I blame global cooling for all the dead birds
In the past couple of weeks, I've received several phone calls and e-mails from subscribers concerned with the thousands of birds that have died in mass recently across the winter-weary Northern Hemisphere.
These 'fowl fatalities' began with more than 4,000 red-winged blackbirds that plunged from the sky in Beebe, Ark., on New Year's Eve, perhaps an ominous omen for 2011, weatherwise and otherwise.
Then, a few days later, hundreds of dead birds covered the ground in northern Louisiana. Just this past week on 1/11/11, a unique date, more dead birds were seen in California. Similar occurrences have been reported this month in parts of Europe and Asia, amongst other places.
Some have blamed these bird deaths on fireworks, bad water or harmful chemicals left in the fields after harvest.
But, this climatologist believes that weeks on end of cold, snowy weather since last November on virtually every northern continent has resulted in 'confusion and chaos' in the animal kingdom. It's our strengthening cycle of GLOBAL COOLING since 2007 that's killing them, many fish and various reptiles as well due to much cooler waters linked to La Nina and generally lower sunspot activity levels.
For example, in northern Italy this past week, hundreds of turtle doves dove headfirst into the ground. Pigeons in the area, however, remained alive and well as they were able to better tolerate the record low temperatures, in the teens in some areas.
Remember, last winter in Florida, hundreds of cold-blooded iguanas 'fell out of the trees' when temperatures plunged to well below the freezing mark for several days.
The current winter in the U.S. Deep South may go into the record books as one of the coldest and snowiest such seasons in nearly 400 years. It's extremely unusual indeed to have weeks-on-end of freezing weather in Dixie.
Many cities in the South do not have any snow plows. Thousands of accidents have occurred this winter. Grocery shelves have been emptied. Widespread power outages have made life miserable to say the least.
NORTH IDAHO WEATHER REVIEW AND LONG-RANGE OUTLOOKS
As I told my friend Tim Martin, our top-notch street maintenance superintendent, earlier this week, we can likewise blame the strong 'La Nina' event in the waters of the Pacific Ocean for our wild winter of WIDE 'EXTREMES' in the Inland Northwest.
Tim and his able crew have been forced to plow our Coeur d'Alene area roads six times since late November, compared to no times last winter during the mild 'El Nino' phenomenon that was almost snowless.
We had gauged a whopping 74.9 inches of the white stuff in town as of Jan. 12, 2011, just past the midpoint of the normal winter season on Jan. 10. This total was more than five inches greater than our 115-year normal snowfall since 1895 in Coeur d'Alene for an entire season ending June 30 of 69.8 inches and last winter's puny snowfall total to date of just 16.1 inches. Only a scant 2.3 inches of snow, a record least amount, fell the rest of the season last year.
We also blame La Nina for last month's record rains and flooding in California, and the heavy snows during December and January in the eastern U.S. that recently dipped all the way south into the Atlanta area, disrupting all types of travel including air.
La Nina has likewise been responsible for the deadly floods in Pakistan, southern Brazil and, most recently, in northeastern Australia near the nation's third-largest city, Brisbane.
Sunday's high in Coeur d'Alene was 51 degrees, which broke the record for the date set on Jan. 16, 1967, by one degree.
Following a rainy 'thawing' period and afternoon highs in the mild 40s in recent days, more colder weather and moderate amounts of snow will again visit North Idaho during the upcoming 'full moon' cycle of Jan. 19-26.
Who knows? We still may crack the 100-inch mark in seasonal snowfall in 2010-11 for a record third time in four years! Stay tuned.
Cliff Harris is a climatologist who writes a weekly column for The Press. His opinions are his own. E-mail sfharris@roadrunner.com