This is Sunday night here and we got an email from a friend with pictures of flooding in Jerusalem, some showing cars submerged on the roadways.
Now if 40 years ago, or thirty years ago, or even 20 years ago I would have said that someday it would rain in May in Israel, most people would have laughed at me. If I had said, not only would it rain in the north, but it would rain in Jerusalem in May, they would have asked me if I had been working in the fields without a hat or had smoked something illegal. If I would have said that there would be so much rain in Jerusalem that the streets would flood, they would have looked at me strangely and called the nurse. If I had said, not only would it flood, cars would be swept away and people would be stranded on the roofs of their cars waiting to be rescued, they would have called the local mental hospital to hurry up and take me away.
The weather here used to be so predictable. The weather, for the most part was local. The north had much more rain than the south, the coastal plain and the interior section had more than the eastern part of Israel. The weather was so predictable at one kibbutz that had been our home for a few years that those of us working outside would take bets to the minute—about when it would start raining. In short, there were stable very local weather patterns.
Now we can look at a satellite picture and see the whole Middle East covered by one huge cloud. And it's not only the Middle East, but weather satellites show huge systems that cover half of Asia or half the US. And I don’t believe that everything can be explained by ‘global warming’.
Last week there was an article on the net that told of research that claimed that the North Eastern part of the US would become hotter and wetter. The article also mentioned dissenting opinions by other scientists, as is par for the course.
But it reminded me of a book we had read thirty years ago, (lost the bibliography card long ago) that was written by a scientist who had studied the tree rings both on recently cut down and on fossil trees. He came to the conclusion that there were cyclic weather patterns, and that the North Eastern US was due for a hot and wet weather pattern. He explained these patterns by saying that he believed that the Gulf Stream of hot water/hot weather, periodically changed course.
Throughout modern history the Gulf Stream has gone up the eastern coast of the US and then, around Nova Scotia, it goes across the Atlantic to warm up Europe. However, between the coast and the Gulf Stream there is an area of colder water, called the "cold wall" that keeps the eastern coast cooler.
Now if we take a look at the globe, we see something—and the first time I did this it blew my mind. Although I had supposedly learned geography, also on a college level, somehow I had never simply looked at a globe in the way a child would look, with curiosity.
Take the famous city of Rome for instance. Would it be north or South of New York city? Take some time to guess…..
I always thought it was somewhere in the south of Europe so it had to be south of New York. The weather in Rome is much like the weather in the South Eastern parts of the US, so it’s got to be south of New York City right? Wrong.
On my not too accurate globe, Rome and New York are on pretty much the same latitude. This was a revelation to me, at least. How about London, is it north or south of Canada? Take your time…
Well London is about on the same Latitude as Calgary in Canada, and London is a lot warmer than Calgary.
Oslo looks to me to be on line with Nome Alaska.
So what keeps Europe out of the snow and ice? The Gulf Stream. I’ve seen copies of ancient maps that show parts of Europe under ice that haven’t been covered by glaciers in modern times, and I don’t think that they were from all that far back in time, such as an ice age all around the globe (but I may be wrong). They most probably were from a time when the Gulf Stream deserted Europe and warmed up what would be New York and Boston. (See Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, by Charles H. Hapgood, Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age, A Dutton Paperback, NY 1966, 1979).
‘Years ago’ as my grandmother used to say, there was not a cloud in the sky over Israel after seven or eight in the morning, from May to September. Any clouds that came in from the sea overnight would go back out early in the morning. Now we have cloudy and overcast days right in the middle of the summer.
(Not that I got to see sky all that much last summer—because of the rocket shelling. We kept all the blinds down for fear of broken glass, the most likely thing to happen statistically. We didn’t go down to the shelters, but stayed in the most inner room. My father (combat sergeant WWII) used to say, “if the bullet doesn’t have your name on it there is nothing to fear, and if it does have your name on it there is no where to run”. Ditto for missiles and shells. Not that we should go strolling out in the street when the siren goes off.)
Anyway, has anyone noticed some changes in the weather patterns of their locality over the last ten, twenty or more years? Have the trees bloomed twice in a season, or even three times? Has it rained more or less? Are the old timers convinced that something is wrong? Is there more or less water, especially in lakes and wells?
I really think that there is something changing, but I don’t buy the Global warming spin, where I am living it is getting cooler by the year.
