You’ll get different answers depending on who you ask. I’m referring to the two-season jokes: winter and Construction, winter and bugs, Pumpkin Spice and everything else. I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but drought season is one of my favorite topics. I don’t like droughts, but my town has been acting like we’ve been in one yearly for decades. Regular readers will be familiar with the refrain and may have a similar experience.
Each spring, the signs pop up all over town. Odd-even watering ban in effect. That means you are only allowed to “water outdoors” on the odd or even day that correlates to your street address. We have a bunch of town wells, and they provide the water, and someone who makes more money than I decided a while back that we need to conserve water so we’ll have it. … then they add thousands of new apartments all over town with two or more sinks, showers, dishwashers, laundry, and toilets.
Assholes do vex me!
Anyway, the signs aren’t up yet, but it’s almost April, and no whining yet from me (does this count?) about the water thing or the likelihood that the Chicken Littles will emerge from behind some taxpayer-paid-for desk to tell us about the drought. We don’t have to be having one, after all, New Hampshire has been enjoying a few decades of historically wet years during which the same public servants were yelling drought and putting up odd-even water ban signs.[Related: Our Systemic Lack of Drought.]
I had a conversation with someone who is wicked smart and knows about developments, construction, planning, and zoning. He said that’s what the environmental impact fees are for. When you want a new development or building, added municipal infrastructure could result in added fees. The fees pay for the infrastructure (or something). It didn’t occur to me then, but while it might pay for initial infrastructure (water pipes, sewer, roads, etc.), how does that make more water appear?
It doesn’t. You can pay to make it rain, geoengineering conspiracy aside. You need nature to accommodate you, and last year it did. We didn’t have a drought season because it rained a lot and often. We had near-record precipitation all spring and into summer (and yes, they still put out the odd even watering ban signs).
I suspect the timing of the Hunga Tonga eruption played a part, and as it wanes, we’ll see something different. 2025, for example, has been just above the mean each month, but just barely. March might be wetter, but not compared to 2024, so playing by Michal Mann of Penn Tech rules, that’s a drought. This is the same thinking used by Democrats when they call a 5% budget hike a cut because they wanted 25%.
If you give a damn, we had record snow cover in the northern hemisphere during the winter of 2024-2025.
Temps in New Hampshire for Dec-Jan-Feb were all below the 120-year trend line, and February nearly reached the 120-year mean. And that’ using NOAAs crappy data.
The USCRN data shows how pedestrian climate change has actually been. These stations are nearly, if not all, away from heat islands, while many of NOAA’s traditional data stations have been overcome by urban sprawl.
Both poles have added snow and ice this year. Tony Heller reports that Greenland added 200 billion tons of snow and ice in the past 60 days.
And for fans of the show Paradise (an underground city built in anticipation of a global climate catastrophe (spoiler alert)- they tell you what in episode 9) that while there was nuclear war it was triggered by a global climate catastrophe that started because human activity thinned the ice caps of Antarctica.
I like the show enough that I had to let that go, but…um. No.
None of this matters to climate cultists because, as the linked article reminds us, in 2014, the same experts told us that record Antarctic snow and ice were caused by climate change. The writers for Paradise must have missed that year.
Yes, the climate changes (there are no climate deniers, only actual scientists and exposers of fraud, lies, and grift), and look – there was more snow and ice that year and possibly this one too. No, it wasn’t man-made nor could it be done or undone by giving the UN credibility or greenwashing Montebanks more money. But if the ice cap issue is such a big deal, move some snow-making equipment down there and get to it. That’s got a cost less than what we’re spending on “climate change.”
Anyway, I’m betting that this year we’ll have two seasons: winter and drought. And we should take them as seriously as Vermont takes its emissions inventory and reduction targets.
