Whoa. Are these the storms we can expect?

[icarus]

Storm.

Last night we huddled in our little cars, parked, headlights on, windshield wipers stroking, frightened and startled by the violence of the storm.

The lightning pounded the ground like air strikes, close, bright lines crisscrossing each other. Thunder rattled the windows.

I sat thinking, Is this what we can expect for the future? Is this the price of my gallon of gas? The more powerful storms are the result of global warming, I know, I sat in on the US research presented from the studies of Hurricane Katrina and (mostly) the one in Texas after. The increase in global temps puts more moisture in the air, hence more powerful winds, larger cloud systems and bigger, badder storms.

Have we really damaged the environment that much, that our kids will inherit a more frightening world? That even the storms will be much worse?

I used to stand out in the wind and watch it roar. But storms weren't this bad.

Comments

[caseylane]

It's funny, I was just talking to my children about this. I remember when I was younger we would have a steady, gentle rain that would last for hours. We used to call them soakers. I can't remember the last time we had rain like that. Now it's a torrential downpour or nothing.

Yet, there are those that still insist that it's all natural and not man made. What a crock.

[elf]

Some of the environmentalist blogs point out that they made a mistake with the phrase "global warming," because those places that got chillier winters or wetter summers refused to believe the changes were happening, because "warming" wasn't what they got. They should've used "global weirding."

And yes. We have scrambled the weather and other eco-systems badly, and the next generation or two (1) will have harsher weather to deal with and (2) all the data we've collected about weather patterns, will be useless.