It's Halloween Weekend, and it's..... snowing. Though this isn't the earliest arrival of snow on record, it is the earliest arrival of snow with such large snowfall amounts. This is so crazy.
This year (in NJ) we've had record breaking snowfall, record breaking temperatures, a hurricane with record breaking rainfall..... And the during the previous winter there was also record breaking snowfall.
Record breaking events happen often enough (the Blizzard of 1996 sticks out in my mind), but it's the sheer number of record breaking events that are happening in rapid succession that stand out to me. Maybe it's because I'm still young, and noticing things more now than I did as a child..... But even adults are noticing the trend in severe weather events. You don't need fancy statistics to notice this trend.
Add in the severe weather extremes around the rest of the country- flooding on the Mississippi River, huge drought in Texas, snow as far south as Alabama, a shortage of snow at the Vancouver Olympics- just to name a few.
What the hell is going on?!
I wonder if it might have anything to do with climate change.
My next mini-project is to go find some scientific papers to back this up, because as a scientist, I hate when people make claims without anything to back it up. So at this point, my conclusion is made solely off anecdotal evidence. Maybe these weather events are simply getting more media coverage, just as earthquakes did after the earthquake in Haiti.
It's interesting though, how climate scientists have been warning us about this sort of thing happening for years, and now.... it's actually happening.
(Click here for my follow up post)
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