Sturm und drang

One calm sunny morning last week as I walked to the shops two blocks away, the summer time leitmotiv of songbirds was drowned by the ugly snarl of chainsaws, cutting up fallen trees and hundreds of stout tree limbs, victims of a violent thunderstorm late on the previous afternoon. At its peak, the clouds were so low and so dense it was as though night had come a few hours early; I could feel our solid tower block sway in the force of the wind; rain and hailstones hit the west-facing windows with a sound like machine gun bullets: I was relieved to find no breakages when the storm passed; all but one were water-tight too, thanks to renewed grouting last year. A graceful old willow tree beside Paterson's Inlet immediately below our north windows was split asunder and most of it blown into the water. All that remains now is the sawed off trunk, almost 2 meters in diameter. Violent storms with lightning, torrential rains, high winds that occasionally twist into tornadoes, are common in the heartland of this continent; this was the most violent I remember in over 40 years in Ottawa. My impression that storms have increased in frequency and ferocity over the past 20 years is supported by the statistics. This is one of the defining features of climate change. I'm perplexed when I reflect on it that this and other obvious signs like disappearing polar and alpine ice fields, retreating glaciers, and prolonged droughts, aren't recognized by those who deny the existence of climate change, as proof that it really is happening.