Bad Weather is Over – for the Moment

Everything is calm in the Atlantic, Caribbean and the Gulf, so now I can breathe a sigh of relief. This week I spent quite a bit of time keeping an eye on the storm brewing from the Gulf but thankfully, it was mainly a rain event rather than a hurricane event. Whew.

Still, there was a lot of flooding but it was not like three years ago where there was news of people being airlifted off of their roofs in rising waters. That was a scary event.

This event was a rain event and most flooding was street flooding rather than structural flooding. There might have been some structural flooding but I’m not aware of it. It’s mainly street and people driving their cars into the waters, hoping to drive through the water.

However, the season is not over. The weather forecasters are predicting more storms in early October. Boo!

Between the fires in California, Oregon and Washington – the last ten years have been the worst decade for fires and 2020 has been the worst year ever – and the constant large rain events – 2020 is already tied to 1916 for the most storms to hit land and is tied with 2005 for the most storms named, I don’t know why folks are still denying climate change. Watching the West burn is very anxiety producing. Watching the storms brew in the Atlantic, Caribbean and the Gulf is making me extremely nervous. I cannot see how these events do not worry people. How can they deny that something is very wrong with the climate?

After the storm passed, I was extremely tired so I was unproductive this week. I just wanted to sleep. It may be that the accumulation of all that has been happening this year (pandemic, employment crash, politicization of masks, fires in the West, tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf) is catching up to me and wearing me out. I’ve been trying to “catch up” on my sleep and get back to being productive.

On another topic, I noticed on Tuesday, the news noted that the total coronavirus cases breached 200K, yet my post on Saturday or Sunday mentioned crossing the 200K count. The difference is the news is using the John Hopkins data and I, and Bing, was using Wikipedia since it is easier to pull the information. Why are they different? I’m not sure. I speculate Wikipedia is pulling information from hospitals and states which may be including probable deaths whereas John Hopkins might be using just confirmed deaths, but I really don’t know. So there is a slight difference – I have to keep that in mind.

That’s it for now.