The evidence of erratic weather patterns
When I first heard that climate change will produce extreme or erratic weather “events” a few years back, it stuck in my mind. I thought these “events” might not happen for a few decades. I now realize it’s already been occurring. Here in Toronto, we’ve had multiple summers that have started in April, and skipped right over the traditional “springtime”. Temperatures in early to mid April went straight from plus 5 degrees, to 22 degrees. And these summer like temperatures would last for weeks. I also started noticing thunderstorms occurring in march.
By mid July there were so many hot days with no rain, all the grass turns brown. Septembers have started to act like July and August- being hot all the way till the end of the month. Autumn like weather lasting until mid December. Last winter in February we had a whole month of minus 10 degrees consisting of 30 days in a row. Perhaps these aren’t considered “extreme” by the experts, but I think they’re certainly NOT normal for this region.
Last week January 11th, the average temperature was supposed to be minus 4 to zero degrees. That evening the temperature was plus five degrees. It started raining and the winds picked up quite a bit over the course of the evening. By twelve midnight the winds were gusting up to 100km an hour. This rain and wind storm is usually relegated to summertime, here in Toronto. Large branches fell down and smashed cars in, swing stages affixed to roof-tops swung about and broke windows on highrises. Hydro lines went down leaving thousands without power. The wind was howling so loud it made moaning noises through the screens in the windows, sometimes it sounded like screams — it was pretty eerie.
The next day I was throwing out peanuts to the posse of squirrels that have nests in the trees amongst the property of my apartment building. As I typed away on my keyboard I look out my window and see the squirrels climbing up the trees with their nuts. Then I did a double-take, the trees were bare — the squirrel nests were gone. There were four nests in two maple trees at 6pm Jan. 11th and on January 12th at 10am- GONE.
I thought shit, what are the poor little buggers going to do now? Christ, does a squirrel have to get a degree in architectural engineering to build a nest that can withstand these gale force winds? Like what’s a squirrel to do? Maybe I should build them a little squirrel condo, nail it to the tree and charge them rent…nah, the wood is already laying around, it’ll only cost peanuts.
