Gardiner's Mill
Flowing Waters
People who deny climate change are not living in reality!
This last week, Nova Scotia experienced a severe series of storms, all of which set new records, following a fall that has also set records. While dangerous amatuers got everyone in the Privnce all worked up with doom and disaster forecasts, there actually was a very dangerous and powerful set of storms in the very northern end of the Province and in Cape Breton.
Our summer home in St. Ann’s got over 5 inches of rain in a 24 hour period, while other places in Cape Breton got over 9 inches of rain. The flowing water destroyed roads and for some time left some folks cut off or having to drive long detours, as roads and bridges washed out.
This points out a couple of things -
First, that silly amateurs should be ignored and not be able to get folks wound up only to have the forecast be completely incorrect. That is dangerous in that crying wolf causes people to become complacent, and when an actual event does occur, confused, as how come their forecast was so far off in one end of the Province and an actuality at the other end. Environment Canada, it should be noted called the storm just as forecast 48 hours prior to the event instead of working everyone up a week before!
Secondly, it shows the impacts of climate change as Nova Scotia received more rain in a short period of time than ever before, and like in British Columbia, these storms seem to be coming more frequently, and much more severely.
The image this week is of Gardiner’s Mill upstream from our family summer home in Deerfield. The dam there is the restoration of an old saw mill dam, which creates Sister’s Lake. Had Yarmouth County actually received the 8 inches of rain the foolish folks predicted, one can easily see why people would be a tad excited. Structures such as this would definitely have issues holding, and in fact historically came apart as recently as November of 2010 when we got 4 inches of rain in one 24 hour period. The result was washed out roads and bridges – several washed out roads and bridges.
It is imperative, then, that we actually begin to address climate change – seriously. To ignore what’s going on and not act is to cause the future to be far more problematic than it needs to be – and far more dangerous!
