Last month, more than 1.5 million acres burned in 9 days in California, forcing the evacuation of more than 100,000 people.
The fires were caused by unusual intense 'dry-lightning storms', which focused on the San Francisco Bay area in a short time period - an event comprising around 11 percent of the average annual lightning activity for the entire state...
No, it's not 'man-made global warming', as the media claims, nor is it 'elite-made weather', as alternative media claims. The climate globally is 'going wonky' in part because the planet's very atmosphere is changing.
Extreme weather has only worsened the exodus of people from California over the last decade. About five million Californians have left the state for a net population loss of more than one million people. Colorado was also hit last month by the largest wildfire in the state's history. The Pine Gulch fire has burned 139,006 acres and left ranchers with little-to-no grazing for cattle and worried about long-term impacts.
In Algeria, over 1,200 fires have devoured almost 9,000 hectares of forests. The North African country has experienced more frequent forest fires in recent years but the causes remain unclear. Negligence? Coal-traffickers? Increased lightning strikes? Who knows, but the fact is something unusual is going on there too.
Sheets of rain, typically resulting heavy flooding, landslides and huge hailstones continued destroying houses, basic infrastructure and crops around the world in August, impacting the lives of dozens of millions of people. In South Asia alone, an estimated 17.5 million people suffered the consequences of record-breaking monsoon floods. Nearly 700 died and thousands have been displaced. China, Bangladesh and India continue to be the most affected.
South Korea has suffered from unusually heavy downpours for over 2 months now, marking the country's longest and worst-ever monsoon season. Now, the strongest typhoon of the year is on its way to the Korean peninsula, so the deluge is unlikely to abate anytime soon.
Snow in Australia, southern Brazil and South Africa is normal this time of year - it's still winter there (barely), but what are we to make of August snowfalls in Yunnan, China; Dagestan, Russia; the Alps and Pyrenees in Europe? A foretaste perhaps of a cold northern winter to come.
Given the amount of water falling out of the sky the world over, if the unprecedented slowdown in the North Atlantic Gulf Stream holds, we may soon be entering an extended winter.
All that and more in our SOTT Earth Changes Summary for August 2020:
