Come on already!

I knew it would be a hot summer when I was able to have my windows open on February 15th. Yesterday the temp got up to 100 with a heat index of 105. This is the beginning of June, and I am glad this is my last summer in Alabama. I will be in the North in the summer and the South in the winter for the next five plus years.

Has the weather been crazy this year or do we just forget what happened last year? I remember in 2008 we had the worst drought I remember in the 31 years I have been here. One hundred year old trees died. Grass and bushes were dead. Creeks dried up and the lakes were down so much you could walk from the edge, past your now dry dock, and out a hundred feet past your dock before you got to the water. Boating was done very carefully that year if you could even get your boat in the water.

The next May Montgomery saw the worst flooding in their history. I was driving back from a client’s home, down the Atlanta Hwy and passing Frazer UMC when I realized the water was rising fast. There was a car in the parking lot with water up over the tires. I had never seen that here. It was raining so hard my windshield wipers could not keep up. Atlanta Hwy was now flooded and my idiot self kept driving. When I got back to the store, we all stood at the front windows looking out in amazement. Water was running down the street like a river. The ponds leading to my place were overflowing and covering the roads, and if memory serves me right, we ended up getting just over 10 inches of rain in four hours.

What is with all the tornadoes this year? I heard that Massachusetts got hit with one yesterday. This year has been the deadliest year for tornadoes since 1950 with Alabama having the largest death toll of 243 confirmed. Missouri had 139, Tennessee 33, Mississippi 31 and 24 in North Carolina. “Tornado Alley” which is Oklahoma and Kansas had 12 and 3. Yea, things are getting crazy!

The number of earthquakes this year has totaled 1340 so far, and that is magnitudes of 5.0 and higher. Japan had the highest magnitude of 9.0 and a total of 13 earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.0 or higher. Tornadoes you get warned about, earthquakes just happen. Last year there was 2098 magnitude 5.0 or higher earthquakes, and I hope this does not get topped this year.

The weather is undeniably changing, and not for the better. I don’t know if we can do anything about it or if there are just too many humans occupying the planet and using up all of the natural resources. I can only imagine how it will be when I start having grandchildren, and they grow up. “These are the good ‘ole days!”