By John Matonich
“Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned.” I have heard this many times, but for some reason I think Mother Nature is a little cheesed right now. I always thought the saying came from William Shakespeare, but did a little research and found out it wasn’t. It came from William Congreve, in his 1697 tragedy, The Mourning Bride. The actual line is “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d,/Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.” Either way, I wonder what we can do to help smooth the feathers of our nature’s mother.
She recently blasted us in the west end of the UP once again. It wasn’t as bad here as it was in 2016, but was worse for some of the good folks in Houghton and Menominee counties. In 2016, we received along with portions of Northern Wisconsin enough rain to count the storm as at least a 1000 year storm. No I didn’t mistakenly add a zero. My brother (the county Sheriff) told me not long after the storm that he escorted a number of scientists from the United States Geologic Survey to the areas hit and they disagreed with calling it a 1000 storm. They said they would rather classify it as “Biblical”. I am not sure what that means, but I have been drawing up some plans for an ark ever since. Millions of dollars of infrastructure was lost.
Mom Nature decided to shake us up again this past weekend. We received about 8” of rain a few hours several different times and it caused a lot of damage. I am not sure how much rain they received in Houghton, but the pictures showed nothing but devastation. The reports I heard for Gogebic County this time was damage that will approach 6 figures while Houghton County is in the 10s of millions. Yep, I did say millions. I have never heard numbers tossed around like that since I listened to some politician talk about “real money”. Believe me, the losses suffered are real and whether some financial relief comes, it never can replace the losses that are suffered or the severe upset of life that has to be endured.
I don’t want to get in some big debate about global warming. The historical numbers are showing both an increase in temperature from historical numbers as well as a pattern change in storms. I heard a presentation a couple of years ago by a climate specialist and he felt we would continue to see temperatures, rainfall and snowfall close to the same as historical numbers (although slowly warming), but he said the storm pattern was going to change a lot. He said that while our total precipitation wouldn’t change a ton, we would see an increase in major storm events with multiple patches of time with no precipitation. As far as I am concerned, he was right on the money. Our storm events here both in rainfall and snowfall are becoming more severe yet normal events are farther apart.
I am not sure what if anything can be done about this, but I have been buying real butter instead of margarine so as not try to fool Mother Nature and tick her off. As a safeguard though, the ark plans are about done and with all the trees that have been knocked down, I think I know where to get some good timber to get started.
And that’s the situation as I survey it.
After a 35-year career downstate livin’ amongst da trolls, during which he built a successful engineering and surveying business, John Matonich is back home in da U.P. His column will appear here occasionally, don’tcha know. His book “Surveyin’ Da Situation” is available on Amazon.com.
Photo by Jonas Kaiser on Unsplash
Climate change is factual. The Earth has constantly undergone changes for billions of years. Athropogenic climate change (man made) is a farce designed by liberals to further tax and control the people.
No new laws or taxes will ever prevent any climate driven issues. Zero…. Nothing….
You may be right about lack of solution, Working Dad, but the storm severity is something we need to be prepared for.
It’s easier to just say “it ain’t real and those scientists are liars” to complex issues that are hard to understand.
Accepting what you do not know and do not understand requires persistence and work (oh, that horrible four letter word).
Well learning and understanding the facts and science of it does. Or if that’s too much, we could always listen to the scientists who make it their careers to understanding it. Just dismissing them because it’s too complex is lazy.
I am glad to hear you were not directly affected by the problems caused by the weather in the Houghton area. I am following it as best I can from Florida where I moved 2 years ago. I had no idea such flooding and the resulting damage would happen in that area. But I am not surprised about the spirit of community found in Michigan’s UP. Wish the rest of the country were the same!
I always look forward to your columns. Thanks for sharing them.
Not many folks are as resilient as yoopers, but it will be a long time before those areas are back to normal. All these good folks should be in our thoughts and prayers…
Do you have room in that Ark for one more?
I just may have, Fred…
With Al Gore bloviating on and on about global warming that will cause the ice caps will melt and the sea levels will rise at least 50 to 60 feet. At least that is somewhat close to what the AGW people claim. I just wonder how much Al believes his figures and stories.
A few years ago after he wrote his books and ran around the world talking about AGW, Al went and purchased a house on the California coast that cost a couple of million dollars or more. He purchased the house that is only a few feet above sea level. If the oceans were to rise and flood the coasts at the levels that Al Gore and other scientists claim, this house of Al’s would be about 20 feet under water.
Ice ages have come and gone. The earth has gone through all sorts of climate change over the millions of years that it has existed. The human race cannot significantly change weather patterns.
One volcano can change weather patterns with one large eruption. One eruption can cause more climate change than humans can.
Noone said it will happen tomorrow. It’s about what we leave behind for our grandchildren.
Actually in Al Gore’s fictional movie, he claimed the catastrophic results would already be here today…. and none of his claims came true….
All of his claims are false.
Here is Al Gore claiming the northern polar ice cap will be completed melted by 2014.
https://youtu.be/u1XyTbPwhlw
I don’t follow Al Gore that closely. You must be a big fan.
John, Do you have Gopherwood timber? As far as I know, arks are made of Gopherwood. Does it grow in the U.P?
I don’t believe it does, Tom but some good maple would work well… may have to stock a few bags of calk though ….
The devistation looked horrible. My grandmother was born and raised in Houghton Hancock area. I was only there once in the mid seventies. Beautiful area. Whatever caused such destruction doesn’t really matter. Hope they get some funds from the government to help them. Pretty sure I have some sort of relatives still there. Good luck to everyone there.
John,I also notice the difference in the weather. I figure it’s better to play it on the safe side and cut down on the pollutants. I remember when big business said dumping pollutants in the lakes would not hurt because of the vast amount of water. Then in the seventies Lake Erie caught on fire and I guess the scientists were right.
You make a good point. When I was at Michigan Tech, one of my profs said that if you put a drop of water in Lake Erie it takes 5 years for it to work it’s way through the system. This explains how cutting off pollution can be cleaned up in a reasonable time. To contrast that he also said that the same drop of water in Lake Superior takes 300 years to work its way through the system … his point was that we haven’t begun to see what bad things we may have done to the biggest Great Lake…
John, that is one amazing study. I guess it just goes to show you that whatever we do now it will have either a good or bad effect in the future.
Valid point…
John – Thanks for this column. Everyone should know that you are an established, recognized authority on the environment, and that what you say means a great deal. I am very sorry that the Two Trolls have decided to bother you here. I hope they will leave you alone in the future. They know not whom they are trolling.
😊
John, maybe biblical means adding another zero to the historical storm year number, as in 1 in 10,000? The number is the denominator for the odds of having such a intensity level in any given year. A thousand year storm has the occurrence probability of 0.001 or 0.1 %. Have a nice summer!
Biblical proportions. Simply put, very very rare. A rare accurance written in the bible.
Biblical Proportions = Noah.
I believe that’s what the USGS Scientists were referencing. I found it interesting that some scientists were referencing the bible :)….