Last night, my sister @EllieNeo was supposed to catch a flight home from Mexico City, and left six hours early.
It wasn’t enough to get her there on time, because the city was suffering severe flooding, and many roads were closed. They had to drive through some pretty high water.
She’s now due to catch a Thursday flight. She’s okay, by the way. Gonna enjoy the extra time with her fiancé.
It seems the news over the past few weeks has been dominated by wildfires and flooding across the US. I’m wondering if this is a case of a lot of slow news days, or if the weather has really become extreme lately due to global warming or for some other reason. I don’t remember a time when there was so much weather news to report, and I’m well over 70 years old.
They call it climate change.
reply to dolphinboy
Sure, call it climate change, but does it seem to you like it’s happening much quicker than they predicted, or is it just me?
I think a lot if it is breathless, sensationalist media pumping up “weather” to generate clicks. Since when were people “in danger” of getting rained on? Then again, with more people in more areas and everyone carrying a phone with a high-quality camera with easily uploaded video shared to millions within hours, that could play a role, too. I suspect climate change is causing more frequent severe events, and then you add-in the two above mentioned points, and yeah, it seems like a lot of crazy weather happens now. I will wait, tho, for someone familiar with the data to assign it fully to climate change - I mean, isn’t Mexico City in an ancient lakebed after all?
reply to dolphinboy
That is difficult to say. On the one hand, there is climate change, and on the other, the media are responding more frequently because disasters always make for good stories. What’s more, it’s currently the “silly season,” at least in Europe, and the media are grateful for any story they can get their hands on. It’s difficult to gain an objective perspective on something like this.
Oh, yes. In fact, the story of how Mexico City was founded can be found in the country’s flag.
Years ago, I heard a climatologist bemoaning the fact that “global warming” had caught on as the shorthand reference for the phenonemon, because while technically accurate on a macro scale, it didn’t convey the particulars of how people would experience the change. He suggested that it would have been better to call it “global weirding” because of how longstanding patterns would be disrupted.
I’m glad they’re OK; but this is generally a very bad idea. Better to miss the plane than to miss the rest of your life.
I’ve heard that term with some frequency and often use it myself.