A Season in Hell

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It was an unpopular week for weathermen. In almost every corner of the country last week, the news was bad and the forecast was for more of the same. In the Midwest -- where the swollen Mississippi continued to turn streets into rivers and fields into lakes -- the floodwaters reached record heights and just kept climbing. In the South and the East -- where the temperature hit triple digits in many cities -- weather reporters were reduced to frying eggs on sidewalks and reprinting lame jokes ("How hot was it?" asked the New York Post. "So hot, Grant's Tomb had the front door open"). Even the breaks in the weather were bad. It snowed (in July!) in Colorado, but the white stuff melted too fast in most places to do skiers much good. In South Carolina, which had been spared the Midwest's drenching downpours, the total rainfall for June was .74 in. instead of the normal 4.8 in., causing millions of dollars in argicultural losses.

But meteorologists have more than just last week to answer for. In March, 20 states from Florida to Maine were briefly paralyzed by an atmospheric oddity that scientists called an extratropical cyclone -- a blizzard with hurricane- strength winds that blanketed parts of North Carolina with 50 in. of snow. In early winter, some Southwest cities got a year's supply of rain in six weeks. A record number of tornadoes (1,381 in all) touched down on U.S. soil last year, as well as the nation's costliest weather disaster, Hurricane Andrew, which destroyed $20 billion worth of property in Florida alone.

Nor is the outrageous weather limited to North America. Hailstones the size of tennis balls last week bombarded France, a country whose precious vacation time has been marred of late by blazing springs, cool summers and snowless ski slopes. Farmers in western Queensland, Australia, are currently suffering through the state's longest and most widespread drought. New Delhi recorded ^ its hottest day in more than 40 years in June; Rome last week had its hottest day of this century. Torrential rains have become so severe in Hong Kong that meteorologists coined a new term -- black rainstorm alert -- to signal their approach. Weather-related losses at Lloyd's of London are staggering. Says underwriter Richard Keeling: "From what we have experienced over the past four or five years, we have either been very unlucky or things are getting worse out there."

What is going on? Scientists have a standard reply to questions like this. It is the nature of weather, they say, for wild fluctuations to occur. Their proof: there is a record broken every day somewhere in the world. But after last week's weather -- which showed every sign of being this week's weather as well -- the standard reply starts to wear a little thin. Why are so many records being set in so many places right now? Could it have anything to do with the holes we've drilled in the ozone layer? The forests we've leveled? The greenhouse gases we've pumped into the atmosphere?