Back in the 50's and probably long before that, the Russians were going through an extended period of poor agricultural output. They also publicly mentioned that they were working on weather modification technology in an effort to fix this problem. This led a few people here in the U.S. to begin blaming every years weather and any noteworthy incident on blowby from Russian weather modification experiments.
People who knew better (farmers) nodded sagely to hear the news of falling skies and comment that the Russians seemed to be the victims of the longest stretch of "bad weather" anyone could remember. Our own experience seemed to suggest that the harder the government tried to assist the agricultural sector, the worse the weather seemed to get.
So let us assume that Putin has allowed the Russian "weather modification" department to continue its operations for a moment. Couple this with a radio report I heard today that said that Moscow had set an all time record for one days snowfall at about 18". This represents about half of what they expect in a month over there and the infrastructure is severely strained.
When my family first moved to Colorado, 1960, over the Christmas break, We got hit with 24" of snow and temps of -28F. I had to go to school*. The next day about half the roads has been cleared and the temp was up to a balmy -26F. The superintendent was able to get to a phone and cancel school. So we went sledding.
*Walking of course. Uphill, both ways, barefoot, with barb wire wrapped around my feet for traction, etc, etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment