Winter is the New Summer?

Have you noticed the weather lately? Well if not, I’d like to bring your attention to the everchanging weather here in California. While walking around the hallways,  you may have heard a cough or two from your fellow bobcats. Now, we could all jump to conclusions and claim they have contracted a disease that shall not be named, or we could look toward the most probable cause: the sudden change in the weather 

Thinking back to just last winter, recall that the Christmas spirit had visited the mountaintops here in California. Blankets of snow covered the tips of the mountains, and San Jose was enhanced with a crisp, frost-like air quality. This, however, was unlike the past, room-temperature winters in California. The culprit: climate change. 

This summer we experienced dangerously hot weather conditions, which was anticipated as the winter of 2022 was extremely chilly and left many Californians to add cozy winter jackets to their closets. Naturally, to balance out the intense frost, summer had to be parching. The summer of 2022 was ranked the 34th warmest summer in the last 129 years, and in this case, we don’t want to reach number one anytime soon. 

Summer left a lasting impact on the climate as we see sunny weather even in the latter seasons of the year. Transitioning into fall, the weather has been seen to fluctuate from extremely cold to extremely hot not even in a week, but in a day, confusing many if they should wear shorts or pants (or both…). This battle between the weather throughout the day can be compared to the greenhouse gasses affecting the ozone layer daily. Due to this, we see copious amounts of weather changes as the weather tries to balance out both extremes, causing choppy weather reports.

Christmas is arguably one of the best holidays out there, and one thing that brings home the Christmas spirit is the winter frost that comes along with it. Overall, the weather change is not only proving that climate change is ruining our atmosphere by the minute but also taking away from the Christmas spirit. This year, winter is predicted to be pretty sunny, but don’t be discouraged if you enjoy the cloudy, rainy days, as it is also predicted that we will have a few weeks of mild rain.

Sources:

Karlamangla , S. (2023, September 21). The Summer of 2023 Was California’s Coolest in More Than a Decade. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/21/us/california-cool-summer-climate-change.html#:~:text=And%20there’s%20an%20 important%20 caveat,crisis%20%E2%80%94%20and%20sons%20of%20 news.