The big (and I do mean BIG) project

Righto, folks, it's time to explain why I've been so slack on the posting front of late. I've been leading a double life. That's right. While you've been here, patiently waiting for me to come home by dinner time, I've been off cavorting with another blog.
About having babies. 
Which we'll be doing in June.
If you want to check out how we got ourselves into this situation, head over to The Pretzel Project.
To avoid all mention of babies, waistlines, IVF, and the ridiculous nature of Nature, then maybe just stay here. I'll try to keep it clean for you all.
x T.

Is it just me, or does this person look dubious about proceedings?

 

Fires, floods and the end of the 'typical' Aussie summer

It seems every year or two, Australian weather stories dominate the news over here in Canada. Phrases like "once in 100 year event" have lost all meaning as massive fires quickly follow other infernos, and now another flood is swamping Queensland. 
The people at home are showing a startling resilience in the face of all this, creating "mud armies" to help each other face the onslaught. Creeks have become rivers, towns that have just recovered from the 2011 floods are setting new flood records - again - and in the north, Bundaberg is forcing people to evacuate from waters strong enough to uproot trees. 
It's crazy, especially coming on the back of ferocious bushfires that affected most of the nation just weeks ago. It's enough to make one feel guilty for planting oneself in oh-so-protected southern Ontario, where the only dangers seem to be black ice and the occasional tornado. 
Overall the rivers and inundated coastlines won't grossly impact the lives of all that many people. But it's got to be a strange and startling time. (Not to mention wet. So bloody wet!) 
But the most sobering aspect is the new normalcy that is developing. Massive storms. Near-monsoonal rains. Fires and soaring temps. The occasional is now the common, while the rare becomes an all-too-familiar face. 
What lies ahead? That's what really must have people scared right now. 

Inventing new levels of crazy Down Under

When I visited my delightful homeland in 2007, the powers-that-be in south-east Queensland were busy inventing new levels of water restrictions. The region of 2+ million people only had a couple of months of fresh wet stuff left, so the four-level water restrictions suddenly received a level 5. No baths. No outdoor water use, especially car washing. 2-minute showers. It was a kid's dreamland. As the drought wore on, there were murmurings of creating a level 6, but torrential rain came and flooded everything. (Handy!)

Then they updated the fire danger billboards that dot the countryside. Gone is the level 'none'. Instead, they start at 'moderate' and work their way up.  

Image: bushfireCRC.com

Now, the entire country is inventing new levels of heat alert. Forget the traditional get-the-F-out blood red of the old-school heat maps. Now they've added vibrant purple and neon pink to the mix. Which kind of does say 'get-the-F-out', but with extra pizzazz. 

Image: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

In case you were wondering, no, this isn't standard practice. When I was a kid, 37°C was an outlandish and rare high. Now my friends are sweltering through 40+° almost every summer, and it's triggering firestorms with startling regularity. (Although, to be fair, firestorms ain't nothing new Down Under.)

The bitter, sweltering irony is that the two nations that have apparently given most credence to climate-change-deniers are the U.S.A. and, you guessed it, Australia. Despite the fact that we're inventing new extremes on the fly for decades-old weather alerts, some people are still having a hard time coming round to the idea that all of that mining and deforestation and air-con and reliance on automobiles and other stupid, wasteful stuff is negatively impacting humans' ability to simply survive on that big, dry island. Reckon these new extremes might just help poke a hole in that delusion, though. Either that, or the hold-outs will just get more stubborn. 

So here's an idea: Don't just warn about weather extremes, Australia. Warn about stupidity extremes too! You can even use the same colour scheme to do it: Just gather up all the climate-change-deniers, mining advocates, car-loving air-con freaks and the rest, and clothe them all in vibrant purple and neon pink. If rational citizens can't beat tone environmental curse, at least they can get some help avoiding the other.