The wonder of weather

It’s thunderstorm season and one shouldn’t be all that surprised at their ferocity. I’ ve been through some humdingers in my time and sat and watched our property (sometimes in the dark) as the lightening crashes, the thunder roars, the wind howls and the rain and hail threaten my truck because garages are for stuff right?

I do recall tornado warnings in and around Yellowhead County but I don’t recall hearing of a touch down. However, the tornado alert on the evening of Sunday, August 21 did result in at least one touch down according to Environment Canada. The twist er occurred about 30 km northeast of Ed son leading to some damage to trees.

I know the chances of getting in the path of a tornado are slim, 10 million to one I read. Although I guess if you live in an area where tornado es are more common then you might want to throw those odds out of the window.

Sometimes though there’s this odd paradox that when it’s you it’s you. The advice is get into a strong structure or basement and wait it out. I also read that if you’ re on the highway with nowhere togo then drive into the ditch. Of course, that must be why one sees no many vehicles in the ditch they’re worried about torn ad os. I get it now.

There is little doubt that globally, weather is becoming more extreme but I expect that Mother Nature will realise that she’s going against the climate change agreement and reign her awkward behaviour in, yeah right.

I really wish that our leaders would quit trying to come up with all kinds of solutions, some of them tr ad able, such as carbon tax and trading and just well, endeavour to do no harm or endeavour to not do any further harm.

Since 1999 when I first began covering the environment beat on climate change, be it human caused or not, I thought it was too late to stop the process that our earth has already begun. A lot of the scientists I spoke to back then thought so too. So why have we got to keep spending billion son talking shops? Monitor, work environmentally smart and adapt and adopt where we can and where we can’t I’ m afraid we have to suck it up.

Whatever we do or don’t do our earth will still be there. It maybe changed but we don’ t need to save it. It saving us is maybe a better way to look at it. Canada could, apart from extreme weather events, actually benefit from climate change, especially warmer. Those growing zones are not set in stone and could be correlated with climate change. We have the land, the expertise, the infrastructure and the potential not only to feed the nation but a good deal of the world too.

Time to step up to the plate and explore the opportunities of climate change not just the doom scenario.