So I’m well aware there’s been plenty of extreme winter weather in the eastern half of the U.S., but where I live, in the Southwest, it’s been a seriously weird weather stretch worthy of the phrase The Year Without a Winter. I’ve lived in Colorado off and on since 2002, which was a terrible drought year for the southern half of the state. Living in that drought year was good training: It made me aware of how dry it could be, but also how quickly the weather can change and the natural world can bounce back. Usually the El Nino/La Nina variations play a role in our drought, as it did this year: We’ve had La Nina conditions all winter, which tends to push the jet stream farther to the north, resulting in less moisture and cold in the Southwest, more snow in the Northwest. But this one has been a doozy. There’s a “heat dome” over the Southwest right now, breaking many record highs. Of course during this dry spell we’re also dealing with an idiot POTUS who is doing his best to kill renewable energy systems throughout the country and lavishing his praise on Big Oil. It’s embarrassing, so wrong-headed it makes no sense whatsoever. Now the War on Iran has driven oil prices up and Trump says that’s good because the U.S. is a great oil producer. That’s nice for the oil lobby but a money drain for the rest of us. All the other nations who have embraced renewable energy can withstand the price shocks better than we can. Below is a photo of my home in the Sangre de Cristo mountains west of Pueblo, Colorado. In a wet year we can have as much as 12 feet of snow or more. This year we’ve had maybe two feet total. This photo was taken recently, after a couple inches of snow.
