LibertyBell

Today turned out much sunnier than anyone thought. We had a small period of clouds around noon but both before and after has been mostly clear, even last night. The clouds have been going to our north and our south but we're the clear part of the sandwich lol.

Con Edison is horrible, I heard they were trying to increase rates yet again. Highway robbery....

that predominant west wind, I think this will continue through the summer with some small breaks.

the forecast is for breaks in the clouds over NYC and western long island just in time for the eclipse even better inland the trend is our friend here, all week we've had more sun than forecast

Chris, something else I remember about that April heatwave is that they were haze free and one of the bluest skies I have EVER seen. This is also from that month.

When we had that really hot summer in 2002 (JFK had one of its highest number of 90 degree days-- their three top summers for them were 1983, 2002 and 2010 if I remember correctly), had the area recovered enough from the earlier drought? I do remember a lot of very yellow lawns in the summer of 2002. I actually have a couple of images of my lawn saved from that summer lol.

Thanks Rob, I've been looking for something like this.

I think the reason we didn't have wildfires in 2002 is because we didn't have this foliage overgrowth we have now from previous years of excessive rainfall. It's very much like California, they've been going through these drought-flood-drought cycles too and the flood periods result in massive overgrowth of foliage probably like what we have experienced with the last couple of decades of high rainfall now being corrected by the current dry period. If we keep having more extremes, not just in temperature, but also in rainfall and snowfall, then we and our environment are going to have to find some way to adjust. Incidentally, 2002 just got hotter and drier from this point on, beginning with that historic April heatwave that matched 1976 almost perfectly, but unlike 1976, it was followed by a very hot and dry summer (one of my all time favorites.) The pattern broke with the historic 2002-03 winter, yet another great winter followed by a hot and dry summer.

I have had this kind of thing happen around me for many years I call it *match* when someone else says or writes the same thing as I do, at nearly the same time. Sometimes it even happens with TV shows lol. Even word for word sometimes. Maybe consciousness is entangled between like minded people? About your scenarios, this is why many believe we're going to be reduced to pre industrial levels. It's nature having the last laugh, we mess with it, it finds a way to achieve a balance, at our expense of course. What you outlined in b, I find rather fascinating, it's like being on the boundary of a whole new world isn't it? What happens after mass extinctions is rapid evolution, completely different from what existed before of course. Remember the K-T event? We went from massive ferns and giant reptiles dominating the planet to flowering plants, feathery birds who evolved from the dinosaurs and tiny mammals who rapidly evolved into brainier ones by consuming high quantities of nuts, protein rich, mind you. These nuts did not exist before the K-T event happened. So mammals would likely have remained tiny rat like creatures if an asteroid did not hit the Yucatan. By the way, something I find so fascinating about nature regulating the environment, birds still have that gene that made the dinosaurs so huge, but it's been turned off. Why? Natural selection of course; the environment had become inhospitable to creatures the size of dinosaurs so the dinosaurs who survived-- the birds-- had that gigantism gene turned off. b, diaspora into an alien ecology, which is usually not good for the new ecology ... because it in itself does not posses the capacity to adapt to the change of having hordes of arriving opportunistic climate refugees. And I mean "clime refugees" not just human beings but all migrations up and down the biological kingdom.

we'll find out tonight. If that total lunar eclipse can be seen and it's exceptionally dark it means there are particles in the stratosphere that could lead to a global cooling trend which might have impacts on this summer and next winter. If the eclipse is bright red it means our stratosphere is clean and there is no impact.

August 1995, I was just talking about that on X earlier when someone said this has never happened before. That was a real wildfire system, the wildfires were widespread from Long Island to NJ and you could even see the smoke in satellite imagery! We have been doing prescribed burns in Nassau County which should help things from getting out of control.

he has solar panels?

I like my hot summers unfortunately it does not look like that for us, 2010 was my hottest summer on record.

The problem is there is needs to be a differentiation between what caused changes millions of years ago vs what's happening right now. The rate of change is MUCH faster now, for one. Also, I'm not sure humanity would survive if we went back to a Mesozoic era climate. For most of the history of this planet it was actually uninhabitable. Multicellular organisms only evolved in the last 600 million years.

it's raining in LA and SD and snow in the SD mountains though.

I don't even consider the measurement of *drought* to be accurate, the normal rainfall for NYC (as an example) is around 41-42 inches per year not the 50 inches or so we've been averaging the last period or so.

I think 2010 was even better for spring+summer+fall.... hell make it best winter+spring+summer+fall+winter again lol

Any chance of a downslope wind on any of those days to get JFK to heat up, Chris? Doesn't that usually happen on the day of the frontal passage?

It reminds me of March 1990, people were wearing bermuda shorts on spring break..... on Long Island! We were in the mid and upper 80s for three days and this was before the middle of the month, I think we hit 85, 86 and 88 on consecutive days.

I heard someone say 80 the other day, but that seems doubtful. Low 70s maybe?

The weather flipped a switch in the last week of February; besides that brief 2 day bout of cold, we've been above normal ever since. That's probably why bulbs are sprouting and peepers are out. I've even seen flying insects get busy outside. The birds must be having a feast lol.

Yeah the birds love it too, they've been singing like crazy this morning!

Rainforests are much better for biodiversity, the problem with that for us is that if the earth becomes more like that in the future, we're going to see a lot more microbial diseases and pandemics. Mosquitoes that carry malaria, dengue fever and other such infections are just an example. We'll also have a lot more worm infections, in nations that have tropical rain forests, the parasitic worm infection rate is as high as around 1 out of every 3 people (especially if they walk barefoot.) I love tropical rain forests too-- but to visit only. I've noticed I get very sick if I'm there more than 2 weeks. The water isn't all that good either.

The sun feels really awesome too!

Today is a wonderful sunny day, I have high hopes for the eclipse tonight. We'll worry about Sunday when that day comes.