Tag: weather

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I don’t think of myself as someone who wishes ill for others. I genuinely do not wish for anyone to come to harm. But I’m struggling just a bit with schadenfreude right now.

Take, as an example, the wildfires in California. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, these fire events were not just entirely foreseeable; they were actually foreseen forty years ago. And yet, there are tens of thousands of people who apparently made the calculation that the views from a house on a hillside at the urban-chaparral interface were so good it was worth taking the risk—and especially so, given that a large fraction of the costs of fighting those fires, and insuring against financial loss, could be spread to other people. People like me.

I think I’m allowed a bit of, “I hope you are enjoying the entirely foreseeable consequences of your choices.”

As another example, take the snow about to hit New Orleans:

By Tuesday, the winter storm will drop freezing rain, sleet and likely several inches of snow onto south Louisiana, including in New Orleans, Metairie, Slidell, Baton Rouge and Lafayette.

I have to admit that when people in red states face an extreme weather event that’s entirely to be expected, a certain part of me thinks, “Well, you could have voted for politicians and policies that would have greatly ameliorated climate change, but you didn’t. Enjoy the entirely foreseeable consequences of those choices.”

And, as a non-climate example, apparently a lot of black and brown male voters refused to vote for Kamala Harris. I suspect many of them will be surprised and saddened by the utterly predictable deportations of friends, family members, neighbors, coworkers, and employees over the next few years. And although I will be very sad about that—sad for the people deported and their friends and family, and also about the dreadful police actions that will be required to make them happen. But I hope I will be excused from feeling no sympathy for the bosses who find themselves having to pay up to get workers who haven’t been deported, and very little sympathy for the people who voted for these policies and find that everything they want to buy costs more.

“Welcome to the entirely foreseeable consequences of your actions as well.”

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I don’t get why people are treating Helene like some unpredictable catastrophe, rather than just the way things are now.

I’m like, “Hey, it’s going to be like this all the time from now on—either impending disaster, disaster occurring, trying to rescue people from the disaster, or recovering from disaster—from now on.”

It’s weird that people don’t understand that. I mean, it’s so obvious to me, but people are still treating each new disaster as an unpredictable one-off.

Although some people are getting a clue. Zillow, for example, will now show climate risks for property listings in the US.

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There’s a small creek that runs behind Winfield Village. It feeds the ponds in the Lake Park subdivision, and then the water flows on to the Embarras River.

It usually has only three or four inches of water in it, but after heavy rain it swells quite a bit.

A swollen creek, overflowing its banks enough to reach nearby trees
This gives you some idea how swollen the creek is.
The weir in our little creek is completely under water
Less impressive to you than to me, because you don’t know that there’s a weir across the creek which is completely hidden by the high water.

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A black dog wearing a khaki dog coat

I put Ashley in her new coat, put on my Alaska Pipeline coat, and went out into the bitter, bitter cold. Ashley would have liked to come right back in, but I made her stay outside until she had accomplished a couple of very important tasks.

At the airport it’s currently -9°F, with a wind chill of -34°F (-37°C).

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“The safety and well-being of our employees and partners is our top priority right now,” Richard Rocha, an Amazon spokesman…

I’m curious to know: Was their safety and well-being was the top priority a few hours earlier, when the National Weather Service issued a tornado watch?

Here are a few related questions:

  • Does Amazon have a plan for moving everyone in the building to shelter if a tornado warning is issued?
  • Have they tested that plan?
  • How long does it take to move people from the most distant parts of the building to shelter?
  • Does someone have the job of monitoring for a tornado warning?

Source: Deaths Confirmed After Tornado Hits Amazon Warehouse in Illinois – The New York Times