How The West Was Lost

In the early spring of 1987, as Gary Hart was making plans to announce his ill-fated candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, he surveyed the rugged terrain near his home in Colorado where he planned to make the announcement - perhaps, not coincidentally, on April 13, the anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson, the President who sent Lewis and Clark on their expedition to the Pacific.  He wanted to emphasize that, as a resident of a Western state, he believed that the West was the future.

Uh, not exactly.  And not because Hart's campaign bit the dust soon thereafter (you know the story; I won't repeat it), and not because it wasn't until 2020 that Kamala Harris became the first Democrat from the West to be nominated for and win national office (which was the least of her firsts). 

It's because the West has no future.

That became apparent as the drought in the West, which had been worsening for years, led to horrendous wildfires in California.  More wildfires have burned in Colorado and New Mexico.  There have been unprecedented heat waves in Washington and Oregon.  The Colorado River, a major source of water for numerous states, is drying up and causing water shortages in Nevada and Arizona.  The Great Salt Lake is drying up so fast in the Mormon homeland of Utah that another miracle will be needed to save Salt Lake City from being suffocated by toxic alkaline dust blown from the lake bed.  And in Montana and Wyoming, the problem is actually too much rain.

Look what happened to this building in Montana along the flooded Yellowstone River.

Climate change is obviously affecting the West in ways any idiot could have seen coming simply because water has been an issue in the region from the moment the first white settlers arrived.  It's just plain dry out there.  Los Angeles and Las Vegas rely on river water just to survive.  Phoenix was so named because it was founded on the remains of a Native American city that disappeared for the same reason Arizona is in trouble now - lack of water. Too many arid areas are being overpopulated - Las Vegas is literally in the middle of a freakin' desert - and too many famers are growing heavily water-dependent crops in these same areas.  The West is actually more urbanized than the East despite its more limited water resources.  I mean, didn't those folks out there get it?  Seems it never rains in southern California, and there's a reason for that. 

The only way the West survives is if fewer people populate it.  And though most people in the region have no intention of leaving - except for many California residents, who are feeling the state's high taxes and high cost of living - Mother Nature, God's bratty kid sister, may eventually force them to leave.

See this?

This is the infamous "bathtub ring" on Lake Mead, created by the Hoover Dam.  The white deposits on the cliffs are from the minerals left by the water that once rose higher, before the drought.  This is Mother Nature's way of telling Westerners, "Take a hint!" 

Triple Climate Change Whammy?

My area is expected to get widespread thunderstorms today, and for once, they're not expected to be severe.  But I fear far worse down the road.

In light of the numerous wildfires in California (and the rest of the West Coast!) and a 60-degree (Fahrenheit) drop in temperatures that caused Denver to go from a heat wave to a snowstorm in less than a day, it's important to note that the Atlantic hurricane season peaks today.  But that doesn't mean that there's less of a chance of tropical cyclone hitting the East Coast after September 10.  In fact, the Global Forecasting System (GFS) weather projection, which goes out sixteen days, shows six disturbances in the Atlantic at once.  One of them is a tropical wave moving into the eastern Atlantic Ocean from Senegal and possibly becoming a hurricane - maybe even a major hurricane - within two weeks, and some runs of the GFS have shown it getting dangerously close to the East Coast - maybe hitting Florida and running right up the shoreline to Long Island, or even hitting Newfoundland as a Category 4 storm!  Newfoundland! 

To be fair, runs showing a major storm have tended to be primarily 06z and 18z runs on the GFS, and they're somewhat less accurate than the the standard 00z and 12z runs.  In addition to being the only forecasting projection going out beyond ten days, the GFS is the only major weather projection with intermediate runs between 00z and 12z.  But the fact that such a storm is popping up on the GFS at all is rather frightening. And the main runs aren't necessarily that much better - recent 00z and 12z runs have shown this system beyond a ten-day period making landfall in Florida and possibly going up the shoreline from Georgia, albeit as a tropical storm. And the Euro and the Canadian projections have not been far off from the GFS in the earlier stages in regarding where this storm goes within a ten-day period. 

This storm will likely be the eighteenth named cyclone in this year's Atlantic hurricane season, and I'm already recalling that Sandy was the eighteenth named cyclone of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season.  The name this storm would thus get is Sally - eerily similar!  And I'm already having nightmarish visions of maps showing Charlie Brown's sister's head as the center of this storm bearing right down on my area.

Remember, the farm almanacs last year predicted a hurricane threat for the Northeast in September and October. And we're only in the beginning of that two-month period. :-(  

Is Australia Burning?

No, the entire continent of Australia is not on fire, but enough of it is on fire to make it an unprecedented disaster.

Five hundred million animals - which represent the most unique species on the planet - have been killed,  with 19,297 square miles - an area almost twice almost the size of Maryland - already consumed by fire.  At least two dozen people have been killed, which seems low compared to all that has already been destroyed, but it could still get much worse for everyone.

The Australian government has been attempting to react to the crisis in a responsible manner, but Prime Minister Scott Morrison has appeared to seem uncaring and callous in response to the fires, thanks in part to having been vacationing in Hawaii at the time the worst of the blazes started and having appeared to be in no hurry to get home to handle the crisis. Also, the government's attitude toward climate change - which is clearly the cause of these fires -  has been almost as nonchalant as the U.S. government's attitude toward the issue.  It turns out that Australian fossil-fuel interests have been just as influential over policy set in Canberra as their American counterparts have been over policy set in Washington.  Early efforts to address the problem included a carbon tax, which seemed to be working in  lessening emissions, but the Morrison government has had it repealed.   Morrison and others have dismissed the idea that climate change is responsible for the wildfires, explaining that Australia has always had wildfires at this time of year, their summer.  Yes - but not like this!

Alas, Canberra doesn't seem to be prepared to take climate change any more seriously than Washington does.  Greta Thunberg has her work cut out for her. :-(  But if one event changes the global discussion about climate change - even in Congress and, dare  I say it, the White House - this may be it.  

Irma . . . Jose?

On this anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, we're taking stock of the aftermath of a disaster of a different sort. 

Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida yesterday, blowing street signs and trees out of the ground, turning pieces of buildings into deadly projectiles, flooding Miami (above), leaving nearly six million people (at last check) in the dark, and rendering the entire state as a wasteland.  And a friend of mine,  a sister of another friend, my maternal cousin, and my paternal uncle and his wife are all in the middle of it. 

And Irma isn't done yet.  It's moving into the Atlanta area and the South Central states, and it will likely bring more misery.  And even with all that, there is still . . . 

. . . Hurricane Jose.

Jose formed on September 5 and is currently looping around in the warm waters of the North Atlantic Ocean just east of the Bahamas.  It won't be a threat to anyone for at least a week, but by next weekend things may change.  Jose will start to move northward, and while it may go out to sea, computer projections from the Global Forecast System and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts - the so-called GFS and Euro models, respectively - show it moving north close to the U.S. East Coast and possibly, sometime during the middle of next week,  hitting the Canadian Maritimes, hitting New England, or . . . making a direct hit on New York City or on Washington, D.C. via the Chesapeake Bay.

Here we go again!

One GFS model run even showed Jose making a hard-left turn, in the manner of Sandy, into southern New Jersey and moving westward toward Baltimore.  And all of these models show Jose's central pressure anywhere between 935 and 955 millibars - which would indicate a more powerful storm than Sandy was.

How much more powerful?  I don't let myself think about it.

To be honest, no one knows what's going to happen with Jose.  New Jersey weather blogger Jonathan Carr notes that the storm could fall apart while it goes around in a circle near the Bahamas and get taken out by trade winds to the northeast or remain intact and still stay out at sea.  But a hit on the Northeast or on southeastern Canada is also possible.  We'll just have to wait.

So, I have to repeat the same spiel I offered here this time last week, albeit with changes of dates.  I may end up blogging less frequently in the days leading up to wherever this hurricane is going. And if it turns out that the storm is zeroing in on New Jersey, I will be putting this blog on hiatus and shutting down my Music Video Of the Week page temporarily, because while I may be able to post a new video on September 15, I may not get to post one on September 22 if the power goes out just before then and stays out for some time to come.  My beautiful-women picture blog - front-loaded with posts scheduled to publish automatically all the way to the end of October - will continue, with or without me. 

It wouldn't surprise me if Jose hit my area of the country.  First Harvey hits Texas, then Irma hits Florida . . . the Northeast would logically be next.  It's as if America, so long a country dedicated to plundering the environment and denying climate science, is suddenly being punished by God, with God's bratty kid sister, Mother Nature, dishing out the punishment.  Twenty seventeen has been a tough year for  this country, with hurricanes on the coast and wildfires in the West.  And even if Jose spares the U.S., worse will almost certainly follow. :-(  

California Nightmares

The numerous wildfires in California that have threatened the Los Angles area, San Bernardino County, and parts of the Sierra Nevada - including acreage near the border with Oregon - probably couldn't have been prevented, but they could certainly have been foreseen. Much of the state is naturally dry, with most of its water supply brought in from the Sierra Nevada range or diverted from the Colorado River. The Los Angeles region is overpopulated after more than a hundred years of hyperdevelopment started by the first aqueduct built for the area.

When the Spaniards first settled the little pueblo of Los Angeles in the late eighteenth century, they found few if any native peoples in the region. That's because the Indians learned right away that the basin Los Angeles was settled in was dry and prone to fire. Before the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, Los Angeles was a dusty little farm town, relying on what little water was available in the semi-desert area and sustaining a population in the tens of thousands. Now the Greater Los Angeles population is in the millions, and the challenge has been to keep enough water flowing for everyone, and in the face of a statewide drought (and a regional three-year drought) that has made the brush so tinder-dry in the first place. Winter rains along the coast have helped supply water in the past, but they have caused periodic mudslides in the hills. Even if southern California has managed to pull that off, they now have to deal with wildfires, along with earthquakes and the aforementioned mudslides, as an ongoing fact of life in the region.

This comes at a time when California is struggling under a $42 million deficit while its economy is in the loo. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger gets my vote of confidence for tacking the fires head-on by diverting resources to contain the blazes and putting public safety ahead of budgetary concerns, but he sure isn't going to go in an put the fires himself single-handedly. This isn't a movie!

A hurricane affecting Baja California in Mexico is not expected to bring any beneficial rains to the area, and it may even bring winds to fan the flames. In the meantime, temperatures have dropped and humidity has risen, allowing the fires to be put under greater control. But firefighters are keeping a close eye on Mount Wilson near Los Angeles, which is the site for an historic observatory as well as TV and radio antennas.

It never rains in Southern California. . . .

It pours.

Man, it pours!