What's been happening is (or seems to me like) they (the elusive they) are seeding the clouds now two falls in a row (at least), causing it to rain buckets from roughly August through September. Now that is normally our rainy season so no one will take much notice, but lately, I've been worrying that all our precipitation is falling in liquid form and not so much of the snowy variety.
For two to five years in a row it has flooded dangerously here - not at my house; I live up on a high hill - but down on the river damage to the lodges is becoming of great concern. Too high a cost to keep repairs up and businesses will close (and I will be out of work). The last lodge I worked at is losing their front yard by the foot and very soon the river will be running under the lodge itself. Need I speculate for you what will happen to that lodge then? Already some of their buildings are on state land behind them. They just can't move back any more. The lodge where I work now is still recovering from the flood five years ago as they continue to work to replace floors and jack the guest cabins up out of the mud. Admittedly, some of those projects are things that should have been done years back, but that flood did other kinds of damage too. Next summer I'm going to need to take a scrub brush to some lower walls. Wood grain hangs onto silt pretty well.
Back to the farce of global warming
Rain in the fall is a norm, but I will bet that it probably messes up the harvest, especially if it comes down like twice normal. That's not the issue. You see, their whole proof is based on the receding glaciers, and if you think about it, it's snow that created glaciers, and it's snow that maintains them, so if it doesn't snow, the glaciers run out eventually. So it equates that if you can suck all the precipitation out of the air before winter sets in... Well, you see what my logic is. I don't pretend to know anything about weather models, so I have no idea how it all works. I just know what I see, and this is what I think.
For two winters in a row, we've gotten a pitiful amount of snow. This is Alaska. Our whole winter is geared toward winter sports and activities. There's the Iron Dog, and the Iditarod. There's even a winter biking race on the river and a I think there's a hiking thing as well. That's not to mention entire businesses geared to promote and support play. If snow goes away, all that goes away too. Though it might seem kind of funny in a way, I'm sick and tired of hearing how everyone down in the lower 48 is getting the feet of snow we are used to while we eek out an inch or two. It's December. It's after Christmas, and we have less than a foot of snow on the ground. Once was the time when this much snow was already on the ground by the end of October and four to five feet of snow was on the ground by now.
So, next time you hear about receding glaciers, look into how much snow has fallen in the area as opposed to how much rain has fallen earlier in the season.
Oh, and the seeding thing - I know it's seeding and not just random jets flying over because random jets flying of is just that -> random. Seeding - especially like we've been getting lately, is planes flying in a grid. Yes, I really mean a grid - multiple planes flying back and forth in one direction, and other planes flying back and forth in another direction. By the time they're done the sky looks like someone strung a pig wire fence up there that slowly dissipates. Oh yeah, and the worst part about that is when that crap reaches the ground, it stinks.
Once upon a time the air up here was actually sweet smelling. It's been months and months since the air has smelled like that.
Now, the really concentrated seeding - when I finally put all of this together - happened like three days after Obama toured the state last year. I know that this whole global warming thing is a multi-million dollar thing, so they gotta keep it going somehow, but they really need to lay off. Give us back our snow. If the globe is warming up a little each year, it will happen one way or another, but putting an entire state out of business can't be a good thing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
