As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.

Warning: This blog may contain scientific propaganda from so called 'scientists.' Things should be taken with a grain of accuracy.

Sunday the wind was uncanny. On our way to church some gusts almost knocked us over. That night the wind really picked up thundering and bellowing low like a lion's roar. It shook our building. You have to remember we have walls as think as a castle's. Some of the wind found its way into the building and doors rattled. "Windy." we said to each other. Lori went to lunch with some of the ladies in the ward and they were all talking about the wind storm. It was a hurricane they said. When Lori told me I scoffed knowingly. First it's not Hurricane season. Second, they don't penetrate this far inland when they originate in Africa and none from the Pacific could reach us either. Well, maybe they've occurred 'historically' very, very, rarely but not in winter. I mean, really, I taught all about huricanes and El Nino's in my Ecology class! Always willing to follow the data, however, I decided to check. Sure enough there was an article in the Austrian paper on 'Hurricane' Paula. It had caused damage all over Europe. Now I was confused. I knew global warming was changing the climate worldwide (oh, just as an aside Global Warming is causing climate change, not necessarily warmer temperatures. It's redistributing moisture (anyone seen a crazy winter anywhere?), causing droughts in some places, floods in others, cold bitter winters in some places, warm in others, changing the monsoon patterns, etc. Don't expect it to get warmer everywhere just more variabable (and if you think this is natural variability you must mean 'natural' longer ago than about 650 thousand years because as far back as we've been able to construct temperature from ice cores and it's never been this warm (over the course of about six ice ages (cycles of warming and cooling). Some 'skeptics' say was natural variability but, no scientists say it, just 'think tanks' no one that is actually taking or analyzing the data (I'll let that speak for itself))) where you able to get all those parentheses straight (I wasn't)). Anyway, a hurricane didn't make any sense unless climate change had scrambled things up way more than I knew about. Apparently, Poland really had suffered a lot of damage. Here it was a few trees down and roofs blown off. But this made no sense. Hurricanes? Well, live and learn. Europe is vulnerable to a weird weather pattern called 'Winter Hurricanes.' It's cyclonic like a tropical hurricane (like those that hit the US), but there is not the masive moisture picked up in mid-latatude hurricaines. They're caused by a strange arctic weather pattern where they originate, but typically don't come this far south (and just to confuse you with more parentheses ,we are pretty far North, about even with Toronto). I guess they hit Scotland often enough. But Winter Hurricanes? Who would have thought? I learn something new in Austria every time the wind blows.

Surprisingly this Nazi bunker with 5 foot concrete walls designed to take a direct air raid attack was undamaged by Paula's wrath. Nathan in forground by tree.