Snow in Spring

Snow in Spring

It’s Spring! Normally I’d be thinking of crocuses and daffodils and waiting for the hibiscus to send out thick buds that will turn into giant red flowers. But this season has started off strangely. The bushes in our backyard are showing puffs of white instead of the colorful promise of hydrangeas. Branches from the pine trees are touching the ground with the weight of wet snow.

What is going on? This is the fourth nor’easter we’ve had this month, bringing snow and sleet at a time when we should be having a gentle shift into the next season. We speak about global warming and yet we see snow in Spring?

I remember the saying that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. I also can recall one year that we had snow in the beginning of April. So things do sometimes defy expectations. However, we are in a time of large shifts in our climate.  It’s hard to ignore the changes that are taking place across the world. The atmosphere is heating up, causing glaciers to melt, oceans to rise, more floods, and fires in drier lands. And yet, we can still have snow at the beginning of Spring.

What we do affects things, whether it is personally or globally. Our climate has changed over the millennia but we seem to be hurrying things up lately. I hope that our current leaders work to minimize climate changes rather than take a short-term approach for political gains. Our planet is a marvelous place; let’s try our best to support it.

U.S. Spring forecast:

https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/2018-us-spring-forecast-cold-snow-to-linger-in-the-northeast-severe-storms-to-kick-off-early-in-south/70004044

NASA evidence of global warming:

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Snowstorm!

Snowstorm!

Another incredible storm has passed and it was a whopper! So much snow. Our part of South Jersey lucked out. We had just a few inches, which quickly melted as the temperature warmed. But that wasn’t the norm. Long Island was hit hard, again, with 2-3 feet of snow in many towns, not a welcome occurrence after Hurricane Sandy. Up further into Connecticut, the storm laid down even more snow, forty inches in Hamden and close to that in Milford. Many towns in Massachusetts had about two feet, though several counties had more than that.

Our daughter-in-law took this photo looking through the screen at the beginning of the snowstorm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before the cars were completely covered and the accumulation had risen to over two-feet high. By the end of the day all that was seen were white lumps hunching up by the no longer visible curbs.

So what do we make of this Blizzard Nemo, as it is being called? Is it a freak happenstance or part of a pattern? And what about the frequency of recent tsunamis, wildfires, earthquakes, and flooding, and the increase of our global temperature by about a degree, which is no small amount?

I know there are people who call global warming a sham but the evidence is proving otherwise. It is not a subject that can be cozily determined by political preference. Photos show the glaciers are in retreat. Statistics point up the numbers of record-breaking storms that have been battering the earth in the past several years.

It seems like the right time to look at our environment in a responsible way. Let’s put aside selfish profiting and dogmatic inflexibility. We are at a point where we cannot undo much of what has happened but we needn’t continue our global disregard. We can cooperate for the benefit of all, and for respect for this magnificent planet we call home.

What does Global Warming mean?

http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/fcons/fcons1.asp

Polar Bears are in danger – but they are not the only ones:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/arctic-bears/%20the-melting-arctics-impact-on-itsecosystem/780/

Geese on the Go

Geese have been on the go these past months. They can be seen, and heard, in their v-shaped migration to warmer climates. It’s a long trip and they have to stop along the way for rest and food. I was on my way home from grocery shopping when I saw a flock of geese chowing down on small patch of bedraggled grass between busy roadways. Not a particularly inviting place to take their respite. But then this area didn’t always look like this. The place where the geese had landed used to be a wide stretch of open, grassy ground. There were two roads that intersected, with green medians stretching along the length of them. There was no overpass, no jug handles, no ramps coming off the main arteries looping around and heading backwards in a confusing attempt to keep some semblance of approach to the town’s main street.

The geese had no map showing them the “improvements” to the road. Migration is partly a response to the freezing of the water supply up north and the lack of food during the cold months of the year. It also seems to be a learned behavior, calling geese year after year to the places they have been before. Which brings up the problem of the conflict between natural habitat and human expansion. Suburban growth has altered much of the local environment.

Things are changing, though. Many communities are beginning to see the value of preserving undeveloped land; people are working with their townships to preserve their farms, woodland, or open fields in a  movement to keep land free of development. Other things are changing, too. The temperature of the earth is heating up (this has been the warmest decade in recorded history) so maybe the geese won’t have to migrate in the future. It would be easier for them, no doubt, but I must say, I would miss seeing their elegant flight formations and hearing the call that heralds the change of seasons. 

The Canada Goose makes the long trip:

https://americanexpedition.us/canada-goose#migration

How is the earth heating up?

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page2.php