Weather With a Twist Episode #3: Batten Down the Hatches- Weather We Like It or Not

The narrator reflects on how climate change is affecting their favorite activity of mushroom hunting and how it is causing extreme weather events like tornadoes and hurricanes. They discuss the need to adapt to these changes and take steps to mitigate the effects of climate change. The narrator suggests small actions that individuals can take, such as using the Red Cross Emergency Mobile App and making personal emergency plans. They also highlight the importance of society taking action, such as weatherproofing buildings and making wind turbines more resilient to extreme weather. Slowing down climate change requires everyone to make small changes in their lives, such as reducing carbon footprint and practicing sustainability. The narrator emphasizes the significance of collective efforts and mentions the positive impact seen on college campuses. The series concludes with a call to work together to address the climate change crisis. It used to not be this way. I'm walking through the woods with my dad, where some of the best conversations happen, breathing in the smell of the trees and scanning the underbrush for my target. In the spring, the warm, stormy weather calls me outside to look for the delicious morel mushrooms that it brings to the surface of the forest floor, but this season, the usual haunts back home for one of my favorite foods are turning us empty. The air is too dry, and there's not enough rain and humidity to persuade the fungi to pop up. The wind kicks up as we walk, swirling the scent of smoke, but not rain, past us, and my dad just shakes his head and tells me again, it used to not be this way. We talk about how climate change is shifting our storms to new paths, bringing floods to some and droughts to others, like us. Twisters spin up trouble for states that never experienced this severity before. Hurricanes wreak havoc on the coasts, wildfires bring the heat, and the ice storms the last couple winters? Oh boy. The problem may be all but invisible to some, but to me, it stares me in the face when I carry home half the mushrooms that I should for a mid-April weekend in Oklahoma, and when my college town Little Rock, Arkansas gets hit by a tornado like I've never seen back home, and when I don't even need a jacket on a warm January day because temperatures across the nation start to hit record highs and lows at the wrong times of year. So what can we do about it? Is our only option to adapt to the curveballs that the weather regularly throws our way? Batten down the hatches as we cover what our next steps are to face the challenges brought by climate change. Hi guys, and welcome back to the final installment of our mini-series, Weather with a Twist. Once again, I'm your host, Regan Hodge, and today we're going to look at what society is doing to handle crazy climate shifts, and what on earth we can do to fix this weird weather problem that we've created for our planet. We've already established that the weather is not the same as it was 50 years ago. But can we go back to the way that it was? According to many scientists, the answer is unfortunately no. Just last week, I was reading a Forbes article on an interview with David Pogue, who wrote a book called How to Prepare for Climate Change, A Practical Guide to Surviving the Chaos. And one thing that stuck with me was a statement from Pogue, quote, the climate has changed, past tense. The stuff that we're seeing with the hurricanes and the wildfires, that's not an anomaly. That's what we've got from now on, end quote. But luckily, he doesn't stop there. He goes on to state that his advice is to mitigate and adapt simultaneously as hard as possible. The less carbon we send into the atmosphere and the more prepared we are to handle extreme weather events as they occur, the better off humans will be. Preparing for severe weather and climate changes in general may seem overwhelming, but it can begin with small steps. A really easy thing to do to improve your preparedness that I actually stumbled upon from that same interview is the Red Cross Emergency Mobile App. This app allows you to enter your address and it sends alerts if there's a disaster headed your way, whether that's hurricanes, fires, floods, windstorms, tornadoes, and even nuclear accidents or chemical spills, I think, were included. The app also points users towards the nearest Red Cross shelters and has emergency instructions that don't rely on internet or cell towers. Being prepared personally can be just as simple as that. Download an app. Have those emergency plans in place like we talked about last episode. As a society, taking actions such as weatherproofing buildings as maintenance is done, windproofing roofs, preparing ways to maintain powers after an extreme weather event, all of these things are going to be necessary going forward. Roy McCann, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Arkansas, states that even making small changes to wind turbines that allow them to operate under unexpectedly cold weather in states like Texas is a way to adapt to climate change. Whenever there's a cold snap, they're not going to lose power because those wind turbines are going to still be running. But what about trying to slow the problem in the first place? How can we do that? Well, that, too, is a complicated process that is best begun by every person taking a small step to improve. Increasing sustainability practices, reducing your carbon footprint, and taking better care of the environment as a society will be crucial to slowing the damage that we've done and continue to do to our planet. Every person can make one small change in their lives, whether that's carpooling more often, walking or biking to work, switching to energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances, or simply turning the lights off when they're not in use. If everyone does a little, it adds up to a lot, so don't let the appearance of insignificance stop you from doing your part to help. We can even see some success in places like college campuses, as more opportunities to improve student sustainability, such as recycling and energy efficiency, become more common. We all live here together, so we all need to work together to improve the climate change crisis, whether we like it or not. It's been great learning with you this series, now let's go be prepared and do better. As always, thanks for listening to Weather with a Twist.