Hanna Storm

(Note to sports fans - see what I did there?)

After we got the earliest named storms for the first seven letters of the alphabet in this Atlantic hurricane season, Hanna became the earliest eighth named storm ever and the first hurricane of this season, slamming into the Texas Gulf Coast.

This comes amid persistent, interminable heat waves in the Northeast and an even stronger Pacific hurricane hitting Hawaii.  It's official - climate change is here and getting worse.  Those lockdowns at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic only slowed down carbon emissions in a minuscule, temporary way.  It seems like everything that could cause Armageddon is coming together in 2020.  As for the extreme weather, I suspect it may have been the cause for some recent Internet outages I've had this summer and I fear a far greater outage of services as the hurricane season progresses and peaks later.  Just because my area got a tropical storm a couple of weeks ago, doesn't mean a stronger storm can't affect my area later.       

I'll be glad to see 2020 go - unless Trump is re-elected, in which case I'll write off 2021 and beyond.  Because I know that, if that happens, nothing will be done about climate change and far worse will happen in the immediate future . . . things that have nothing to do with the weather.

Because The Wind Is High a Third Time . . .

Oh, wonderful.

My electricity stayed on during the snowstorm this past week all right, and it looks a threatened snowfall for this coming week may not amount too much but tomorrow my area may be - and will likely be  - under a high wind warning for a third time this winter (there's a high wind watch as I type), with the promise of another outage opportunity.

All over New Jersey, in fact.

Forget terrorism.  My biggest fear is the weather.  Trump would make me feel a whole lot better if he suddenly realized that climate change is a bigger threat to our safety and happiness than the Islamic State.

Did I happen to mention that AccuWeather is predicting an ice storm for early March?

Okay, it's eighteen days out, and AccuWeather's predictions for an ice storm for fewer days out than that have proven to be erroneous in past winters, but there's always a first time for AccuWeather to live up to its name, isn't there? :-O      

Cabin Fever

Okay, it's official: I can't take winter anymore. Remember, I live in the Northeast, which gets snowstorms from the Rockies, Gulf storms from the South, blizzards from the Midwest, Alberta clippers from Canada . . .. Aughh! We're on the receiving end of storms from everywhere!

I keep having to cancel plans because of the constant snowfalls, and the only bright side to that is that I haven't made that many plans these days anyway. My writers' group keeps having to reschedule events not because of the snow but because of changes of hours of operation at the library where we meet . . . but we could get around those changes more easily if it weren't snowing every three days. (At least four days have some kind of winter precipitation in the week ahead, with another big storm expected on Thursday.)

Even worse, I have to get by on winter gear that's wearing and tearing by the day. It wasn't supposed to be like that. My mother bought a pair of Thinsulate gloves for me for Christmas, and she was going to buy new boots online for me as well. But the boots she wanted to get me wouldn't be available until April, and I lost my Thinsulate gloves. Because the geniuses who run retail chains decided that no one buys winter clothing in February because they already have what they need - it never occurs to them that people lose gloves and need to replace them - and because they're too busy putting out Easter candy (Easter falls on April 24!), I can't buy a new pair. So, in addition to relying on wearing boots that I've had since the older George Bush was President, I have to rely on a pair of cheap store-brand gloves that started to wear out the same day bought them.

I bought them last year.

A friend of mine told me she saw an ABC news report saying that the worst of this winter would be over by the middle of February, and that the rest of it would have better weather. I don't think so. And I don;t think we'll have an early spring just because Punxsutawney Phil said so on Groundhog Day. A more benign winter? This winter ain't gonna lighten up; it's gonna tighten up!

And I'll still have those same worn gloves.

Ugh . . . I have to finish clearing the snow off our flat garage roof before the next nor'easter.