Strange Weather!

The winter has been unusually warm (or so I am being told by the locals) and luckily, we have been getting rain regularly. All the watering bans that were in place at the close of the last year have been lifted. Even Thames Water is saying that we have enough water in the reservoirs that we may not need to have hosepipe bans (that is bans on using a hose to water the lawn or wash a car) unless we have unusually high demand on the water supply once the bans are lifted or we have an unusually dry spring.

I am wondering if the recent drop in water usage here will have the same affect it had in Denver. Denver has been in the midst of a drought for the past few years and in the summer of 2005 the water authority in Denver (who, incidentally had left a fireplug open in the area out by the airport for the past three years so as to prevent the water in the system that far out on the periphery from growing stagnant) imposed mandatory restrictions on water usage. The bans worked. The water utilization in Denver and the metro area including the surrounding counties dropped sufficiently to keep the reservoirs from drying out completely and the city was saved! The problem is that then, they (the water board) petitioned the city councils for the areas affected by the drought for a rate increase claiming that the drop in water usage was driving them into bankruptcy. You can’t win for losing some times!

But back to the weather here! Last night I was riding my bike into Surbiton to catch a train into Central London. The evening was mild and in the dying sun of the later afternoon (16:30), I noticed something in the park as I rode by that I had to stop and check-out… Yes! I was right! There are daffodils sprouting in the park. Some are up to a foot tall and are in bud! With the crocuses blooming this past summer and the daffodils coming up in the middle of the winter, what next? Swallows in Capistrano all year round?

Who says that there is nothing to this Global Warming thing? Oh, yeah! The wanker in charge of my country says so! Oh! At least he has finally (grudgingly) admitted that the polar bear may be an endangered species because its habitat is being diminished.

Oh, and speaking of the polar bear, there was a piece on BBC recently telling how Polar Bears were close to the body mass limit for viable carnivorous species. The piece talked of how the physical size of the animal had doomed it from the start as its habit cannot support a large enough food supply to support anything more than a limited number of the species at a time. I gathered that the point of the story was that it was lucky they had survived as long as they have.

I hope that wherever you are today you are surviving well by mastering your environment!

Don Bergquist - 18 January 2007 - Thames Ditton, Surrey, UK