So today I had lined up three appointments important to various projects I’m working on. All of them had to be canceled due to a severe weather projection – at least heavy rains and strong winds rolling through several Southern states on the front end of a cold front. In response, schools (including USM) and businesses had already shut down by late morning.
By mid-afternoon, weather reality had matched predictions and then some – a tornado watch extended long into the evening, punctuated by actual “Take cover now!” warnings announced by shrieking cell phone apps and blaring civil sirens; heavy, heavy rain, arriving in blinding waves, resulting in widespread regional flash flood warnings. I certainly won’t be surprised to see stories of destruction and death trickling into my news feeds any time now.
Wow, “such weird weather,” I’ve heard some say about recent bouts of similar meteorological havoc. Well, yes, sort of. But it is increasingly frequent, common weather that shortly won’t seem strange at all, but rather simply the quotidian stuff of the so-called “new (and all-too-predictably disruptive of daily life) normal.”
And we’re worried about the disruptive effects of rising commodity prices? Inflation can’t hold a (wet) candle to the disturbing impacts of a destabilized climate and the dangerous weather patterns it spawns.
The Southern Miss School of Social Work 