Spring

Can't believe that we are already in the second half of May! Just had an absolutely glorious afternoon last weekend, which is now unfortunately followed by a week of warm rains.
What a mild spring this has been! Sunny and rainy in good proportion, and not too humid. Granted April had not a particularly pleasant weather, too many rapid temperature jumps and quite a bit of rain. March, on the other hand, was unusually bright, fresh and very uplifting. As a matter of fact, this was one of the warmest Marches on record. Still, I don't think we actually had any typical crystal-crisp spring days when the air is so piercingly clear you get light-headed.
I just re-read the above - as the song goes, "nature has no bad weater" but what an imperfect being a human is. Never quite satisfied. What we had had so far in this first third of the year certainly makes the memories of the last year's weather excesses seem like a horrible nightmare. Generally speaking, last year was something else weather-wise, and it was true the world over. I read an article online some time ago - there were twelve (!) over-billion-dollar natural disasters in the United States alone in 2011, three of which hit the East Coast. Some experience, eh?

One can argue forever if the climate is heading into some extraordinary shift with all these freak storms and droughts and earthquakes. The Earth is everchanging whether humanity likes / accepts / believes it or not, and its geological history may be interpreted as a litany of woes. There is only hope that the worst can be somehow avoided with better science, timely warnings and appropriate actions.

So the three big ones: the snowstorm series that hit North Eastern states in the beginning of 2011 (I have written about them when I started this blog; truly bad, bad weather, that Nor'Easter had practically buried the coast); then, of course, the hurricane Irene happened in August, promptly followed by a short but nasty Halloween snowstorm. Between all that, the East Coast also got hit with a pretty far ranging earthquake and was one part of the country suffering under an extensive heat plume.

Irene was truly terrifying. Let's face it, the Greater New York area is not used to excesses of this nature (pun not intended). The preparations were extensive, some said too extensive due a scandal relating to a complete mismanagement of the winter storms earlier in the year. My opinion, given how deadly this sort of system could potentially be, better be safe than sorry. Yes, over three million people were evacuated and a ton of public money spent but had the hurricane moved the way half of the models predicted, the losses would have been staggering. And you know, until probably midnight the day before the hurricane made landfall, I still didn't believe that anything would happen. And it was obvious from TV reports that most people in the area didn't either. There was a bit of a growing dread as the first drizzles and rains arrived and wind gusts appeared. The main concern in Morris county was the flooding (there are plenty of little and not so little lakes and rivers and streams) and, of course, the high winds causing trees and wires to fall. I remember I woke up at 5am to check things out - all seemed rather quiet and normal, so I went back to bed. An hour later the firefighters were knocking on our door - the entire area was getting flash-flooded, our driveway and garage were already ankle-deep in water. We had to spend half a day at a local Red Cross shelter, and then the next couple of weeks cleaning and drying out the basement and the garage, and waiting for the power to come back on. All in all, the eye of the hurricane passed within 30 miles of us, right over Manhattan which, along with other boroughs, thankfully did not suffer too many ill effects (it was an eery sight - the empty streets of the City; for the first time, the entire transit system was shut down). I suppose one can say that with all the scientists' predictions on the big and bad one, New York has dodged the bullet yet again.

The earthquake certainly caught everyone by surprise. It has actually occurred in Virginia but was felt throughout most of the Eastern Seaboard. The geological crust composition here makes the earthquakes' epicenters very shallow, so their effects will propagate and spead much more widely than in the West. Very widely - quite a stretch from Atlant to Quebec City! On a personal note, the sensation of a rocking office building is highly unpleasant... Though thankfully no casualties were reported, this earthquake did cause quite a bit of damage. The Washington Monument is now closed indefinitely.
And then, of course, the Halloween storm. Talk about unexpected. After an already very wet August, topped with the water brought by Irene, the over-saturated ground could barely hold the hurricane-wind-abused trees. Plus it was only the end of October, and most of them still had leaves on. It was obvious that the enormous pressure brought by a significant snow dump will cause a lot of problems. You could literally hear creaking and groaning through both day and night. Thousands and thousands of trees fallen, snapped in half, limbs broken. Terrible sight!
I'll try to find some photos and maybe add some more details to all of the above.
Hmm, I only wanted to comment on the spring, and all of a sudden a whole essay came out.