Weather Danger !

 The ice storm that dumped record snow on Texas and other southern parts of the United States is thought to be caused by global warming.  The increasing heat of summer is disrupting the jet streams and in the northern winter they are unable to contain the cold from the Arctic from penetrating further south.

This ice storm has delivered a sharply increasing death toll.  Millions of people are without electricity or natural gas because the power generating plants and gas wells are frozen over.  A desperate system is  made worse by people trying to stay alive by using outdoor BBQ equipment indoors and falling victim to carbon monoxide gas.

Deaths are also occurring where people run the engine of their cars to use the car heaters to create a warm shelter for the family.    When the car is snowed in, enclosed in the garage, the exhaust delivers that same  carbon monoxide death to the family.

We think of Global Warming as something that delivers ever hotter summers, bur science predicts that it will also deliver extremes at both ends of the weather spectrum, and we are just as vulnerable here in Australia.

Last winter, a news item drew public attention to a weather phenomenon.  It snowed in the Tasmanian city of Launceston, and the snow stayed on the ground for many days.  What was remarkable is that Launceston has only once ever had a few snow flurries back in the 1920's and this heavy snow could be a warning of things to come if global warming persists.

That ice storm in Texas was the unexpected and the United States is paying a heavy price for being unprepared.  Perhaps last years snow event in Launceston is a harbinger southern Australia could experience a similar event and such an event in Tasmania and Victoria could be catastrophic.

Our cities are not built to shield homes from heavy snow falls.  The roof line of European cities is sharply inclined to shed snow, but we have a temperate climate and homes here have a softer pitch.  It is probable that most homes would not be able to sustain the weight of a metre of snow on their roofs - and collapse.

It is doubtful if householders would have the capacity to shovel snow off their roofs to reduce the weight load in such an emergency and we certainly don't have emergency services in place to tackle a job of that magnitude.  We are extremely vulnerable to a snow event as is happening in Texas.

It is impossible to predict either the timing or the extent of weather changes caused by a permanent change in temperature.  We could get a weather phenomenon that delivered a winter snow storm as far north as the city of Sydney and that would bring this nation to a standstill.

If nothing else, it delivers a clear warning that we need to take global warming seriously..  Mother Nature has just delivered the Australian eastern seabord an unusually cool and wet summer.   We would be wise to expect the unexpected when winter arrives !