Weather and Climate

The difference between weather and climate is that nobody is a weather-denier. Weather has become poetic. Who can resist the plume of moisture stretching from Hawaii as a pineapple express becomes an atmospheric river? Suddenly I am sailing downstream with Huck Finn and Jim or on the high seas with Ishmael and Queegueg and no Ahab in sight.

Weather is in our face. Flood and mud. Water table rising. Power lines down. The havoc among trees. Cars half under. Weather is a grounded poem.

Weather is what we almost never have here in this collection of outskirts called Los Angeles. It is so ho-hum. 72 and sunny, no relief in sight………until now, all of a sudden we have returned to the elements. What next, seasons? A time to sow, a time to reap. Could be an alignment with the grand cycle.

L.A. County is so vast parts get pummeled while other areas remain parched. We are 800 sq. miles larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Is that possible? So says Google. Flowers with their throats open for a drizzle on one end while cascading debris causes evacuations on the other.  

Weather is the offspring of climate. Abuse the air and the forecast gets super-charged. It used to be, It's raining, it's pouring / the old man is snoring. If he slept for centuries, he is now awake. We have messed with Father Time and Mother Nature and we’ve gotten hundred-year storms and droughts every few years.

Glaciers calving, sea-levels rising, islands sinking, crops failing, millions migrating. Have a nice day. We now know why there ain’t no sun up in that sky / Stormy Weather.

There was a time when plant-life overran the planet. They inhaled all that carbon dioxide, stored it and exhaled oxygen. As flora decayed it became coal and oil. Temperatures sank in what is now known as the Ice Age. 

We are now reversing Earth’s respiration and choking on CO2. Bring back the forest, the greenery and halt the mining and drilling. For a favorable weather report scrub the sky and let sun and wind power us to ever after.