People in North Carolina know something is whacky with the weather.
Four months ago, Hurricane Floyd dumped three feet of rain on the state, causing the region’s most devastating flood on record and more than $1billion in damages. And this week, North Carolina awoke to a storm that dropped 2 feet of snow, eclipsing the 1893 monthly record in a mere two days.
But North Carolina isn’t the only place the climate has gone wild. In Boston this month it was 64 degrees one day and well below freezing a week later. In India in November, a gigantic cyclone killed 10,000 people.
Northern Europe weathered a violent windstorm in December that felled 10,000 historic trees at the Versailles palace and destroyed Parisian roofs and chimneys to a tune of $80 million. At the same time, half-way around the globe, floods and mudslides in Venezuela swept more than 15,000 people to their death.
We’re getting a grip on increasingly erratic climate in the second hour of The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
William Stevens, New York Times science reporter and author of “The Change in the Weather: People, Weather, and the Science of Climate.”