El nino

[Anne Kilmer]

We're having your rain here in South Florida. Our dry season is our
winter: now. We've had flood warnings many times this winter.
    A couple of weeks ago we had 9 inches of rain on Saturday; six the
following Monday.
It's being pumped rapidly out to sea, destroying vast quantities of
sealife. It's full of herbicides and pesticides, because we do not yet
have our act together in this regard.
The excess water is putting pressure on many endangered birds in and
around the Everglades.
Because there's noplace to store it, the community is still in danger of
drought damage when the rainy season fails next summer.
Local weathermen attribute all this to el Nino.
We did enjoy the lack of hurricanes last summer, but it's being balanced
by huge winter storms.
Anne Kilmer viceroy at gate.net
South Florida

Ken Adams wrote:

> A comment on effects in South Africa. Parts of the country have had
> "normal"/good rains. However, here in Eastern Province it has been
> very dry. Our main rains are supposed to over our summer months- like
> now, but rainfall since October has been less than an inch, compared
> with our usual six or so inches
> We have also had a hot summer so high evaporation. Result on plant
> growth has been devastating- there hasn't been any, the grass has
> remained brown and burned up and failed to green up absolutely.
>
> Last year by contrast was cool and comparatively wet. The
> significance of which for leps was that there were very few because
> it was too cool and wet. this year by contrast there have been very
> few leps around possibly because it has been too dry to support plant
> growth. Butterfly counts have produced yeilds roughly equivalent to
> those of late winter. I also operate a moth trap (uv) here. Yeilds
> again have been abyssmal like three or four moths per trap night.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ken Adams
> Zoology Department
> University of Fort Hare
> P Bag X1314
> Alice, SOUTH AFRICA
>
> Phone (W) 0404-2337
> Fax (W) 0404-31669, 0404-31643
> e-mail adams at zoo.ufh.ac.za
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------