Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
October 11, 2024
The autumn-afternoon ache comes on as I pilot the Silver Bullet past the undulating fields south of Dove Creek. The feeling of regret, melancholy, nostalgia, and relief infuses both senses and mind every year at this time. Maybe it’s the harsh light of early October that does it, or the merciless blue sky, or the apples and pears hanging heavy on sagging, yellow-leafed branches, or just the knowledge that another summer has passed and June’s dreams and aspirations went unfulfilled.
But this year the weather seems confused — or maybe just confusing. For instead of the scent of piñon smoke wafting from chimneys, the air is infused with the smell of freshly cut hay. Even as leaf-peepers race to see high country hillsides burn with the brilliant yellows, oranges, and reds of the changing aspens, Wyoming ranchers scramble to ferry thousands of head of cattle out of the path of raging wildfires in the Bighorn Mountains and the foothills of the Wind Rivers — places that during many Octobers might be blanketed with snow.
It is October, according to the calendar and the angle of the sun. But the weather might disagree: In Colorado, farmers are still harvesting tomatoes and raspberries, and they’re getting a third or fourth cutting of hay. The mercury in Phoenix has surpassed 100° Fahrenheit on every day so far this month, resulting in an average maximum temperature of 109°. Even the highest peaks are suspiciously devoid of snow, though it can be hard to tell since smoke from distant wildfires have obscured the views on several days this month, as though it were July or August.
It all makes for a deceptive end to the 2024 water year. Deceptive because, for as dry as it all feels right now, most of the Southwest received a weirdly normal amount of precipitation over the last 12 months.
“Normal” precipitation levels, unfortunately, aren’t enough to wipe out drought. In fact, drought conditions have gotten worse in much of the Upper Colorado River Basin and northern California in the past year, while subsiding somewhat in southern New Mexico and the Pacific Northwest. Remember that water year 2023 was super wet in the Southwest.
When water falls from the sky it goes into rivers and reservoirs, allowing irrigators to pour it onto their fields long after ditches normally would have been shut off. That allows for the odd juxtaposition of sprinklers soaking emerald green alfalfa fields against adjacent khaki-colored corn or sorghum crops.
But the normal amounts of precipitation have been offset somewhat by warmer temperatures. And, yes, the temperatures are getting warmer everywhere — and not just in October. Much of the Southwest experienced the hottest summer on record. Phoenix has sweltered through 138 days of 100-degree-plus heat this year so far, with the mercury surpassing 110° F on 70 of those days, smashing last year’s record of 55 days of that level of scorcher. It was 120° or hotter in Death Valley on 36 days.
I hoped to give you an updated map of temperature deviations for the entire water year, but the National Centers for Environmental Information has yet to issue their September climate report because, in an ironic and troubling twist, the Asheville, North Carolina, headquarters were damaged by the climate change-exacerbated Hurricane Helene. So here’s one for January through August.
I’d be lying if I were to say I wasn’t enjoying the unseasonable warmth. Soaking up the sun on these bluebird days eases that autumnal ache, somewhat, and being able to lay on my sleeping bag on the sandstone at night and gaze up at a sky full of stars (and Northern Lights — holy cow that was cool!) without even getting chilled is kind of nice.
But then I start thinking of the water year that just commenced, and wonder whether this beginning is an auspicious omen of what’s to come or perhaps just the calm before a whopper of a winter? One thing we can be sure of is that we’re in the new abnormal era, brought on by human-caused climate heating, when the strangest weather phenomenon is the, well, norm.
And my revelry is broken by thoughts of “The 2024 State of the Climate Report” recently published in BioScience. The authors warn that in spite of all the warnings the planet has sent, its human inhabitants continue to burn more fossil fuels, cut down and burn more forests, and emit more greenhouse gases — “in part because of stiff resistance from those benefiting financially from the current fossil-fuel based system. … Human population and ruminant livestock population have been increasing at approximately 200,000 and 170,000 per day respectively,” they write. “Decoupling the growth in all of these variables with greenhouse gas emissions may be difficult.” [ed. emphasis mine]
As a result, global temperatures keep rising as do heat-related mortalities. Severe weather events have become more extreme and unpredictable. They conclude:
📸 Parting Shot 🎞️
