Global Warming reversed

[jetter]

OK. First photo is Feb 22th. Ruddy Duck under its blanket. No snow. Sun shinning. Photo 2 is April 18th. Winter blanket off. 8" of snow. Ice in harbour. Overcast........10 days to splash. Hard to get excited.

[DesertAlbin736]

Yet down here in the Arizona desert we had not one night of frost or below freezing temps all winter. Everything in the Phoenix area is bone dry, only 8 days with any amount of rain recorded year to date. Last time rain fell in any measurable amount was March 24th. Year to date recorded rainfall amount is now at 1.13 inches (2.87 cm), off 0.96 inches from seasonal year to date averages. We have already seen our first 100 degree F day (37.8 C) as of April 10th. We are at or near the end of our winter rainy (relatively speaking) season, so if no more rain comes before mid May it won't happen until the mid summer "monsoon" season arrives, and maybe not even then the way this drought is going. It goes without saying that Phoenix rarely if ever sees snow, but even the higher elevations of northern Arizona, which can and do get snow and cold winters, this year has been exceptionally dry for them too. Our normal annual average rainfall in Phoenix is 8 inches (20.3 cm), average number of rainy days per year = 36, that is less than one in ten. And "rainy day" is a relative term. When rain does occur it rarely lasts all day & usually less than an hour & is very scattered & spotty.

[jetter]

I have spent many enjoyable holidays in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. Currently I'm booking April 2019. My wife and I love hiking the desert.AI visit to AZ has always made the months without Ruddy Duck in the water seem shorter.

[Tree]

Quite the opposite here today. It was the hottest April day for 70 years. Average temp for this time of year may be 16-18°c. Today topped out at 29°c!

[DesertAlbin736]

Quite the opposite here today. It was the hottest April day for 70 years. Average temp for this time of year may be 16-18°c. Today topped out at 29°c!

Yes, climate change is real. Sometimes it's counter intuitive, colder "polar vortex" winters in some places due to disrupted weather patterns & ocean currents. I've lived in Arizona for the past 40 years, and it definitely gets hotter earlier in the spring these days & stays hot until later in the fall than it used to. Some of that might be the "heat island" effect of urban sprawl, but this drought we're in now is exceptional. I can recall summer monsoon thunderstorms & downpours in the early 1980s where streets in Phoenix would flood curb to curb and dust storms where you couldn't see houses across the street. I was up at Lake Powell in July 1983 the last time the lake was brim full (I was at a "boogie" skydiving over the lake just like the scene in "Point Break" with Patrick Swayze & Keanu Reeves except we landed on the shore & not in the water, but that's another story from another chapter in my life). Now Powell's level is down by 83 feet, or 53% full. Lake Mead is just as bad or worse, down to 40% capacity, and affected states in the region are fighting over the water supply. Arizona's Central Arizona Project (aka CAP) canal system uses Lake Pleasant, our home boating lake, as a buffer storage reservoir which gets pumped up full each winter with water drawn from Lake Havasu via the canal, which in turn comes down from Powell & Mead. If this drought continues much longer it could limit Arizona's allocation of Colorado River water which in turn could affect boating on our lake. We're still a long way from the kind of shortages seen in places like Cape Town, South Africa or the drought restrictions California had the last couple years.