Horrible Northern Hemisphere Summer Already Starting? India Heat, American, Siberian Fires

Record heat has engulfed India and Pakistan for weeks,
and it's only getting worse More than a billion people
will experience life-threatening heat this week.

 We're racing toward summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and if recent weather news is any indication, it's going to be another destructive, record breaking one in many parts of the world's northern half. 

With climate change, summers have gotten hotter and stormier, with terrible results. Witness the big wildfires in recent years,  the record smashing heat wave in the Pacific Northwest last year, all those hurricanes, and flooding in the southern and eastern United States last summer, you get the picture.

Summers have always brought heat waves, droughts, fires, flash floods and hurricanes.  But these issues are getting worse and more long lasting as the world warms.  

We don't even reach the month of May until Sunday, and summer type disasters are already beginning to unfold. The worst of them so far is in India and Pakistan.

INDIA HEAT

In most of India, the most intense heat waves each year usually strike in May, before monsoon rains cool things off marginally later in the summer. 

This spring, though has been off the charts in this densely populated nation. And now the heat is intensifying.'

As CNN reports more than a billion people - 10 percent of the world's population - are subject to life threatening heat over the course of the next several days. 

Once you get into May, daytime temperatures routinely exceed 100 degrees in New Delhi. But the forecast this week has that giant city approaching 120 degrees.

Overnight lows will only be in the mid-80s, which makes this heat wave especially dangerous. There's no chance for overheated people without air conditioning to cool down. The longer a heat wave grinds on, the more dangerous it becomes.

Extreme heat has already been going on for weeks, so people are already worn down.  Temperatures starting hitting record levels of over 100 degrees in March and consistently continued at record levels through April.

If by chance your heartless enough to not care if people in South Asia die in this heat wave this probably affects you, too.

India had hoped to boost grain exports to help make up for shortfalls in world grain supply due to the war in Ukraine. (India's motives to do this were aimed to both humanitarian and an economic windfall for the nation).

The long heat wave has stunted wheat crops in India, thereby tightening the world's supply and probably further boosting the cost of Cheerios at your favorite local supermarket. Not to mention a huge portion of the rest of your groceries. 

Don't like inflation? India's heat wave could just make it a bit worse than it already is. 

WILDFIRES

I've been blabbing on about wildfires pretty much all of 2022 so far in this here blog thingy. 

That shouldn't have happened. There should not have been many wildfires to talk about during the first four months of the year. Wild and forest fire season used to be predominantly a summer and fall thing, now it's year round. 

Almost a daily occurrence lately. High to extreme
fire danger in the Southwest today 

As a side note, wildfire and brush fire season in the Northeast is an exception to the summer rule. These fires peak up in the Northeast in the spring, before everything greens up. Brush fires have been reported this week in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut. 

Most of Vermont has a high fire danger today, due to very low humidity, sunshine and stiff breezes.

But, like I said, that's an aside. 

Today, for seemingly the umpteenth time this year, parts of the nation today are facing once-relatively rare extreme fire risk. This time, the worst fire risk is centered in parts of Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico. 

With drought conditions and little prospect for rain in much of the west, wildfires have gained a stronghold weeks or even months before what was once considered normal. New large fires broke out in recent days in New Mexico, Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas. 

The yearly spate of wildfires in Siberia have already started, also earlier than normal.  With the Russian military distracted by their war crimes and failures in Ukraine, officials fear there won't be the personnel to deal with those Siberian fires as they inevitably intensify over the summer, notes the Washington Post. 

The Siberian fires are intense enough to bring hazy skies from the smoke to parts of the western United States this week. 

CALIFORNIA WATER EMERGENCY 

Also this week, about 6 million Southern Californians were ordered to reduce water usage and limit outdoor watering to once a week due to the drought there. 

The winter rainy season is sputtering to a close out there, with not much rain having fallen. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California said in a statement that "supplies have been so drastically reduced over the past three years that in some parts of the region, we simply don't have enough water to meet normal demands this year."

All the problems I've cited above are just the opening salvo in what promises to be a long, hot, destructive summer. Maybe I'm wrong and I hope I am, but we're already not off to a great start.