Thursday, April 1, 2010

Climate Change 101

I know that there's a whole lot of debate over Global Warming and Global Climate Change and all of the other buzzwords out there.

It's not like we're having consistently warmer temps year 'round. Minnesota definitely had plenty of cold weather this winter. Enough frigid temps that the snow pack we built up starting in October never really settled at all. (Usually, there's a kind of shrinking of the snow as we have a January warm up and then we get a bunch more snow.)

This year, though, the snow was around so consistently and for so long, that when it started to disappear a few weeks ago it left behind the largest amount of "snow mold" that we've seen in years. Honestly, I'd never heard of snow mold until this year when I heard about it on the news. I simply looked out one day and thought "Wow. I didn't realize there was so much frost last night" and then realized that is was only on the grass. It took a few days for the mold to go away - in some shaded areas you can still see traces of it. (Gee. Do you suppose this has anything to do with everyone having cold and allergy symptoms the past few weeks?)

Of course, March is typically the snowiest month of the year, which might explain why we don't usually see much of the mold. On the other hand, this year, for the first time since weather records have been kept in Minneapolis, we had no snow. Not a dusting. Not a flurry. Not a flake. (Not even really any rain, if you want to get down to it.)

On the other hand, we've had days in the 60s, when our average highs are supposed to be in the 40s. At the end of the month, when highs should be in the 50s, we were hearing predictions of 70s and even 80s.

On my drives home, I've been watching the ice come off the lakes. And I've seen the clothes coming off of the people running and riding around them.

Don't get me wrong. It's been a wonderful early spring, so far. Tulips and irises are up higher than usual. We've gotten to drive with Christopher's sunroof open. I've gotten to wear my "in between" coat about twice as long as I have the other years I've been out here.

It's been great.

But... Yeah... Anyone who says there isn't some kind of climate change going on really needs to look outside.

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