Lion's Daily Blurb - Mon., Tues., Aug. 6-7

[Lion]

I think this is perhaps one of the driest summers we've had in a long time. A few days ago we had a storm pass through that produced some violent lightning, but little rain. A lightning bolt struck my neighbor's grass field that is about 300 yards from my house. Because it was so dry, it caught fire and spread quickly. Another neighbor spotted the fire and called 911. The fire department arrived and doused the flames very quickly. It burned about an acre of ground. If it had been windy it could have taken much more, including a mountainside that borders the field. The grass is so dry in my back yard that when ya walk through it, you can actually hear a crunchy noise. The only thing growing is weeds that have beautiful blue flowers on them. Dunno how they thrive so well without water, but they do. Temps will be in the 90's this week with very little rain in the forecast, so looks like things will get worse before they get better.

[General Al Ramsey]

Here in SoCal it has been that dry since March. I keep waiting to find Rattlers when I go clean out the weeds out back, but I have not seen one snake this year. Maybe it has been too dry for them too. The only thing that is green is the sage brush, (tumbleweeds) those things can grow without water. :lmao: We don't get any lightning though except up into the mountains. So it usually takes a nut to go out running in the fields with flares to get everything going or a downed electrical line.

Its August, so hopefully summer will be over soon. Then we can get back to global cooling. :shifty:

[sovietmisaki]

odd, I remember a few years ago when the situation used to be pretty much reversed, these days, we get rain at least once every 2 weeks, though sometimes it rains once a day in my area, man... I remember when people in the front range of the rocky mountains used to have to wish for the rain to come, and that was during La Nina.

[SiDeWiNdEr]

Do you want some of our rain? We've barely had a summer over here. It's just not fair :(

Everyone here is Blaming Rhinas' song 'Umbrella' as for the 10 weeks in was #1, It rained! as soon as she got knocked off the top spot by Timberland the sun came out, and it's rained twice since I think. o.o

[Avapodnaught]

U just can't tell, maybe not this summer, the clouds are just waiting, waiting, waiting, probably go full out this fall... but truth be told, we have been getting less rain than lightning storms (we have been having lots of those)

[HawkEye1102002]

There is plenty of water in the United Kingdom, want some?

Some say that it is solar activity that is causing extreme wether

[NuclearDreams]

Some say that it is solar activity that is causing extreme wether

That's a possibility. Not everything weather "severe" is linked to human activity as some would like us to think. Paleoclimatology tells us that there were even more severe weather occurances that came in roughly 300 year cycles. A good indicator of some of those occurances are droughts. One occured in North America several centuries ago that affected a very large area and lasted over twenty years. Several centuries before that another devastating drought occured in the same area. If anyone thinks that droughts are nothing significant then you need to consider that the U.S. drought of the late 1980s is the single most costly national disaster to date. It's also well known that when major droughts occur over vast regions that the weather in other parts of the world tends to be out of the ordinary and extreme.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/drought/drght_paleo.html