Weather

A strong majority of Mecklenburg County residents surveyed said they think there’s solid evidence the Earth has warmed in recent decades. An even larger majority said it’s a somewhat or very serious problem. Yet despite nearly unanimous consensus among climate scientists that global climate change is occurring due to human activity, only about half the […]

After months of steady – and sometimes excessive – rain, we’ve recently seen a more typical pattern of precipitation. Autumn is our driest season. If this trend continues and we don’t receive a soaking from a hurricane or tropical storm, our total precipitation for 2013 could be deceptively average. It’s been a banner year for […]

The Atlantic hurricane season spans half the year, June through November, but North Carolina typically sees the most storms, and some of the worst, in September. Our coast is especially vulnerable to hurricanes, but we sometimes experience their devastation here in the Piedmont. In the fall of 1989, I was living in Chapel Hill in […]