A monthly members-only column by Alan Dulaney
With a prodigious yawn, the Cowardly Lion sat up in the field of summer poppies in which he had fallen asleep. Noting its recent covering with snow, he remarked “Mighty unusual weather we are having, ain’t it.”
Three events over two years indicate just “mighty unusual” have grown in number. In 2024, a small low-pressure area was cut off from the jet stream, and parked itself over the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. It was a mass of colder air. Shortly thereafter, a hurricane moved inland and was downgraded to a tropical storm. It was a mass of warmer air, laden with moisture taken from the Atlantic. This mass of warmer, moist air encountered the mountains of North Carolina, and was forced to rise. It met the colder air of the low pressure zone, and great thunderstorms were produced. These thunderstorms did not move, and they continued to release huge amounts of rain as more warm moist air rose into the colder air of the small low pressure zone.
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