A wet/dry December because of climate change

The Flemish TV news (VTM) of this evening left me completely and utterly bewildered (translated from Dutch, my emphasis):

December is almost over and if the forecast doesn’t change, it will remain dry for the rest of the year and then there will only be seven days with rain during this month. That is very little, we have to go back 126 years for a month of December with so few rainy days. The air quality is bad. A lot of smog is lingering. And it is yet another indication that our climate is changing.

¿Que?

There were only seven days with rain this month and that is ALREADY an indication of climate change?

Less than … one entire month?!

For the first time … since 126 years?

Aaaaaaargh! That is definitely a worrying trend!

Also today, no drop of rain has fallen from the sky in our country. The sun even shines and there will be no precipitation in the following days. Therefor, we already know it: December is bone dry.

OMG! The sun is shining … in December … in Belgium!

There have been very few rainy days. In Uccle there have been only seven days with rain. Normally, December is the wettest month of the year with 19.3 rainy days, so we are far below that.

Many like it that way, Christmas shopping without rain or snow. But it’s not good news for our health. Exhaust gases, fine particles, they all remain suspended in the air in the drier weather.

Weather? Ooops. Wasn’t it climate just a moment ago?

We are all under the influence of an area of high pressure over the European continent for almost the whole month, and such an area of high pressure is like a lid on the atmosphere and thus ensures that all polluting gases and exhaust gases and all polluting particles can’t escape. We see this in air quality of this month of December, which was particularly bad.

Aha! A new insight. Climate seems to be caused by high pressure areas.

Moreover, experts say that this dry December is a direct result of climate change. Everything is becoming more extreme. We have extremely dry weather, in Southern Spain, which has usually little precipitation, is now suffering from floods.

Wow!

Those Belgian experts are soooooo much smarter than their sluggish colleagues abroad who can’t even attribute extreme events to climate change yet.

IPCC, eat your heart out!

By the way, are these the same experts that until now predicted that the winter months would be rainy, I mean, increasingly rainy because of … well … climate change?

We increasingly see that the extremes get more extreme. When wet, it is very wet, then there are immediately floods. When it is hot, it is very hot as we had more than 30 degrees [Celsius] in September. Yes, and if it does rain a little bit, it rains very little, as in this normally very wet month of December.

We had periods with high precipitation in the first half of the year, one day with a temperature above 30 °C in September and now only seven days of rain in December?

Can it get even worse than that?

Precipitation has been forecasted for the beginning of January.

Phew. What a relief. Rain. Saved from total climate devastation…

Now serious again. Can those “experts” please decide what it will be?

I am not a climate expert, but if it is an event of less than one, repeat LESS THAN ONE, month caused by a high pressure area over Europe, then might it not just be something called … weather?

No?

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BTW: I am still pinching my arm.

I am definitely not dreaming.

Amazing… Did this really happen?

Yes, it did… It is even on on video (from 40 min)

I didn’t see that one coming…

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