I am no expert in English grammar. Whenever my daughters have any English questions I always direct them to my wife. There is one rule, though, that my sixth and eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Hake, pounded into my head, the conditional tense. Anytime you begin a sentence with ‘if’ (the condition) then the verb must be ‘were’. It does not matter if your subject is singular or plural. If I were seven feet tall I would have chosen basketball as a career. Keep the conditional tense top of mind and you will be surprised how many times it is written or spoken incorrectly.

Check this article out…

Time Magazine: June 24, 1974: 

"In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F. Although that figure is at best an estimate, it is supported by other convincing data. When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world. Indeed it is the widening of this cap of cold air that is the immediate cause of Africa's drought. By blocking moisture-bearing equatorial winds and preventing them from bringing rainfall to the parched sub-Sahara region, as well as other drought-ridden areas stretching all the way from Central America to the Middle East and India, the polar winds have in effect caused the Sahara and other deserts to reach farther to the south. Paradoxically, the same vortex has created quite different weather quirks in the U.S. and other temperate zones. As the winds swirl around the globe, their southerly portions undulate like the bottom of a skirt. Cold air is pulled down across the Western U.S. and warm air is swept up to the Northeast. The collision of air masses of widely differing temperatures and humidity can create violent storms—the Midwest's recent rash of disastrous tornadoes, for example."

If you replace 'global cooling' with 'global warming' and this article reads just like the global warming articles of today. I believe the issues of global warming and going green are separate issues. If global warming jump starts our environmental movement again then great but we have lost a lot of time in the 80s and 90s.

There is irrefutable evidence that the planet's temperature has risen steadily since the late 1970s. The global Warming issue has led to a Green movement. What strikes me as odd is that even if the planet were cooling we still have to go 'Green'. What happened to the environmental movement in the 70s ? I made reference to this on an earlier blog how it seemed what environmental momentum we had we was wiped out by the 'I' decade of the 80s. If the data showed that the planet were cooling, which it did until the mid 1970s (see Time article above), do you think we would say "ok, let's add some more co2 to the atmosphere". Of course not. We need to clean up our planet and fast. 

A nor'easter is a low pressure system that moves up or along the east coast producing winds from the northeast. Northeast winds are always a cold wind. In winter they hold the cold air in place providing one ingredient for a snowstorm. In fall, spring or even in summer they keep the temperatures well below average. Low pressures rotate in a counterclockwise direction in the northern hemisphere producing these northeast winds. Nor'easters do more damage to the coast than hurricanes or tropical storms. Nor'easters can sustain northeast winds for a longer period of time than tropical systems causing more erosion to the beach and more damage to coastal towns. Once the low pressure passes the winds shift and become northwest. Our weekend Nor'easter is now to our north but because of its intensity and slow movement we are going to experience high winds through this evening and strong winds through tomorrow. We called this storm a monster last week. It did not disappoint so to speak. The storm produced snow in the Rockies and the Plains States, tornadoes in the south, three to four inches of rain here and five to seven inches of rain in the New England with heavy wet snows inland and of course now, the fierce winds. If it were January this storm may have set our all time snowfall record for a single storm but that's another story.

We are looking at a big weekend storm. If it were January, February of even early March we might be using the 'B' word. That's right Blizzard. An intense coastal storm will develop Sunday and move of the coast off Norfolk Sunday evening. The storm then moves up the coast to a position off of the northern New Jersey shore Monday morning. As is common in spring the storm will take another 24 to 36 hours to leave us alone. We might even see a wet snowflake in our northern and western suburbs early Monday morning. The main impact for the Metro Area will be heavy rain Sunday into Sunday night. The computer models are cranking out anywhere from 1.75" to over 3" by Monday afternoon. Strong winds will accompany the storm possibly leading to some tidal flooding and beach erosion along the DelMarVa looks like a sure bet. Check the storm drains and your gutters and maybe bring in a little firewood. I know it's April but Sunday will be a perfect day for a fire.

I recently heard from an old friend of mine from Knoxville, Tennessee. It was great to catch up with Chuck. We used to play racquet ball twice a week and he took me to all the home games of the Tennessee Volunteers. He was up in DC last July 4^th but never had a chance to call. As we were catching up on our families and friends he made a comment that made me proud of our home town. He said "I didn't know how green DC is." I told him how great DC was thanks to its open spaces and relatively low buildings. In the early 1900s congress passed a law that no building could be higher than the Capitol. At that time the Cairo Building at 16^th and Q Streets was higher than the Capitol and prompted the new law.  The Washington Monument and the Cairo Building, now condos, are the only two exceptions to the height restriction law.

According to Bill Line of the National Park Service the Metro Area has the largest variety and diversity of National Parks of any other city in the U.S. Rock Creek Park alone is over 1800 acres making it nearly three times as large as Central Park. In all we have over 87,000 acres of parkland with 1000s of historic statues and archeological sites. We have 100s of miles of trails, bike paths and scenic parkways. The president of the United States lives in a national park.  On the National Mall alone there are 9000 trees !

A week ago last Tuesday my family and our neighbors biked from Fletcher's Boathouse to the Mall and the Tidal Basin. Remember that day ? Sunny and eighty degrees. While it is a distant memory now it was such a beautiful way to see the monuments and the cherry blossoms.  In many ways DC is a green city already.

Spring can be a bit cruel here in the Metro Area. I cut the grass today for the first time this year with a ski hat on and several layers to keep warm as temperatures hovered in the low 40s.  It is a distant memory now but we enjoyed temperatures in the 80s last Tuesday and then had some snow last Friday night. Believe it or not we average a trace of snow downtown and one tenth of an inch out at Dulles for the month of April. Our largest April snow downtown was five an one half inches in 1924. What always perplexes me is that we average a trace or more of snow six months of the year (November through April) yet we have to cut our grass eight and sometimes nine months of the year.