October, 1965 Cold Wave Got Me Started With Weather. But Man, Have Times Changed!

The autumn, 1965 cover of Vermont Life
magazine. A weird October cold wave
that year helped start a lifetime of 
weather geekdom, which has morphed
into a horrified fascination 
with climate change. 

When weather geeks like me are asked what got them into keeping their heads in the clouds, so to speak, they'll often mention childhood memories of dramatic storms like hurricanes, tornadoes or blizzards.   

My experience is more odd and convoluted.  I don't think what got me into weather and climate geekdom was one particular thing. But a long-forgotten early October cold wave piqued my interest. At a very, very early age.

I seemingly was born with the desire to understand nature, and wind and clouds and the sky. How it works, and why it's all as cool as it is.  

For some reason my memories of early October, 1965 are vivid, even though nothing particularly exciting happened, and I was only three years old.  

It was Sunday, October 3. West Rutland, Vermont. When I got up that morning, my parents were in the kitchen, talking about an expected cold wave and even the chance of snow. 

Outside, a stiff north wind had just started, peeling colorful leaves off of sugar maples with gleeful abandon.

The temperature fell all day. I stood by the windows watching my dad doing stuff outside. These were big windows, with three panes stacked atop each other. As an adult, standing in the living room, I would look out the top window. At age three, I was so short I could just barely peek out the lower pane. 

From the base of the window, my breath steaming the glass, and my mother warned me about getting fingerprints on the spot she just cleaned. 

I watched my dad, looking rather bundled up, working one of the outdoor projects he was always doing. I think he was building a stone wall. He repeatedly pushed a  steel wheelbarrow loaded with rocks and dirt up a hill like he was out for a stroll. He was 45 years old at the time and had the strength and stamina of a bull. 

I wanted to go outside to "help" dad, but my mother said no. It was too cold. I was a smart ass, and frankly, sometimes actually smart even at that age. I pointed out that dad was outside, and that was OK. And I told mom she let me play outside in the middle of winter when it was even colder. 

But I lost the argument. My mother must have not felt like digging all the winter clothes out. It was too early in the season to deal with it.   

That evening, though, my mother turned on the outdoor lights in the backyard. It was snowing, only a little, and it wasn't sticking. But it was snowing. Both of us were excited. The first snow of the season. 

It flurried for each of the next two days, in one of the earliest bouts of winter on record. I looked it up recently and learned the temperature in Burlington fell into the 30s during the day on October 3, 1965 and did not get above 40 again until the afternoon of October 6.  

The high temperatures on October 4 and 5, 1965  in Burlington were 39 and 37 degrees, all record low high temperatures. 

A WEATHER JOURNEY, CLIMATE UNEASE

Anyway, from then on, for the next six decades I bored people to death with my weather obsession, but I just couldn't help myself.  I overcame a childhood fear of thunderstorms so that they're now my favorite weather. The louder, the better.

I get a stir of excitement with every storm. Except the dangerous ones that have been hitting with greater frequency with climate change.  I actually cried a bit when I woke up on the morning of July 11, 2023 to see Montpelier under water. 

Then the floods kept hitting. Until the worst drought I can remember hit this summer and fall. 

The ever-changing Vermont weather I grew up with has started to change too much. It's gotten scary. And sad. This isn't the Vermont climate I grew up with. Epic floods. Epic droughts. Epic heat waves. It's so much weirder nowadays than a snow flurry in early October could ever be.

I don't think we'll ever get another October, 1965 in Vermont because the climate is so much different now.   

Just two years ago, it was 86 degrees in Burlington on October 4, an all time record high for the month.  That's as big a contrast to October 4, 1965 as you can possibly get. We're expecting potential record highs in the low 80s this Sunday and Monday.

When I was young, I LOVED snow, and 1965-66 turned out to be the start of a series of snowy winters that lasted well into the 1970s. That era was a great time to be both a kid who simultaneously loved snow and was an incorrigible weather geek. 

The stats back me up. Burlington's average annual snowfall is 72.6 inches. Every winter from 1965-66 through 1975-76 had at least 85 inches of snow. Yeah, my ADHD always leads me to the stats for some reason. 

Nowadays, I'm not nearly as big a fan of snow.  A changed climate has minimized the amount of snow we get. Fortunately for me, but not for a lot of other Vermonters.

Snow in the winter has become uneven. Some winters don't get much snow at all. Other winters recently have had tons of snow. At least on paper. But it seems every snowfall is followed by a thaw. The snow cover never really gets deep like it used to half a century ago.

I'm still a geek who - unlike 99 percent of the rest of the world - can still get breathless over a mesoscale  convective complex. (Don't ask).

I'm still as fascinated with the weather as I was as that three year old, who just wanted to join his dad outside on a wintry day during what should have been foliage season. 

That joy I find in the sky and clouds and air is now tinged with a bit of sadness and fear. What will climate change bring next?  I've always gotten excited when the weather got a little extreme.

But now, it's a little too extreme for my tastes. I imagine a lot of other people feel the same. Even if they aren't weather geeks.  

Most Of Weekend Rain "Canceled" As Frustrating Vermont Drought Rolls On

Canada gifted us with a cold front Thursday and
all we got was a wind shift and a couple clouds. 

 Droughts might not necessarily be the most destructive weather disaster possible, but they are probably the most frustrating.  

I don't mean to dismiss the damage droughts inflict. Each one can cause millions, even billions of dollars in damage to crops, water infrastructure and more. 

In some parts of the world, droughts cause or contribute to famines which can kill thousands. Droughts are not to be messed with. 

Most weather disasters, though, have a pretty clear beginning and end. The hurricane, tornado or flood arrives and does its damage. When you're in it, you have a pretty good idea when it will be over. Then the storm indeed departs, leaving us humans to pick up the pieces. 

A drought sneaks up on you.  You don't realize you're in it until the crops start wilting, the well runs dry and the trees start turning brown. Worse, you have no idea when it will end.  Plus, there's usually no clean break from it.

I look at droughts the way I look at my experiences in airport terminals. Some people are afraid of flying. I'm not. My phobia is airport terminals. 

Airport terminals are where everything goes wrong. It usually takes the form of a slow cascade of escalating trouble. Like droughts. The worst part of airport terminals is you're there, and your flight gets delayed. They don't tell you how long the delay will last, why there's a delay or whether it will turn into a cancelation. 

You don't know whether you'll have to rebook with another airline, how long you will be there, whether you will actually get to your destination, or where you will sleep tonight. The uncertainty is what kills you. You actually feel better getting terrible, concrete news at the airport than you do when you are lingering with all those unanswered questions.

Not knowing what will happen is strangely better than learning your flight is canceled and the next available flight is three days from now. 

Droughts are the same way.  There's no real end date.  No information. There are moments of false hope. Maybe on a particular day during a drought it rains hard for awhile. But then it stops, and you return to endless days of blue skies and dry air. The drought worsens. 

Even when the rains really returns, it takes forever for the drought to actually end. It's hard to end a drought. Months of near average rainfall won't do it. You need months and months of above average rainfall. The chances of that happening are less than 50/50. 

OUR CURRENT EXPERIENCE

That's where we are in Vermont now. Each new forecast, each new day is another piece of frustration. It doesn't rain, again. A forecast that said rain was likely evaporates into a chance of scattered sprinkles. 

A cold front went through Vermont Thursday but you're forgiven if you didn't notice. Most cold fronts at least have a band of showers with them.  This one maybe had a couple puffy clouds. And a breeze that came from the north but didn't affect temperatures all that much. 

The only moisture we had was the patchy dense river valley fog we so often get during calm early mornings in September. The cold front meant temperatures this morning fell into the upper 30s to mid 40s by dawn. There might have been a patch or two of frost again in the very coldest hollows. 

Today is another sunny, dry one. It'll be a couple degrees cooler than yesterday but still pleasant. Except for the arid air that will keep worsening the drought. 

Speaking of worsening, the forecast has dried up too. The hoped for rain this weekend will not materialize. At least not to any great extent.

Earlier forecasts had a disturbance coming down from Canada and going right over us. That would have been good for maybe a quarter inch of rain. Not much, but it would have tided us over for a day or two.

Instead, the disturbance now looks like it will zip by to our north, leaving just a weak trough (basically a semi-cold front) to come through Saturday night. It will have very little rain along it. Plus, the air is so dry most of the small amount of rain coming with that little front will evaporate on its way down from the clouds. 

A few raindrops probably will make it to the ground, but they will basically amount to a trace. It might wet the dust down a tiny bit late Saturday or early Sunday. 

Then it's back to another long period of sunny, dry weather.  It feels strange to curse a string of sunny days in what used to be a perennially overcast Vermont. 

This drought is stubborn. It will actually get a little warmer next week, which is doubly bad. Dry, sunny weather will keep evaporating what little water we have left. When it gets warmer, evaporation rates increase. 

Expect at least some days next week to get up to near 80 degrees. 

Our next shot at rain still looks like it will come in around September 20. Long range forecasts continue to indicate that the weather system that would bring that rain looks unimpressive, so don't expect any kind of nice soaking. 

That would be too much to ask. 

Vermont is stuck in Terminal A of Drought International Airport, and the ticket agents are not telling us anything about whether we'll eventually be able to leave. They're not even offering a drink of water.  

Gardeners Supply Goes Down The Tubes, In A Sad American Way

A "Viking funeral" of memorabilia done by former
employees of the late, great Gardener's Supply. 

There's a black charred little spot on my property today. 

That's where on Sunday, myself and former coworkers and current friends burned some memorabilia from a now former Vermont company called Gardener's Supply.  I'll tell you why, but first some disclaimers.  

I'll admit this post is a little off topic from what you're used to here, but it's important.  It's about how corporate American ruins a good thing, time after time.

 Create monopolies, concentrate wealth to just a few people and corporations. Those few win, and everybody else loses.  

This is a relatively small story that echoes the biggest ones. And it's personal. 

After 12 years at Gardener's Supply, I and nearly 60 people were let go. A series of poor management decisions led to a bankruptcy, which led to a takeover by an outfit called Gardens Alive!

And yes, they have that obnoxious exclamation point in their name. 

Gardens Alive (screw the exclamation point) has been gobbling up smaller garden entities like Breck's Gurney Seeds, Henry Field's Michigan Bulb, Spring Hill Nursery and Zalenka Farms.

It's the familiar tale of one company vacuuming as many competitors as they can. It happens all the time now.  You get these little monopolies that give the consumer fewer choices, worse customer service, and often higher prices. You can do that if you wipe out the competition. 

The buyups, either by Gardens Alive or any other big firm which buys up, I don't know, all the widget factories in the world, are all done with  cold efficiency.  

That type of thing affects all of us.  If you look at the bigger picture, the concentration of business, money, our very culture into the hands of a few billionaires and millionaires and entities leaves us all with fewer choices, less freedom. It increases the income inequality that also leads to less stability in the world, less fairness, and plenty of unrest.

Yes, I'm sounding a bit like Bernie Sanders, who's always sounding off on the growing gap between the few haves and the very many have nots, but the dude has a point. 

This isn't a pity party for me. I'll be fine. I'll figure it out. I hope everyone else I worked with does.  

 GARDENER'S SUPPLY

 I landed at Gardener's Supplyin 2013, after the first big corporate F.U. I've experienced in my lifetime. 

The once great Burlington Free Press the big local paper in Vermont, was desiccated over time to basically nothing by the corporate overlords at Gannett, which owned the paper and hundreds of others. Gannet bled these local news sources dry, leaving "news deserts" across the nation and leaving the public more open all kinds of misinformation from dubious sources. All in the name of making their top top-tier shareholders happy.

The layoffs kept coming, and in August of 2013, I was unceremoniously dumped by Gannett. It was just as well. The work environment had become toxic. As I drove away from that layoff, Billy Joel's "Say Goodbye To Hollywood" came on the radio. It fit.

Stung by the bad experience, and unlike many of my great colleagues and friends from the Free Press, I largely left journalism. I kept my writing brain going by writing this blog and doing a few side projects, but that's it.

Instead, I found refuge at Gardeners Supply. The atmosphere at the employee-owned company was the opposite of toxic. Sure, you had to work hard. Sure, there were bad days. But many good ones, too. everybody was in it together. You made friends. You grew. The lack of toxicity was refreshing to say the least. 

The work slogan was People, planet profits. Not just profits. All three.

Gardener's Supply was never spectacularly profitable, as far as I could tell, but it did OK. I think. Until 2020, when things really started to go off the rails.

The biggest of all the big bad conglomerates - Amazon - was hitting us hard. We tried to play with them, selling on their marketplace. I'm not sure how that went. 

The pandemic in 2020 created a gardening boom, and a bust that we didn't handle all that well. After every boom comes a bust. The decision makers at Gardener's didn't plan that out well, at least I think i my 20/20 hind sight. 

We made a series of bad decisions on systems upgrades, sales philosophy and other issues. Chapter 11 became inevitable, and it hit this year.

The process and Gardens Alive moved in for the kill with that cold efficiency I've already mentioned. The stock we employees accumulated as employee-owners evaporated. 

The announcement that we were being laid off came in a brief Zoom meeting. No severance. No support, Just a message that essentially told us, "get lost, suckers."

This after we were told after the takeover, it would be business as usual. So they gave us false assurances during a time we could have been preparing for our next chapters, instead of getting hoodwinked.

Human beings are just part of the machinery. Why run an "expensive" older model when you get get slick plastic version to do the work over in India or somewhere? I get it, businesses are not charities. The workforce has to grow or shrink with what the current conditions allow. But this whole thing smells bad.

Gardens Alive is getting rid of a crew that bent over backwards for customer service while at the same time not giving away the store. We are all gardeners, so we know how to solve customer's problems and steer people to the products that will actually work

I imagine that according to some algorithm, that's not as profitable as having some unfortunate person at a call center in India try to help a customer battle some strange bug called aphids in a mysterious land called Iowa.

So, the bunch of us laid off from Gardeners gathered in my backyard on an atrociously hot Vermont Sunday to hug each other, and have our cathartic Viking funeral at a small backyard campfire I set.

Productivity sheets that measured how good we were with customers, into the fire. Instructions on how to manage the latest, non-working ordering system? Into the flames. Name tags, old catalogs, congratulations on your tenth anniversary paperwork, various instruction manuals on how to manage creaky ordering systems. All up in flames.

There's still some decent local, honorable businesses around. Cherish them, the ones that treat you honestly, are part of the community they serve, that are invested in both their own profits and you, the customer..

 Come to think of it, this column is a bit on point for this here blog thingy after all. The stuff I've reported on, the cutbacks at the National Weather Service and FEMA, the concerted effort by Trump and his minions to regard climate change as a hoax, is all about greed, protecting the big wigs from any change in circumstances that can threaten their billions.

So, I'm deciding what to do. If anyone wants to hire an old Vermont weather geek, or has side gigs for me, let me know. (Hey, I'm not above a little self-promotion here).

If anyone does want to pay me to do their gardens, write their copy, do an article, whatever, I promise you one thing: I'm not going to sell out to some billionaire who doesn't care about you.

Like my friends from Gardener's Supply, I actually care about where I live.

In The Age Of Climate Change, Your Life Can Be Upended At The Drop Of A Hat

The family who lived in this destroyed
California house presumably had a 
joyous Christmas. The burning 
Christmas tree inside just seems like
another one of billions of blows
the fires have landed on so many people.

The California wildfires prove once again that climate change makes all of our lives that much more unsettled and insecure.   

Thousands of lives changed for the worse at the drop of a hat last week as the wildfires tore through houses, neighborhoods, whole communities. The disaster might not have happened without climate change, or at least wouldn't have been nearly as bad. 

It was all just another example of how our own little bubbles of bliss are invaded by a sense of doom sometimes in our warming world.

Things for any individual have always been capable of suddenly going south.   A loved one might suddenly die,  you get a devastating diagnosis, you become a victim of a major crime, or your house burns down due to some stupid electrical short in an appliance. 

Those things have always been at the back of our minds, but we shove it away. We want to enjoy life, not fret about all the bad things that could happen. 

In the age of climate change, we still try not to think about the bad stuff that might or might not ever occur. And that's a good thing. Constantly worrying or obsessing over how the world can harm us is completely unhealthy. 

But the California wildfires have shoved this possibility into our faces. Just like the steady parade of mega-disasters the world is increasingly experiencing, 

Like Hurricane Helene in September. That's when people living in their corner of mountain paradise in North Carolina, seemingly safe from the worst of hurricanes that sometimes roam and wreck the coastal areas found their lives awash in epic flood ruins. 

In Helene, walls of mud swept down those beautiful North Carolina hillsides, wiping out homes and lives in an instant.  Houses and businesses seemingly too high above those pretty mountain rivers to be in harms way just washed away in a few hours from seemingly impossible floods. r 

It was the same in California. All those gorgeous homes in gorgeous neighborhoods in Pacific Palisades, Pasadena, Altadena, Malibu and other communities gone in a night. Homes full of memories and comfort just went poof and disappeared. 

Leaving all those residents to mourn and face a much too uncertain future. 

The rest of us don't really have the right to complain about how unsettling climate change is, given the trauma California fire victims are experiencing. 

But it makes us think. It can happen to us. It has in Vermont. I think of the residents of that apartment building in Plainfield, who woke up on July 10 last year in a quintessential Vermont village with a pretty little brook gurgling by beneath the rich green of the sugar maples standing guard over the town.  

In less than 24 hours, it was all gone, literally washed away in a flash flood.  Thousands of other Vermonters faced misery and ruin amid the floods of 2023 and 2024.  It hurt to watch, never mind experience it.  

The rest of us try to help out, sympathize, to do something about it, whatever we can. But otherwise, we try to live our lives in peace, and hope we're not next.

By the way, western North Carolina and Vermont were considered as two places relatively "safe" from the ravages of climate change. 

These days, we get nervous every time our homes are rocked and battered by the next extreme storm and thank our lucky stars to wake up in the morning to find little or no damage. 

I am one of those extremely lucky ones in Vermont. By my calculation, my St. Albans property has sustained about $1,500 in damage from severe storms over the past decade. That's not bad at all, and we were even more fortunate to be able to absorb those little hiccups with a minimum of discomfort. 

The California firestorms hit in the dead of winter. Most of the nation is frigid, gray, colorless this time of year. Calfornia should be greening up in what should be the usual winter rains, but it's burning down instead.

Yesterday, I ventured outdoors for awhile near my northern Vermont home, under a dark, hazy overcast, occasional snowflakes racing past me in the wind.  Winter is not my favorite season to begin with. Now, the winter seemed more depressing than usual, given the heartache in California, and the worry over what might come next. 

The classic Mamas and Papas tune "California Dreaming," popped into my head. I thought how bitterly ironic the song's lyrics have become in the tough winter of 2025:

"All the leaves are brown

And the sky is gray

I've been for a walk

On a winter's day 

I'd be safe and warm

If I was in L.A."

 

A Year After Cataclysmic Vermont Flood, We Get Another One As Climate Gangs Up On Us.

Now that the weather has finally settled down, I've had a chance to think about the two big July flood disasters Vermont experienced on the same date two years in a row.  

Somebody's little piece of Vermont heaven was trashed by
the raging Huntington River on July 11. Similar scenes -
many much worse than this, were once again
common across Vermont this month. 

 We spent the day this July 11 marking the first anniversary of one of the worst flood on record in Vermont by....... picking up the pieces after another deadly Vermont flood.  

It does seem like it's harder and harder to catch one's breath between new weather extremes.  Flooding after July 10, 2023 continued sporadically through the rest of that month and on into August. 

Last year's summer disaster was followed by more rough, scary, disheartening weather. We had another destructive flood in December, twin windstorms that spread further damage in January, and severe thunderstorms and flash flooding in central Vermont just on June 23 -less than month ago.

And never mind the other extremes that didn't cause so much harm but had us weirded out: The hottest October day on record, the warmest winter on record, and damaging wet snowstorms in December and April. It goes on and on.  

This year, the subsequent series of storms following July 10 haven't been as damaging as last year's.

So far, anyway. 

A RECKONING

A year after the July, 2023, and just before the torrents hit again earlier this month, Vermont looked largely tidied up. 

A snippet of a Carly Simon lyric pops into my head here, "Close the wound, hide the scar."  The line from the song is about emotionally wounded people putting on a brave face.  

Which is where I think Vermont was on July 9.  And maybe will be again this time next year.  

Behind closed doors, people were still  still living in homes whose insides are still had not been repaired.  Business owners and home owners teeter on the edge of financial ruin from the flood's cost.  Farmers, always on the edge and at the mercy of the weather more than pretty much all of us, wonder if they will make it.   

A sign outside a church in flood-ravaged Johnson,
Vermont in July, 2023

People like this are out of the headlines, except of course when we're marking the anniversary of the disaster. 

The Associated Press's profile of one woman's current life a year after the flood is pretty harrowing. I'm stressed out just reading it. 

"Lisa Edson Neveu and her two teenage sons still live in their flood-wracked home, despite unrepaired damage that festers like an open wound: Torn-out walls and floors, a missing ceiling in one room and a downstairs bathroom that is no more. The family's kitchen was destroyed, so they cook meals on an outdoor grill, an electric frying pan and an air fryer."

The immediate aftermath wasn't the real problem. Neighbors helped neighbors, the National Guard really stepped up to the plate. But then that was it. 

They were on their own to fight insurance companies, the adjusters, FEMA, state and local regulations, you name it.  A Vermont flood typically comes and goes in a day. The aftermath lasts forever. 

At least Neveu didn't have to start from square one with murky water in her house again. Montpelier avoided another calamity this time. 

 Not so in Barre. Or Waterbury. Or other towns victimized again the night of July 10-11.  I heard one clip on the radio of somebody in Barre saying they hadn't finished cleaning up the debris from the July 2023 flood when this one hit. 

The sudden transition from Vermonter living in a paradise to a climate victim has to be one of the most disorienting things out there. 

VTDigger told us about Sequin Skye, a hospice nurse who lives - or at least lived - in an apartment building on Great Brook in Plainfield. 

The flooding covered her floor in silt. She didn't know which belongings she'd be able to save. A porch she loved sitting out on was in ruins. It was a piece of paradise before Wednesday night.

"I swear to you, it was like a babbling brook. And I sat and drank coffee yesterday on my little porch, listening to the brook and being so happy."  Now, everything was covered with dirt and mud, and it now "looks like some kind of desert."

The joy Skye experienced before the flood is shared by most Vermonters. For me, there's nothing better than sitting in this deep tub we put out on our lower deck. I fill it with cool water. On muggy evenings, I just sit there, watching the flowers bloom, absorb the deep, deep green of a Vermont summer, and wonder what all the birds are gossiping about. 

It's a moment of calm and respite for my chaotic brain.  But now, other thoughts intrude on the peace.

 I wonder, when will the other shoe drop? When will climate change directly intrude into this placid life?  

Of course, it already has intruded. You can't escape thinking about the plight of your neighbors who have been hit hard, nor should you. Storm warnings seem to carry more weight now. Will the next storm be the literal homewrecker? It seems you never know nowadays. 

BARRE

Speaking of homewreckers, what about the fate of communities that have been hit hard over and over again. Places like Barre.

Can a town like that survive after two big flood disasters in a year?  Plus having endured flooding last December?  I'm also not sure everyone in Barre recovered from two big floods in 2011.

Visitors flock to the picture perfect Instagram ready villages in Vermont, but the Green Mountain State is also home to a lot of working class towns. Ones with even less money to throw around than the pretty but still cash-strapped tourist destination towns.  

Like Barre.

I can't be the only thinking along these lines. Heck, even the Washington Post quoted me when I wrote last week, "I honestly don't know how Barre will recover from two devastating floods in one  year."

The city is losing housing and population from the flooding, yet other people are trapped in flood-prone houses, because they are not eligible for buyouts. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has a program that provided money to towns so they can buy up properties in flood prone areas. In many cases, those purchased homes are torn down and the area they once occupied becomes green space such as parks.   

Rain pours down in Montpelier, Vermont and flooding
shown just beginning on July 10, 2023. About 90
minutes after this photo was taken, virtually all
of downtown Montpelier was under water. With
all of our disasters in mind, we now get
nervous with every torrential downpour.

Barre received 62 applications for buyouts, but could only approve 20, because that's all the money that was available 

It almost seems as if Barre won't entire die from all these floods because some people have nowhere else to go. 

It's not as if Barre is full of millionaires.  VTDigger profiled one family whose Barre home was damaged three times by flooding in the past year. Each time, their basement filled up with water and pollutants. They applied for a buyout, but were denied. For now, anyway, Barre is only accepting buyouts for houses nearest the flood prone Stevens Brook. 

Everybody in Barre, whether they suffered flood damage or not, is in a bind because of these repeated climate related disasters.

Reports VTDigger: 

"Barre 'can't afford to buy houses for people not along the river,' according to (City Manager Nick Storellicastro, because property bought out with FEMA funds must become permanent green spaces. The city simply can't lose more housing space, according to Storellicastro, nor can the city's budget - already 'in dire straits' from last summer's flood - absorb any further loss of property tax revenue."

So where does that leave Kate O'Day, her husband Nick Roos and their baby daughter, the family profiled in VTDigger?

On top of not qualifying for a buyout, around last Christmas they also received notices from the city that they must elevate their house somehow, and also bring utilities up from the basement to meet fresh city codes. 

VTDigger again:

"And the couple wonders: Who's going to want to rent or buy a house in a floodway, with an unusable basement that you still pay taxes on, and all the utilities taking up square footage in the living area upstairs?"

Roos and O'Day said they would probably sell the house, accept their financial losses and start over somewhere else. 

For many others, though, there is no somewhere else. Either because people can't afford to move, or they have such deep ties to their town that they simply can't let go. 

Which now leaves our happy rural town life tinged with sadness and worry. There's an excellent YouTube flood fundraising video from Gold Shaw Farm in hard-hit Peacham where the narrator describes how the flood physically and emotionally affected the close-knit town. 

What made Peacham especially tragic is that the flood claimed the life of Peacham resident Dylan Kempton, 33, a married father of young children and a man that everybody in town knew and loved. 

All these climate change disasters in Vermont make me think of another song, "Our Town," by the wonderful Iris Dement. It's about a woman who lived her entire life in one small town, and now the town has died, and she has to move away. Somewhere.

The vast majority of us in Vermont are not at that point yet.  But it makes me wonder if we will see a few of our towns die away.  

It would be such a shame to lose places like Peacham, Plainfield, Barre.   People in those communities are banding together, and Vermonters are pretty awesome at finding creative solutions to some of our deepest problems. 

But some of us might well have to abandon our dreams of living out our days in our small towns, driven out by climate change. I guess Vermont is one microcosm of what's going on everywhere else in the world. 

Those lyrics from Dement's "Our Town" haunt me, given what we've been through with climate disasters in recent years:

"And you know the sun's settin' fast

And just like they say nothing good ever lasts.

Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye,

 But hold on to your lover 

'Cause your heart's bound to die.

Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town.

Can't you see the sun's settin' fast down on our town, on our town

Goodnight."

 

 

Autumn Be Damned: THIS Is Peak Foliage Season In Vermont

You might have seen me write enthusiastically about this time of year in past springs, but I can't help myself.  

A rainy spring afternoon Wednesday in my St.
Albans, Vermont yard. Even "bad" weather is
simply gorgeous this time of year. 

So, I write about it, take photos and shoot videos two of which you can see at the bottom of this post.

We're now experiencing what I regard as "peak foliage" here in Vermont. 

No, we're not having a super duper early autumn. You can relax. It's just that the moment when everything blooms and turns green in Vermont is simply magical. 

I just like this spring peak foliage even more than the one in the fall. It's in many ways more beautiful than fall colors. And bonus! There's not so many tourists blocking the roads.

In a way, I'm glad that the total eclipse of the sun that drew perhaps 200,000 people to Vermont hit on April 8, not May 8. Early April is not Vermont's prettiest season. At that time of year, the trees are bare, the grass is still mostly brown and there's lots of mud underfoot.

Now that we're into May, the gorgeousness of the season is all around us, everywhere you turn.

Flowers after a rain storm this week in my St.
Albans, Vermont yard,. 

The hayfields are the most luxurious green imaginable speckled by countless yellow dandelions. 

The farms in the Champlain Valley now have the same quality, color and texture of a red carpet look on an A-list celebrity created by one of the world's top designers.

If somebody like Christian Siriano should ever come to Vermont for inspiration, now's the time to do it. 

Every routine thing we in Vermont do this time of year feels like a special treat. 

Driving home after work into Franklin County the other day, I noticed all the multitudes of sugar maples, with their job of providing us with sap and syrup done for the season.  

All those maples seemed to be celebrated by unfurling billions or trillions of tiny leaves, which will eventually grow into the thick lush greenery of summer. The way all those baby leaves glistened when backlit by the sun looked like an immense green fireworks display. 

Brand new sugar maple leaves in St. Albans, Vermont. 

Pulling into my driveway in April and early May, I'm greeted by an audience of happy yellow daffodils, bobbing slightly in the breeze as if delighted that I had arrived. 

It's an optimistic time of year in the world of nature. This natural green hopefulness is a refuge from the human world, the one with way too much war, cruelty, hypocrisy, insanity and stupidity. 

I usually get up in the morning pretty early, often around or a little after dawn to let Jackson the Weather Dog outside to update himself on how spring is progressing.

Full light hadn't hit yet, but the yellow daffodils and deep blue hyacinths glowed in the early morning dim light, as if  powered by some internal electric current. 

The robins at that hour give us a chorus of happy morning music. Somewhere, a cardinal's loud "shpur schupr" call echoes across the yard. That's only outdone by the caw of a crow atop a poplar tree, inviting a couple crow friends over the enjoy the morning.  

Forget turning on the TV morning news for updates on the latest madness in Congress, or the war death toll, the latest dumb criminal trial, or the convenience store holdup. 

The early morning spring birdsong, the beautiful organic aroma of blooms and mud and new growth, and all that green punctuated by colorful flowers is all the news I need this time of year.  

It is a little sad that nature is the only island of sanity in this world. But I take what I can get, and embrace it. You can't ignore such a special time of year. 

Videos:

I planted tons of daffodils around my St. Albans property over the years. You can't welcome spring without daffodils, so I went all out. Following video also has a brief cameo from Jackson the Weather Dog, who was studying the effects of a sunny day on daffodil growth.

To view video, click on this link, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

Next up, various glimpses of spring in Vermont, as our surroundings develop endless shades of green, with other wonderful pops of color. Again, click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that:

Longing For Color: Photo Shows Exactly Why We Look Forward To Spring

A beautiful spring evening in my St. Albans, Vermont 
back yard. Photo taken on May 5, 2023.  Click on the 
image to make it bigger and easier to see. 

The snapshot photo in this post was taken in my St. Albans, backyard on the evening of May 5, 2023.

As far as composition and artistry and all that, the photo isn't much. But this time of year, I can't help just staring at it. 

The colors! As we are in this especially drab, gray, relatively snow-free winter, you're going to want to click on the photo, make it bigger and stare lovingly into it. 

The greens, with the speckled blue sky and the pops of yellow from the daffodils just bring such joy and, I don't know, ahhhh.

In three months or so, we will be free from this imprisonment of monotonous gray, brown, and dirty white.  With any luck, by early May, our surroundings will look something like the photo in this post. 

By the way, if you want more spring images to warm your heart, I've added a video to the bottom of this post. 

Anyway, sure we had blue skies for a change on Sunday, which were extremely welcome. But by February, we all wait desperately for the color that true spring brings. 

Click on the photo to make it bigger and easier to see. The late afternoon/early evening light and shadows in the photo bring out every possible shade of green. It helps that the tiny new leaves have that tender new born sort of bright baby green. 

You can see that the lawn could stand a mowing, but that tall grass looks so luxurious.  If I'm not mistaken, Jackson the Weather Dog that evening spent quite a bit of time rolling around in that grass. Which was a great idea. So I joined him. 

Whether you admit it or not, you would have done the same. 

 Check out that sky.  Sure, the beautiful blue skies on Sunday were a nice switch from the weeks of gloomy overcast we had, but Sunday's sky was still a cold, winter blue. 

The springtime blue sky in the photo has a benevolent, warm feeling to it. The scattered clouds complete the painterly feel of the atmosphere. They also have a vaguely unstable look to them, as if promising some springtime showers. 

You might guess from the photo that I like daffodils. Those pops of yellow just make me happy every spring. I have varieties that bloom early, mid-season and late to keep the show going. 

My only regret is I only have about 600 or so daffodils planted on my property. I wish I had thousands. Worse, I ran out of time to plant additional ones this past autumn. Well, there's always next year.  

I have lots of photos of my springtime gardens. My excuse for having the photos is it helps me plan improvements to the property. 

But frankly, I spent an embarrassing amount of time in February looking at those photos as entertainment. Just to take my mind off winter. Even winters as mild as this one has been.  

I know many people like winter. There's a lot of reasons why people would. But those green spring days and evenings  are absolutely heavenly. If there is a heaven, I hope it looks something like what's in the photo.

Video: Spring images from 2023. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

On Our Anniversary, Thanking A Patient Husband For Enduring Weather Geekdom

My husband Jeff enjoying the weather on our deck
in a photo taken a few years ago. It's our wedding
anniversary today, and I'm celebrating the fact
he's tolerated my weather obsession all these years.

Today is my 11th wedding anniversary (Gawd time flies!) and I'm using the occasion to profusely thank my husband for enduring all these years of weather geekdom.  

By extension, I'm also thanking all the spouses and partners of meteorologists and weather enthusiasts out there for supporting or at least putting up with all that weather talk,

My husband Jeff has tolerated the combination of ADHD and weather obsession for so long now, and he still finds it in himself to stay cheerful. 

We might be talking about, say, whether we need to put our dog Jackson in the kennel when we're away the following weekend, then, SQUIRREL!!!!!

Thunder rumbles in the distance.  My favorite kind of weather! Do I go to the window? Is it a big storm? Do I get in the truck and chase the storm down for photos and video?  Off I go, leaving Jeff wondering about dinner. And probably a lot of other things. 

Or, at night, Jeff's trying to watch "Death In Paradise," or one of those other murder mystery shows he likes. I'm sitting on the couch, scrolling social media because there's an impressive tornado outbreak going on in Texas.

Storm chasers are posting amazing photos and short videos of the twisters. So every five seconds, I push the phone in his face to share how gobsmacked I am by the photo of the tornado sending an entire barn into oblivion. Which means Jeff never does learn who killed the book author on that night's episode of "Death In Paradise."

Jeff respects science, but he is not a scientist. Somehow, however, he survives my detailed explanations of a Quasi-Linear Convective Systems and baroclinic zones without fully allowing me to see how badly his eyes are glazing over.

Jeff is a scenic set designer and a painter. He likes doing things big, so he's produced some marvelous large paintings.

Years ago, we were all sick and tired of this huge ugly painting of an owl that was gradually falling apart on my mother's living room wall.

As a gift, he produced this wonderful large painting of what appeared to be a park in September. A few of the trees in the landscape were starting to turn color, but most were still green. He created a blue sky with beautiful puffy clouds and he made the atmosphere look a bit hazy. Just a stunning piece of art. 

And how did I react to this work?  I gave a weather synopsis of what's going on in the painting. I concluded it was a warm, and somewhat humid September day, and a cold front was approaching that would give us the first taste of real autumn chill in the next couple of days. 

Yeah, I came up with that whole weather forecast. About a painting. Jeff just said, "Yes, dear."

The good news, of course is that my mother loved that painting for years until she passed away in 2022.

I also always congratulate Jeff on the accuracy of his clouds within his paintings. He likes to include expanses of sky in his landscapes.  The clouds in his paintings all look plausible. They could happen in real life. 

Which is great, because it drives me crazy to see some paintings that includes clouds that are meteorologically impossible.  Yeah, Jeff has to tolerate that obsession, too. But maybe there's a bit of a closet weather geek within him, since he knows what clouds look like and sort of how they form. 

Jeff does seem to like the gardens I've created around our house, which of course are weather dependent. He's gotten interested in how the weather helps or hurts the perennial gardens.  So maybe a little of me rubbed off on him, who knows?

So, we have had 11 years of marriage through literally all kinds of weather, and we were together a couple years before we married.

I think the weather gods are smiling on our marriage, too. From day one, actually.  Our wedding day was gorgeous. Obsessed as I am, I looked up the specifics this morning. The high that day, August 26, 2012 was 87, the low was 68 and it was mostly sunny and just a bit hazy, like in Jeff's paintings.  

They say that marriage is a path of enduring sunny bliss interrupted by the occasional storm. With Jeff, all my storm chasing seems to be actual, meteorological storms. He never creates metaphorical ones in our lives, another thing that makes me eternally grateful for Jeff.

Here's one forecast I know will be accurate:  A happy anniversary warning is in effect for Jeff. There's a 100 percent chance that I will always love him as intensely as I ever have if not more.  The love raining down will mix with, laughter, respect, awe and pride toward the man I married.  Accumulations of happy memories with him will be deep. 

The "weather pattern" that is the my joy of being married to Jeff will never change. Happy Anniversary, Chief! 

 

Vermont Is No Climate Refuge. No Place Is. It's Up To Us To Adapt, Or Try To

A sign outside a Johnson, Vermont church after destructive
floods swept the town and much of the rest of the state
earlier this month. Adapting to climate change is
going to take the ethos seen in this sign. 

 I have to delve into something I touched on just after the worst of Vermont's flooding in July. 

In a July 14 post when I was explaining what caused the July 10-11 cataclysmic flood in the Green Mountain State in, I mentioned a 2021 study that said Vermont is one of the best places in the United States to shield oneself from the effects of climate change. 

That study by Pro Publica and the New York Times said the top four safest counties in the United States from climate change are the Vermont counties of Lamoille, Orange, Franklin and Essex. All of Vermont was regarded in the study as a pretty  protected from climate change. 

The United States' "safest" county, Lamoille, has been declared a federal disaster area no fewer than 12 times in the past decade. That includes two this year: The big July flood, of course, and a weird May freeze that ruined crops that grew too early because of an unseasonably warm early spring. 

As VTDigger points out, we end up on lots of lists as a great climate refuge.  We're far enough north so that extreme heat waves aren't as big a threat. There's no coastline to drown in a hurricane or  nor'easter storm surge. We aren't nearly as prone to forest fires at places out west or in Canada.  

This "safety" has prompted some people to move to Vermont to escape the ravages of climate change. However, as we've seen this summer, there's really no escape. 

A summer-like early spring led to the freeze that damaged so many crops in Vermont.  Like seemingly everywhere else, the weather seems to whiplash back and forth, from a developing drought in June to catastrophic floods in July. 

Algae blooms closed some lakefront beaches in Vermont. We didn't really have any wildfires to speak of, but boy, we've had a lot of smoke from those fires in Canada and the western United States.

"This summer has maybe burst the bubble a little bit in what probably was more of just a myth, of Vermont being in an idea climate refuge," Jared Ulmer, the climate and health program manager at the Vermont Department of Health told VTDigger.

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.

I think most of us knew, when those 2021 studies came out about Vermont being a climate refuge that there were some huge asterisks attached to those study conclusions. 

It's not that ProPublica and the New York Times were wrong. It's just that Vermont is not in a hermetically sealed utopia of steady climate, steady people and and steady safety. 

That's not to say we have to sit here and be victims every time a climate disaster rolls around. Like everybody else on the planet, Vermont has to adapt to a changing climate. It's wetter here now, at least most of the time. But droughts are also more likely to intervene. 

Winters are warmer, which mucks up our winter sports season. The weather around our iconic maple sugaring season is now all over the place. Weird late winter and early spring heat waves have hurt that industry. 

Summer is tourist season in Vermont. Among all the other problems our July floods caused this year, I'm sure the destruction discouraged some visitors from coming to the Green Mountain State. 

With each new climate-related calamity or mishap, we learn what to do next time.  Or try to. After Tropical Storm Irene's epic floods in 2011 Vermont rebuilt with, at least in some places, stronger bridges, bigger culverts and better drainage.

We also moved some people away from flood prone areas after Irene. But not enough people, apparently 

I think many of us think of climate change in making our life and property decisions.  A few years ago, we replaced a culvert under our driveway, making it much larger than the previous ones and reinforcing it with large rocks. 

That surely saved our driveway from this summer's floods, but still, we weren't unscathed. The water was so powerful that it moved some the rocks away.  That could make the culvert prone to damage in the next torrent.  It doesn't end, does it?

As with Gov. Peter Shumlin after Irene, our current Gov. Phil Scott is solidly leading Vermont out of the latest flood crisis, and his team is surely figuring out how to, as they say, build back better. 

There's only so much we can do, of course. Like it or not, Vermont, just like every other place on the planet, will keep facing newer and weirder climate challenges. 

Vermont is just one tiny dot on the map. All over the world, governments, individuals, organizations, corporations and businesses are now constantly calculating climate change into their plans. Even if some of these entities won't admit they're doing it. 

This state of affairs all snuck up without us fully realizing it, despite decades of hair on fire warnings from thousands of climate scientists. 

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying we're doomed, like the story I hear from some climate activists. It would be easier to reduce carbon emissions so we don't make bad situation worse. But so far, the fossil fuel industry and some greedy politicians are making sure that doesn't happen just yet. 

I just hope that with everything else going on in the world, sane heads prevail as we all react and batten down in the face of climate change. 

Frankly, I'm not that optimistic about many of our national and world leaders, or some corporations for that matter. But, as I've seen here in Vermont after this summer's floods, we're acting as individuals and small communities to recover from, and brace for the effects to climate change. 

That's probably the best path worldwide.  As best we can, we act locally, and hope the bigwigs catch up with us, eventually. 

 

A Welcome Weather Alert: Vermont Now Under A Severe Daffodil Warning

Here's one example of the type of "hazard" that could
develop in Vermont during the upcoming week. 

 It's Easter, I'm feeling whimsical, so I'm going to issue a weather warning not necessarily sanctioned by the National Weather Service office in South Burlington. Or any NWS office, for that matter. 

Still, it needs to be worded like a real National Weather Service warning, so here goes: 

DAFFODIL WARNING NOW IN EFFECT FOR VERMONT

The Matt's Weather Rapport Service in St. Albans, Vermont  has issued a severe daffodil warning for all of Vermont beginning today and lasting through at least this week. 

Isolated daffodils have already bloomed in some cold-protected, sunny corners in Vermont valleys. We also have widespread reports of daffodil flower buds.

This is an extremely welcome warning and you are in a life-improving situation! 

HAZARD TYPE: Daffodils, likely mixed with crocuses and eventually forsythia. Rising temperatures this week in Vermont, which could go as high as the 70s toward the end of the week, will encourage these blooms. 

TIMING: Daffodil blooms will spread across the state during the upcoming week as temperatures warm to above seasonal levels. Warmer valleys will see impacts first, starting mostly on Monday and Tuesday and increasing during the week. Daffodil blooms will gradually spread to higher elevations and the Northeast Kingdom late in the week or next week. 

IMPACTS: Daffodil blooms will cause increased levels of joy and the sense that spring is finally here. Motorists should try not to be distracted by roadside daffodils and perennial gardens brimming with the blooms in front of homes. 

Daffodil warnings will continue at least through this week.

When it's safe to do so, feel free to take photos and selfies with the daffodils. 

If there are many blooms that have accumulated on your own property, it is OK to take some indoors for spring bouquets. 

Considerable amounts of sunshine likely during the warning period are likely to make the beauty of the blooms more intense, so caution is advised. 

Additionally, crocuses have already developed and will continue to increase through the week. It's also likely forsythia blooms will mix with the daffodils, especially later in the week. While not an immediate threat, hyacinth and tulip blooms could also develop during later parts of the warning period. 

Residents are advised to stay near perennial gardens for further updates and warnings. 

Longer range forecasts indicate the daffodil warning will likely need to be extended beyond this week. There are growing signs that Vermont will also see an increasing risk of lilac blooms later this spring. Now is the time to start preparing for such a hazard. 

The March Spring Thaw Is Both Ugly And Beautiful. In Video And Pics

The March melt and mud season in Vermont isn't the 
state's prettiest look, but it can have its quiet
anticipatory beauty. 

 March in Vermont this year is turning out the way it was when I was a kid decades ago

As we get into the closing week of the month, the snow cover is finally starting to lose the battle to spring. But only grudgingly.

Video of this year's March melt and mud is at the bottom of this post.  

 One day we have some strong sun that opens up more bare patches in the reflected sun's heat near the pine trees. The next day, rain washes some of the crusty old ice and snow away.  

It's an old fashioned year. Under our  climate change regime, we've gotten these weird, warm days in March which disappeared early in the month, and got the crocuses blooming way early - sometimes by St. Patrick's Day. 

Not this year. It actually feels a bit novel to have a throwback March like this. Though even this March is running somewhat warmer in Vermont than the long term average.  

This isn't the prettiest time of year. Old snow sort of half-heartedly glows under the overcast next to expanses of brown grass in open fields. Mud is everywhere. Along road sides, litter that has been buried in snow now glares at us with its own ugliness as we pass by in our mud-flecked and road salt encrusted cars. 

But this "ugly"  seasons is also hopeful, and in a strange way beautiful. On rainy days, the fog curls over remaining patches of snow, as if the damp south wind is trying to steam away the remaining ice. The melting snow and is cheered on by the calls of newly arrived red wind blackbirds. 

Garden plants have gotten used to getting an early start, thanks partly to climate change. This year, an odd, balmy January got daffodils, crocuses trying to come up in mid-January. Only to be denied in active. February and March snowfalls.

These daffodil shoots in St. Albans, Vermont aren't waiting
for the snow to melt to get on with the spring show. 

But the head start was already there, so these early perennials are in a premature schedule. It looks like they're saying, "Screw it. I know there's still a bunch of snow on the ground, but I'm coming on strong anyway."

 So daffodil shoots are popping up through the tops of fading snowbanks. 

Spring this year continues on in its uncertain fashion.  A new storm is probably going to give us a headache inducing mix of rain, ice and snow Saturday and Saturday night. 

Current forecasts don't indicate too much snow and ice accumulation in the valleys, but you never known. We could end up being tricked. Even if we don't. it'll slow down our spring melt a bit.  

There's also no spectacularly warm spring days in the immediate forecast. Eventually, real spring will come. But the tentative daffodil shoots, the mud and yes, even the roadside litter gives us hope that greener, warmer days are around the corner.   

Watch the video below to see what I mean by all this. It starts with a sunny phase of the thawing Wednesday, and moves on to the rainy phase on Thursday. Either click on this link to view, or if you see the image below click on that.

Winter Burn Piles Warm The Heart, The Eyes And the Psyche

An image from the brush pile at my house that I burned
away earlier this month. Wintertime bonfires are lovely. 

 Here at my St. Albans, Vermont, hacienda, we had to cut down a series of large poplar trees because they were dying and becoming a hazard. 

To save money, we told the tree cutters to leave the debris here and I'll take care of it. 

With great effort, because I need the exercise, I organized some of the debris into a burn pile. Once I set the fire, I just keep throwing branches and logs onto the fire. Once the burn pile gets really hot, it's amazing how efficiently even green wood burns. 

To dispel the question as to whether I'm wasting wood that could heat homes or be put to good use as wood products, unfortunately, poplar is junk wood. It's terrible for wood stoves and is even worse for furniture or other wood products, so it has to burn.

I like burning these piles in the winter, because there's snow on the ground. It's pretty much impossible for my fires to get out of hand that way.  

Another image from my recent burn pile/bonfire

And frankly, on even a moderately cold winter day, the heat from the fire has a unique comforting quality, much more so than the warmth inside my house, for some reason. 

When it gets dark, the slowly subsiding fire is especially hot, and the burning branches fascinate me.

 I think that's a human trait. We've always been obsessed with fire, ever since at least the day of the cave men. Watching a nighttime fire is absolutely mesmerizing. 

I still have a lot of tree debris to clean up, so there will be more fires this winter. 

For now, I have recent footage of my recent burn pile. Most of the video was taken in the evening, to get a sense of the scorching beauty of those hot burning logs, branches and embers.   

The video is below. If you don't see the image of it, click on this link to watch. Otherwise, click on the image below to view it on YouTube. 

Van Gogh, Climate, Tomato Soup, Despair, Stupidity And Hope: Protest Stunts Reflect Nihilism And Backlash Risk

Climate activists threw tomato soup on a Van Gogh 
painting in a London gallery on Friday. Attention-
getting, yes, but probably not so effective messaging. 

 Among the many weird headlines on various news sites on Friday was the breaking news that some climate activists went into the National Gallery In London, uncorked two cans of Heinz tomato soup and threw the soup onto Van Gogh's painting "Sunflowers."

Then the two activists glued their hands to the wall. 

Yes, this is incredibly stupid in any scenario, and like probably everyone else, I'm at a loss as to how this will blunt the dangerous effects of climate change. 

As the Washington Post reports:

"'What is worth more, art or life?' one of the protesters shouted, her hand glued to the wall behind her. '..... Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet?'"

I'm being Captain Obvious here, but t's unclear how trying to destroy a work of art will save any lives that could be claimed by climate change. 

Don't get me wrong. It IS  appropriate for climate activists to make the fossil fuel industry and the politicians who support these industries uncomfortable. However, to be too literal, I don't think it's Van Gogh's fault that we are facing a climate crisis. 

The good news is "Sunflowers" was protected by glass, so it was unharmed, though the frame suffered light damage from the acidity in the tomato soup.  Six hours after the incident, "Sunflowers" was back on display in the National Gallery.

The Washington Post's report notes that the "Sunflower" attack was one of a series of climate protests that have targeted famous art.  I don't know why. 

If you want to do something about climate change, you need allies. You want to convince people the cause is important, that everyone should participate in efforts to wean ourselves away from fossil fuel.

The art attacks and other strange climate activist stunts, has the opposite effect of alienating potential allies. 

It's true these wacko climate moments do garner plenty of attention. Various video of the Great Van Gogh Tomato Soup Incident of '22 has garnered tens of millions of views on social media.

But how many people who watched the video became more sympathetic to the cause?  My guess is very few. In fact, I bet they had quite the opposite effect. People who might have been persuaded that climate activism might actually help the planet now might  incorrectly dismiss most climate change activists as kooks and attention seekers. 

There's research to back this up.  Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist, cited research from Stamford suggesting that bad or extreme messaging backfires. In the study's abstract, the researchers wrote:

"....we find across three experiments that extreme protest tactics decreased popular support for a given cause because they reduced feelings of identification with the movement."

This isn't at all to say that climate activism among youth is bad.  Most of the time, it's extremely helpful as many young people are creative, super smart and bring a lot of energy in the fight for climate change reform. 

Mann tweeted: "I love the passion of the youth climate movement - it has been a game changer, precisely because it has WON hearts and minds. Let's not forget that."

I completely agree with him. 

I'm not sure if Friday's tomato soup group was just looking for social media clicks, or they succumbed to despair.  I suspect the later, judging from public statements from the soup kids and their supporters. 

I thought Terri Mitchell's @Storm4Nosey defense of the pair was pretty representative. "There will be no art on a dead planet. Climate change will not just destroy the natural world, but everything that humans have ever created. No beauty, no culture, no past, no future no life. Nothing..... There won't be any beauty in the world if we allow the climate to be destroyed."

My response was, "So the solution is to try to preemptively destroy beauty before climate change does it?"

I worry about Mitchell's nihilism and that of the soup group. And that of the other despairing activists. The climate crisis is obviously an enormous foe, and everything needs to be done to stop it.  But this apparent need to try and destroy things before climate change gets a chance seems counterproductive. Why try to blunt climate change when all is already lost?

Climate scientist Peter Kalmus had a more nuanced, but still supportive take on the soup group, In a Twitter thread, he notes that the anger over the vandalism to the Van Gogh painting, which really caused no damage, is misplaced. In part, Kalmus writes:

"How tragic, that there is LITERALLY more outrage over this act that caused zero damage, than about fossil fuel executives lying, colluding, and blocking action for decades, locking in intensifying heat waves, flooding, fires, rising seas, collapsing crop yields and death? 

Kalmus continued: "These activists and their bold act of desperation shattered the collective sleepwalk, if for a moment. It stirred things up. It caused discussion. It shone a light."

I still worry that it might have caused the wrong discussion.  The climate crisis is so big that we need as many of us as possible to participate in a solution. Trying to damage a painting, sitting down and blocking roads (thereby making cars sit and idle, spewing more CO2 into the atmosphere) and other stunts turn too many people off. 

Why not turn our attention toward the fossil fuel executives that Kalmus refers to. And the politicians that aid and abet them.  And others would would deny the dangers of climate change, all for fun and especially profit?

Van Gogh had nothing to do with the climate change. I know it is hard for younger people especially to not succumb to nihilism and despair over the climate crisis?  But what choice do we have. Give up and throw soup cans, or do the real work of changing the world before it's too late.

I know many people, especially those younger than me are doing just that. Changing the world to save it. Let's join them instead of denying and destroying the beauty of the world that still exists.