climate

 For two months we have repeated the same weather pattern, all of it at temps ten to fifteen degrees below average.  We will have a warmer day, then the wind switches to south and picks up.  Temps drop for two days, then we will get a little rain or usually snow.  Then it warms enough to melt the snow and the pattern repeats, all within about a week.  We have been windy, even for us on the prairie for most of the winter.  Difficult to think about planting anything.  The pastures do not even green up.

This is El Nino, or it is climate change, or perhaps both.  In any case, we now pretty much know, seeing the disasters that some others face, that climate change may well appear as a cooling, high winds, drought, floods and etc.  Our climate system is distressed and disrupted.  We need to start admitting that so we can deal with it.  Farms have a lot to do in response and real opportunity to make some positive change.