s become much more complex, that complexity comes with its own fragility!
The environmental burden of the United States’ bitcoin mining boom | Nature Communications
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So the orange menace has fired roughly 800 NOAA employees in his first two months as Fascist Dictator and all-around Moron-in-Chief. His wrecking crew of corporate neo-Fascists put in place by himself and Hitler-lover Musk has also been eviscerating the US National Weather Service, and poor FEMA is going the way of the Dodo Birds with the idiot Noam in charge of that burgeoning Gestapo-tactic Homeland Agency that unfortunately had that ‘rescuing people in disasters’ federal agency folded into the mix. She’s doing exactly what the billionaire bitch in charge of the Education Dept is doing, cancelling the programs.
Neo-liberal Neo-con Republicans have been de-funding schools for 50 years now. Reagan was all for it! So your average 35-50 year old who has experienced this deliberate dumbing-down of the general population really just doesn’t know any better. Obey the King!
Above-average hurricane season predicted as budget cuts and layoffs hit NOAA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QtP2z7yEf0
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This is not going to turn out well.
sealintheSelkirks
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Dude, we’re on the brink.
When it all falls over, remember I enjoyed your contributions to this blog.
Thanks for your support and contributions to this project!
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Thank you for the compliment, Kevin, and the opportunity to put up what I hope has always been relevant data links along with my rather (admittedly) pessimistic viewpoints and personal observations across the wide range of your thread topics.
So here’s another one of those cheery links:
These U.S. Rivers Are In Serious Trouble
https://weather.com/science/environment/video/endangered-rivers-pollution-drought
I guess it’s like ‘don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out’ for our species. We have done SO much damage to this place, and in such a relative short amount of time!
And with toxic water just how healthy are the food crops watered by that sludge?
sealintheSelkirks
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The powers out in Europe:
Tens of millions across Spain and Portugal hit by huge power outage | Spain | The Guardian
The Agonizing Task of Turning Europe’s Power Back On | WIRED
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Here’s a new snippet:
Long-Term Droughts Threaten Water Supply, Farming
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/aridification-putting-global-water-food-supply-farms-at-risk
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It’s up to 40% of the planet’s land now? And the population is growing how fast? And the species has poisoned or ruined what percentage of what is left?
Fuck me!
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sealintheSelkirks
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Another weather snippet; look at the direction the 2nd tornado clip is spinning in. And remember, this is the US and not the Southern Hemisphere!!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DuxzA0T56mk?feature=share
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This is crazy, dude.
Local Selkirk Range weather on the Canadian Border:
Thermometer hit 36’C this May Day afternoon. I’m again experiencing this year what used to be June or early July weather twenty years ago. Hell, ten years ago!!
We are not ready for this, and I’m already in tank tops, shorts, and flip flops. Any guesses on what the summer temps are going to be around here will probably be lower than reality with most people because..they believe Trump and not the science that is kicking them in the crotch.
sealintheSelkirks
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Correction! I put in the wrong temp for May Day! I get C and F mixed sometimes… It was 26’C/81’F on May Day!
Yeah, 85’F yesterday at 3pm, four degrees F warmer, and 40’F last night. A 45’F whiplash.
It’s 60’F with heavy overcast, wind, and (so far) showers and light rain today. I’m expecting heavier rain from the looks of the clouds and what I’m seeing on the Washington coast surf cams. It’s pouring out there so it’s headed this way.
Not Your Imagination: Drastic Weather Flips More Common
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/climate-temperature-flips-warm-cold-weather-whiplash
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Looks like England is feeling the heat already, too. Breaking records there…but the weather channel finds a way to not make this sound serious by using cute little baby ducks…
Baby Ducks, Geese Enjoy UK Record Warmth
https://weather.com/nature/wild-animals/video/manchester-england-warm-weather-goslings-ducklings
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sealintheSelkirks
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Time for another snippet:
https://weather.com/science/environment/video/algae-bloom-killing-sea-animals-california-coast
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So the Sargassum seaweed is heading to Florida to sicken humans (and wildlife)…while this happens on the West Coast. Somehow I doubt even hard core surfers are paddling out in this shit.
Oceans are not doing well, Kevin, but you already know that.
26’C again today by the way.
sealintheSelkirks
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Snippet time!
These US Cities Are Sinking
https://weather.com/news/climate/video/sinking-cities-across-us-subsidence-flooding-infrastructure-0
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Is anybody surprised?
sealintheSelkirks
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“The air traffic control system is not the only infrastructure system at risk. The American electrical grid may be subject to “‘elevated’ risk of blackouts this summer.”
No shit Sherlock.
Infrastructure failure in America: Will we find a fix before the unimaginable happens? – resilience
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More weather snippets:
Massive tornado outbreaks continue as the ‘Tornado Alley’ zone shifts slightly east over new areas, the more populated zones. The scientists saw this happening last year, too, as I remember reading about it but it’s definitely been confirmed this season. The tracks have changed from mostly farmlands and small towns so the damage is going much worse. Dense built-up areas? Of course these storms will bust more up!
The city of St. Louis was rocked by a big twister that tore through thousands of homes:
EF3 Tornado Ruins Thousands Of St. Louis Homes
https://weather.com/storms/tornado/video/ef3-tornado-up-close-damage-st-louis-missouri
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But these beasts are still clear-cutting their way out in the rural counties and suburbs, too:
First Look At Tornado’s Aftermath In Kentucky
https://weather.com/storms/severe/video/devastation-left-behind-after-tornado-struck-kentucky
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And this weekend’s storm stretched all the way up north into Wisconsin:
Homes Destroyed Amid Wisconsin Severe Storms
https://weather.com/storms/tornado/video/tornado-damage-mayville-wisconsin-severe-weather
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FAFO (Fuck Around Find Out means voted for Trump) is a new learning curve for the MAGA faithful. Arkansas was hit recently with massive flooding from unprecedented rainfall and their governor, who was one of his cabinet members in his first term, begged him for federal funding help when her very Red state was under water…and he denied her petition. Said it was up to the states to take care of ‘their own problems.’ No more Blue state money going to Red state welfare? How’s that going to work out? Of course funding for Blue state disasters will be the same, but they can handle it better…as long as they stop sending tax money to the federal government.
Trump’s golf dates are going to suffer from that!
The level of Stupid in this country is astounding, isn’t it?
sealintheSelkirks
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Awesome dude, many thanks.
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What’s wrong with this? Oh, yeah, I forgot, Chicago doesn’t HAVE dust storms! Not since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s? That is a bit freaky!
Large dust storm moves through Chicago area, first-ever warning in city limits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypFbm-XdOTs
Blown in from a food producing states? That’s not good as it probably wasn’t dust, it was topsoil as they used the term ‘dry farmland.’
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When the Arctic Ocean has that ‘blue water event’ during this time of year, it will get sunlight 24 hours a day for months. Can we say super-charged overheating?
What It’s Like To Live Where The Sun Won’t Set Until August
https://weather.com/news/trending/video/alaska-24-hours-of-daylight
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sealintheSelkirks
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