Monk

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As global warming continues to alter the climate, scientists agree that such boom and bust cycles will become more severe. Droughts will become more common as the area's already strained water supplies are further depleted by longer dry spells, evaporation and even the increased thirst of vegetation trying to survive in hotter climes. And the rain that does come is likely to arrive in more violent storms.

"It's paradoxical," said Andrew Dessler, professor at Texas A&M's Department of Atmospheric Sciences. "But you can expect both more drought and more flood."

-- Anton Caputo for The San Antonio Express-News

Thomas Friedman mentioned in his Sunday column that, instead of global warming, some think of it as global weirding. That works for me.

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So a question has started gnawing at us as we observe events like Katrina and the California wildfires. I asked my friend Nate Lewis, an energy chemist at the California Institute of Technology, what is that question? He thought for a moment and answered: “Did we do that?”

Is man’s cumulative impact on the climate now as responsible for the weather as Mother Nature herself? “That is the question Katrina really introduced for the first time — the sense that soon, if not already, what we used to call acts of God are really acts of man,” Professor Lewis said.

-- Thomas L. Friedman for The New York Times

I have caught myself remarking rather often that we are having unseasonable weather, coming to the conclusion that unseasonableness is now in season. Mr. Friedman captures this mood for us, this nervous sense of transition, that our world is really changing in fundamental ways.

Though, I must say that in our somewhat hard southwestern clime, at least in San Antonio, the differences we have been feeling have actually been more like improvements. Droughts used to be our commonplace, whereas this spring and summer we have had more threats of flooding rains. And, even now, we are in the middle of a blast of chilly weather that I think is a month too soon. Still, there is that unnerving sense of running off the tracks.

( Friedman )

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I had to take Bo outside into a rainy morning. I don't suppose I have to tell you that we need another rainy day about as much as Bill Gates needs another million dollars.

I thought that the morning might be a little easier with respect to the cats, at least. In the past, when it is raining, they have chosen to stay hunkered down and skip the chow. When I first gave the back yard a look, letting Bo lie down dead for a while longer, I didn't see any cats, and figured we were staying true to pattern.

However, after I brought Bo back inside from our rounds, I gave the back one more good survey, and there he was. Calico caught my eye. He was on the patio, sheltered from the rain, sitting beside the trash can, obviously hoping not to be forgotten. It was a close call, buddy! Maybe you should give out a little meow next time.

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Oh shit, shit...
the morning sky begins to drizzle
and a smattering of raindrops freckle
the pages of my beautiful, hardcover Iliad
looking like tears from the gods crying
over the pride and frightful carnage of man.

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Just a drizzle, though.
No storm so far.

But I feel better about the mowing.

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The headlines in the Expess-News are about Hurricane Dean raising a swath through the gulf and right up to the Mexican and Texan coast, expecting to hit on Wednesday.

The last rains we had were reportedly based on an other hurricane, or maybe it was a tropical storm - for all I've been following the non-political news!

So these August rains are really different from the usual-but-expanded Nile storm system. These are from hurricanes. Dean is expected to be the worst we've had in at least a long time. Usually, these hurricans have only meant a little extra, needed rainfall for San Antonio, but hurricans have only been getting bigger and more ferocious in these years, as Katrina demonstrated. Maybe we are in for a true flood-disaster?

2007 - what a year! The deluge and now the hurricanes in one season. You'd think we are getting a message.

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