Friday’s post, “As in those days before the flood…” talked about links between today’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 24: 36-44) and recent news about sea level rise. Today’s New York Times has an op-ed piece, “An Almanac of Extreme Weather, written by Jack Hedin, a farmer in southern Minnesota, that hits more immediately and closer to home for Nebraskans.
Mr. Hedin talks about the difficulties Midwestern farmers face as the weather becomes more severe; he especially talks about the recent changes in precipitation and increasing frequency of flooding. In the middle of the piece, he writes:
Minnesota’s state climatologist, Jim Zandlo, has concluded that no fewer than three “thousand-year rains” have occurred in the past seven years in our part of the state. And a University of Minnesota meteorologist, Mark Seeley, has found that summer storms in the region over the past two decades have been more intense and more geographically focused than at any time on record.
The weather in neighboring South Dakota was covered in another recent piece in the New York Times, “Storm Upon Storm for South Dakota” from November 20.
Today’s piece about Minnesota talks about changes we can make in the Midwest to address climate change and try to preserve productive farmland for future generations. It’s a good fit with the First Sunday of Advent theme of being awake and prepared!
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