gallopinggertie

It’s weird that Sally wasn’t retired, having caused over $7 billion in damages.

Hilo, Hawaii is under an Ashfall Warning! https://forecast.weather.gov/wwamap/wwatxtget.php?cwa=HFO&wwa=ashfall warning

Those past catastrophic events in the geological record didn’t have anywhere near as rapid a rise in CO2 as we are causing now, yet still caused mass extinctions. It’s easy to forget how truly short our lives are - the fact that baby boomers have seen a rise of about 30%, give or take, in CO2 levels over the course of their lifetimes, is crazy.

There’s also the rapid rate of change, which is way too fast for most species to keep up with. As one example, marine heatwaves may be driving sea star wasting disease that has caused huge mortality of starfish on the US pacific coast. Then of course there’s coral reef bleaching, where warm SST’s are causing the wholesale destruction of entire reef ecosystems…those are just a couple of examples. It seems like coral and starfish aren’t able to respond quickly enough to the changes to avoid their populations taking serious damage from them. Maybe if this were all taking place twenty times more slowly, it would be different, and coral could adapt or migrate to new areas more easily. The media tends to way underreport on the non-human impacts of climate change, since people are disinterested in things that they don’t think will affect them personally. Also it seems like ecology is one of the least well-understood sciences, which is probably why we keep being blindsided by problems like colony collapse disorder in honeybees. All this to say, it’s not just about whether a warmer earth is “better” or not, it’s a question of how fast that rate of change is and whether human society and the natural world can respond in time.

It has been absurdly snowy this month in Juneau, Alaska (upwards of 6 feet of snow in March), in fact they have now set a new record for snowiest winter! https://www.ktoo.org/2026/03/23/juneau-breaks-march-snowfall-record-but-not-the-winter-record-yet/

Yeah, the UHI is real but it seems clear this event has been incredibly anomalous even outside of the big cities. One example is that Nogales has seen 11 record highs in a row. Nogales is a fairly small town whose population today (just under 20,000) is barely higher than it was in 1980. Looking at satellite views, you can tell there is not much paved area there (even the cross-border Nogales is quite compact) and it’s surrounded by undeveloped mountains, so it seems like a good foil to Phoenix.

Today Flagstaff had a high temp four degrees higher than their April record high…

Looks like Flagstaff had a high of 84 today, which is 4 degrees above the April record high.

Alaska is the only winner this winter in the western US. Juneau has had at least 50” of snow in March, and looks to have had something like 200” for the winter to date, over twice of their normal. Despite that, they’ve had just 67 days with 3” or more of snow depth, reflecting their maritime climate.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/02/1166956 Definitely a bad situation in Toamasina, this sounds like Acapulco after Otis.

From Wikipedia: “In Toamasina, where Gezani made landfall, buildings and walls collapsed, power poles and trees were downed, and roofs were blown off buildings.[41] At least 20 deaths, 15 missing and 33 injuries were recorded, with over 3,200 homes damaged or destroyed and 2,742 people displaced.[42] Malagasy president Michael Randrianirina said 75% of Toamasina had been destroyed by the storm.” :(

Is there any chance sea ice forms in Long Island Sound with this upcoming Arctic cold?

Is there any chance sea ice forms in Long Island Sound? Side note, I like the cobalt color the NWS uses for their new extreme cold warnings.

This has been the worst winter in the Pacific Northwest since 2014-15. In Portland there’s been no snow or ice at all, and just about a week of freezing temperatures at night. Snowpack in the mountains is awful too.

The pattern isn’t unprecedented, but in the context of climate change, it’s hard not to look at things like this as previews of the future. Notice you said this is warmer and more persistent than 1917…as the years go by, these kinds of patterns will get more and moreso, until voila! Eventually a month like this won’t even be that out of the ordinary.