Anthropomorphic weather
We are having a bit of weather at the moment.
The Met Office and the meeja are having orgasms screaming about Red Alerts and calling the weather "Storm Desmond" to make it sound like something that would flatten New Orleans but it's just a bit of nasty weather.
Ireland is somewhere under that lot
The main concern is not so much the wind as the rainfall. They are pleading with us to take necessary precautions which presumably means having a liferaft on standby and to cancel that barbecue we were planning to have. There are dire warnings of flooding and fallen trees but that's a regular occurrence. They are pleading with us to stay away from cliffs and sea-shores, but then only the terminally bewildered would wander into those areas during a storm so I don't know what they are worried about.
They will of course blame any flooding and power cuts on the storm and "Climate Change". The nasty weather is ripping down our power cables and flooding our homes and it's all the weather's fault.
No it's not.
For reasons of simple economics, most of our power cables are overhead, so it an uprooted tree hacks them down we can hardly blame the weather?
Flooding is a different matter. I used to work in an job that involved a lot of maps and housing developments. We would get a new housing plan in from the developers and carefully superimpose it on an Ordnance Survey map. It is amazing the number of housing developments we came across that were located in areas marked on the old maps as "liable to flooding". No one seemed to notice or turn a hair and surprise, surprise, a few years later that development would be under water.
So we build our houses on flood plains and down at the water's edge and we wonder why they flood? We cover the ground in concrete and then wonder why the water doesn't flow away? We build dams, weirs and bridges across the rivers and then are amazed when they don't flow properly? We strip-log entire forests off the mountain tops and then wonder why the water run-off is so bad? We queue to buy water-side developments but seem to miss the clue in the word "water"?
So don't blame poor old Desmond.
Blame the developers and the planners.
I like the heavy brushwork in these meteo diagrams. It's a mixture of abstract expressionism and conceptual art. Definitely for exhibition at IMMA.
It's actually computer generated using live data on windspeeds –
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-12.60,51.53,3000
It can be quite hypnotic, especially if there is a hurricane lurking around.
Funnily enough, we get weather round here, too. Gets quite wet and windy sometimes. Apparently, they've had weather here for time immemorial, so that global warming must have been around for a while. In fact, even the ancient Greeks had weather, according to their archives. So global warming must be older than the people who invented it.
Just goes to show. There's nothing new under the sun. Who'd a thunk…
Ah! But your weather doesn't have pretty names to make the storms feel like old friends. I quite like the idea of knowing who to curse when a few more tiles blow off the roof.
"They are pleading with us to stay away from cliffs and sea-shores, but then only the terminally bewildered would wander into those areas during a storm so I don't know what they are worried about."
During the hurricanes we had in 89/90 (ish, I can't remember), I saw on the news large groups of people gathered on the white cliffs at Dover. Some of them were having great fun in jumping off the cliff, only to be blown back on. They weren't simply stepping off, but taking a running leap into the wind.
There were two brainless fuckwits filmed diving into the sea in Galway at the height of the storm today.
Where the fuck is Darwin when you need him?