2011 weather observations

What a strange year of weather we have had! After the wettest winter in several years it is still raining well into springtime in May. Here in Nevada County we have high winds, heavy rain and snow, and cold northern airmasses consistently since March.

Looking at the United States scale, the Mississipi river system is at flood stage and it continues to rain, forcing calculated areas to be flooded so as to save other areas. Mighty tornadoes in the midwest, as cold northern and warm wet souther air masses collide with violent outcomes. Tectonic activity on the Pacific Rim, in the past year huge releases in the Andes, New Zealand, and most recently Japan, leaving us on the West Coast of North America wondering when the next big stress release will occur in the Coast, Sierra Nevada, and/or Cascade ranges.

These enhanced weather events lead to human responses- an emergency drill in California to prepare for a 100 year flood, which created a 300 mile lake in the central valley in the 1850s. Sacramento is apparently only second to New Orleans in the country for vulnerability to flooding. In Japan a large nuclear power facility lost power after earthquake and tsunami, and now, 2 months later it has come out that there was in fact meltdowns of nuclear fuel there leading to massive amounts of radioactive material in the atmosphere, which has been found in plants in Northern California to Europe. I for one see a connection between the intense storms we had around the 20th of March and the radioactive releases from Japan which came across the Northern Pacific and act as cloud condensing materials to enhance what might have otherwise been an average storm system.

This is no doubt nothing new, we as humans like to think that such super weather is somehow special to our small time in a long 4.5 billion year earth history. We do however have communication and access to information to know about all of these events in much greater detail than before, which was most likely not available to people just decades ago.

Climate engineering programs are still in research phase, and still not public knowledge at this point, but the fact that stratospheric aersol injections, weather manipulation, and so called "chem trails" are more frequent in our environment is become more apparent to the general population. More information is becoming public in government reports such as this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdfs/Geongineeringreport.pdf. Whether or not extreme weather events could be influenced by weather manipulation research programs is not known, and may not be for some time, as most people simply do not "look up" very often.

On the solar system scale, NASA has given data on at least two large asteroids which will come into our near solar system this fall.

One being called YU55: http://www.astronomy.com/en/News-Observing/News/2010/04/Arecibo%20telescope%20tracks%20potentially%20dangerous%20asteroid%20within%2015%20million%20miles%20of%20Earth.aspx

another called C/2010 X1(Elenin): http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/112431829.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-135

At this time there seems to be a lot of people actively believing that the "end times" type prophecies are upon us (Mayan calendar 2012, May 21st Judgement day). I for one believe this is an arrogant anthropocentric viewpoint, one that thinks somehow reality starts and ends with humans and human conciousness. I do however think that many forces coming together, in particular human development and rapid industrial depletion of natural resources on a planetary scale is having some bad effects on human cultures across the world, "global warming" is an outdated term and should be discarded, one would be smart to realize that "climate change" is in fact occurring on a time scale by which we can participate. Howevere it is true that Ignorance is Bliss, and it is easy to see why many people simply do not want to believe that how they think and live their lives may not be entirely what they have been lead to believe their whole lives, especially older generations, and that is understandable and fine.

It is important at this time for we as humans, to look up from our computer screens and "smart phones" to the world which we are an integral part of, not separate from. All of our actions have deep and lasting effects on our own lives and health, our communities' well being, and even on our planet as a whole. This of course is not obviously apparent, but we are dynamic beings containing and belonging to many dynamic systems within which we participate everyday.