Of course, not all was quite on the “eastern” front. Brooklyn and Staten Island endured their first tornado in decades and tropical-like downpours flooded subway tunnels and turned a Long Island Rail Road train station into a cascading waterfall. And Nassau County’s Meadowbrook Parkway briefly turned into a lake deep enough to prevent emergency vehicles from traversing its murky waters. In September, post Labor Day extremes sent the mercury into the low 90s as far north as Hartford, Ct. and other parts of interior New England.

Normalcy, or at least the sense of it, has been slipping away since Sept. The further we go into the “cooler” season it seems, the departures from normal grow. The forecast high for Astoria, New York is 87 F this coming Saturday, Oct. 6. The beaches will be nearly as warm. The Hudson Valley will face similar heat. Even Montreal will today top out near 80 F today!

This isn’t just warm, it’s unprecedented! Can it all be explained naturally? Yes and no. The heat is natural in the sense that it is being caused by totally explainable and measurable meteorological phenomena. A semi-persistent ridge of strong high pressure has remained anchored in the East for weeks. The decending air within the high promotes cloud suppression and air warms as it sinks. Not rocket science.

What is interesting, however, is identifying why high pressure ridges and their cousin – low pressure troughs, seem to be increasing in their amplitudes. Is this part of a natural cycle? Is it the due to global warming? Whatever the case, 87 in October, while great for summer lovers, is truly no day at the beach for the rest of us.

Links will be added later today.

Interestingly, if you have a little faith, the Maine-based Farmer’s Almanac (not the to be confused with New Hampshire’s Old Farmer’s Almanac) is nevertheless predicting a cold and snowy winter for the Northeast and Upper Mid-West. Cold air with widespread frost is forecast to slide all the way down to the Gulf Coast and the Florida peninsula.

But more in keeping with current trends, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration is forecasting another warmer-than-average winter. across much of the country.

I guess time will tell either way. I just hope the Northeast starts feeling a bit like fall soon.

     What am I talking about you ask? For the first time in recorded history, (albeit specific satelite imagery only goes back to1978)  the elusive — and until now entirely fictional – Northwest Passage became a reality. For centuries European explorers were charged with finding an ocean  path across the Arctic that would allow them to reach Asia more quickly. Some sailed as far north as Canada’s Baffin and Ellesmere Islands, only to be stopped by the ice and relentless cold. Others like Henry Hudson, were fooled as far south as New York State by the river which bears his name today. Canda’s St. Lawrence River proved yet another dead end.

     But in 2007, thanks to global warming, the Northwest Passage could  safely be navigated.

     Dovetailing with these climatological developments, Time magazine, with its October cover page story, “Fight for the Top of the World,” details northern nations’ quest to gobble up more of the Earth’s carbon-spewing resources. And if nothing more than a symbolic exclamation point, Russian scientists planted their nation’s flag beneath the North Pole on Aug. 2.

     Umm, is anyone else concerned here? I mean, doesn’t this rush to divvy up the melting Arctic’s riches seem inspired by the same short-sighted ambitions for money, greed and power that have gotten nations in trouble before? Have we abandoned all hope that global warming cannot be arrested or mitigated? Have the United States, Russia, Canada and the northern European nations resigned themselves (and ourselves) to kind of global warming-induced apocalyptic fatalism?

I truly hope quite literally, that cooler heads prevail.

Of course, there are still plenty of naysayers out there, claiming that global warming is a myth, or that if true, not all stand to loose. To that I say, the critics and varying opinion are always welcome. I look to you, the public, to help make this an informative site.