Midwest Flooding -- Is This "Normal"

I hope I'm putting this in the right place....This is a ramble/rant I hope it makes sense

So, I live in Ohio and the last couple days we have gotten a buttload of rain, following that massive snowstorm last week, and for the first time in a very long time the town I live in and the surrounding towns are dealing with floods.

I am 34 and I can never remember this happening before! I said the same thing about the snowstorm last week. Yes, it snowed when I was a kid, sometimes alot, but I can't ever remember us getting slammed quite like that.... AND another odd thing about that snowstorm? It was sleet/snowing AND thunder and lightning! STRANGE!

Anyway, now that the snow is melting ( The day after the snowstorm I swear it was something like 60 degrees...) and we just got 3 days worth of rain, alot of our roads are closed, the river is way up over it's banks and the two area dams are so full the watersheds are trying to slowly let them out... which is causeing more flooding YAY!

I mean, it seems to me that the weather really has changed! Climate Change.... is this what that means? I always thought it meant an ice age.. or unexpected drought lasting forever so I always shook it off as silly talk. Now I am begining to think perhaps I was too quick to brush it off.

Is this going to become the norm? Extremes? one day freezing and a foot of snow, the next 60 degrees, everything melting and torrential rain and floods? It's really got me thinking... and it's scaring me... anyone else feeling this way?

I am also in the Mid West and have been commenting about the strange weather anomalies in the past year. Freezing rain and thunder snow showers. It never ceases to amaze me that more people are seemingly accepting it as if it has always been this way. I notice that people seem more and more to be so overwhelmed by change that they simply slip into complacency and adjust their minds around only that which they can handle. I am glad to see that someone else here understands the reality as I see it.

It's okay. Here in TX . . . across the whole state winds have been averaging 40 mph with gusts up to 70 mph, plus some random storms

Who ordered the nation wide tropical storm?

[edit on 20/3/2008 by xxpigxx]

That's another thing! The weather systems!! Now, I am not a meteorologist, I haven't got a really GREAT education..... I graduated high school and that's about it mmmkay? But, that said, I feel that I am able to reason and actually think beyond basics..... I hope that makes sense......

Anyway ... I noticed, while watching the weather channel that the storm systems seem different as well! Now my only "proof" of this is the image in my mind of radar over the last 20 years or so.

The systems come from different directions than you'd expect, they cover greater expanses of earth and they move a heck of alot slower!

Is there anyone out there with knowledge of climate and weather that can explain to me WHY this is happeneing... in terms that I can fully understand???

[edit on 3/20/2008 by undiscoveredsoul]

Edited cause I can't type....

[edit on 3/20/2008 by undiscoveredsoul]

The global warming theory says we will be able to register the change in rainguages. Places that got little precip will get less and places that got more snow will get far more rain.

Of course there is a great controversy as to if its real and they think people will poo poo the idea and/or adapt. The water however does not lie.

reply to post by Illahee

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Climate change is real. You don't need a university education to figure that out. Time to clean up our act and clean up the planet.

Yes . . . because cleaning up our act and ozone will stop our sun from heating up Earth and the rest of the planets.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in keeping the Earth clean, and I believe that there is a climate change. I do not believe that we are directly responsible for it.

reply to post by xxpigxx

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Believe what you like. Reality will continue on its own course. Look at what we have done and are doing to this planet--deforestation, pollutants, GHGs... If you think that we can do whatever we like to this planet and not live the consequences....well, I'll stop myself there



[edit on 20-3-2008 by Silenceisall]

And all that causes the sun to get hotter?

I mean . . . the other planets warmed up a bit too.

Even the Oceans are cool. The planet is cooling now.

Interesting how 30 years ago and there was a weather fluctuation, one would think "the weather's been wild lately"; and nowadays any anomaly, no matter how small and/or normally unremarkable, is "global warming" and a symbol of impending armageddon.