The Rain from Maine Falls Plainly on My Train
Noah has nothing on we New Englanders.
By now I'm sure you have seen the photos from Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. The mass flooding is reminiscent of photos we had seen last year in New Orleans. I saw one where three kids were wading down their street, the water up to their waistlines.
The reason for this continued rainstorm hitting the northeast is twofold. The quick and dirty -- meteorological -- answer is that the low pressure system carrying the storm east (and out to the Atlantic) has been blocked by an unusual high pressure system faced the other way. The rain cannot move offcoast and instead pounds on the towns and cities of New England.
The other reason is perhaps a bit more controversial. It concerns global warming.
I know. But it's cold and rainy. What does that have to do with global warming?
Fill a cup with water and leave it out in your kitchen. In a few days, the cup is empty. The water has evaporated into the air. Now, fill that same cup and put it into your hot garage and it will empty far more quickly.
Are you still with me? Good.
The water hasn't disappeared. It's in the air. On a grander scale, as the earth's temperatures are heated, as they have been through the last several years, more ocean water is evaporated.
Where does this water go? Rain is essentially evaporated ocean water that is returning to earth. More heat leads to more evaporation, which leads to more rain.
While I wish I was the genius behind this theory, I am not. Several scientists support this, and I support them.
This is not a soapbox on environmentalism. I will save that for another day. What this does, however, is help provide explanation to our sogginess. The world is, in fact, changing.
And rapidly.
Who know? Perhaps someday I will have a great-grandchild who has a beachhouse in the Canadian tropics.
By now I'm sure you have seen the photos from Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. The mass flooding is reminiscent of photos we had seen last year in New Orleans. I saw one where three kids were wading down their street, the water up to their waistlines.
The reason for this continued rainstorm hitting the northeast is twofold. The quick and dirty -- meteorological -- answer is that the low pressure system carrying the storm east (and out to the Atlantic) has been blocked by an unusual high pressure system faced the other way. The rain cannot move offcoast and instead pounds on the towns and cities of New England.
The other reason is perhaps a bit more controversial. It concerns global warming.
I know. But it's cold and rainy. What does that have to do with global warming?
Fill a cup with water and leave it out in your kitchen. In a few days, the cup is empty. The water has evaporated into the air. Now, fill that same cup and put it into your hot garage and it will empty far more quickly.
Are you still with me? Good.
The water hasn't disappeared. It's in the air. On a grander scale, as the earth's temperatures are heated, as they have been through the last several years, more ocean water is evaporated.
Where does this water go? Rain is essentially evaporated ocean water that is returning to earth. More heat leads to more evaporation, which leads to more rain.
While I wish I was the genius behind this theory, I am not. Several scientists support this, and I support them.
This is not a soapbox on environmentalism. I will save that for another day. What this does, however, is help provide explanation to our sogginess. The world is, in fact, changing.
And rapidly.
Who know? Perhaps someday I will have a great-grandchild who has a beachhouse in the Canadian tropics.
posted by E-Luv at 10:18 AM
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