It’s supposed to be the time when summer slips into fall. The temperature cools down. The foliage makes us appreciate the world around us. There is good news for parents as their kids go back to school. Kids not so much. So, what the hell happened? The month started with a blast of record hot weather that felt like we were standing in front a pizza oven. It was ninety-five degrees on Labor Day. Seventy-four of Philadelphia’s school buildings don’t have air conditioning. Kids were let out by noon for the first week of school. Just when a parents thought they got rid of them for the day. The city opened cooling centers and gave out fans. Since 1888, there have only been thirty-one heat waves in September six of them since 2008. That should tell us something. This is climate change on fast forward.
By mid-month, the heat retreated and the rains came. Tropical storm Ophelia ran up the east coast. The last full week of September we had rain every day, except for one. The Jersey shore got pounded with high winds causing beach erosion. The Philadelphia area was spared the worst of the storm. Monmouth County New Jersey got 7.75 inches of rain. Brooklyn got over seven inches of rain. It was even raining in the subway in New York. On this last day of the month, the rain stopped. Next week is forecast to be sunny and in the eighties. It’s as if we are going back to July.
We have ended a summer where climate change has given us another wake up call. The floods, fires and heat in the United States, Canada, and Europe have disrupted millions of lives and caused billions of dollars in losses for homes, businesses and farm land. Every day we delay in dealing with climate change is a day closer to a world we don’t want to see.
September also brought us the sad news of the loss of the man who sang about good times, a woman who blazed a trail for other women to follow, and greatest third baseman in baseball history. Jimmy Buffett, Senator Diane Feinstein and Brooks Robinson inspired us and amazed us.
On this last day of the month, we are hours away from a government shutdown that will leave thousands of federal workers without a paycheck. The poisonous politics of a small band radical Republicans in the House of Representatives are holding the country hostage with unreasonable demands on government spending. They will continue to get paid.
As I write this, I’m squinting through one swollen eye from nasty case of poison ivy I contracted while trimming some bushes yesterday in preparation for fall. Maybe this was a September we’d like to remember to forget.
This just in…Congress passed a government funding bill a few hours before the midnight deadline. It avoids a government shutdown at least for 45 days when we can go through this again.
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