RE: OT - Freeze

Barbara Mann and John Montgomery have touched on reports some
meteorologists say world climate in this century has been abnormally
predictable, whereas "normal" climate
over the centuries may have been much more erratic.

I thought of this today while jogging in one of our river parks where the
city has recently cut quite a few large oaks and gum trees. Stopping to pay
homage to one impressive stump (and to stop jogging, I'll admit it) I
counted 57 annual rings. Then I eyeballed the thickness of these rings,
looking for some sort of 10- or 15-year cycle of growing conditions. I saw
what any kindergartner could have predicted: clumps of "fat" years followed
here by one lean year, there by even fatter years. In short, wild
irregularity.

I haven't seen every tree ever cut down, but I've eyeballed a few, and I
never have seen a tree stump with rings uniform in size for 10 or more
years in a row.

This is predictability?

I don't think our weather, at least in Arkansas, has ever been
*predictable* during my lifetime. All my life, every summer, I've had the
pleasure of listening to gray heads jawing about how "this is the strangest
summer" they ever did see. Every winter it's "a mighty strange winter."
This is predictable weather?
We kid ourselves that the weather guys are able to forecast broad trends.
They forecast them, but they have to turn around and revise those
forecasts. You get much farther out than two or three days and they don't
know exactly what's coming. They say they do, but they don't. :-)

I am glad weather is strange. Thank God for tornado prediction, but we
don't live in a tame world and I hope we never do.

celia
storey@aristotle.net
Little Rock, Arkansas
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