Tag: weather
Charlemagne, Vikings & Global Warming
Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
The rise of Charlemagne came 309.6 years from the fall of Rome in 476AD. What is never discussed in the history books is the correlation with weather. Both the rise of the Vikings and the Franks coincided with the Medieval Warm Period (800–1300) and ended with the start of the Little Ice Age (about 1250–1850). It was at the end of this Global Warming period that we find the reappearance of gold coinage. The climate directly influenced the rise and fall of the Vikings. Moreover, we now know that they established a settlement for a while in America about 500 years before Columbus.
Why Is The Weather So Crazy All Of A Sudden?
Guest Post by Michael Snyder
All over the planet, global weather patterns have gone completely nuts. Just over the past few days we have seen “life threatening” heatwaves, extremely dangerous wildfires, vicious tornadoes and unprecedented flooding – and that is just in the United States. And of course this is just the continuation of a trend that stretches back to last year, when extremely weird weather created “apocalyptic-like conditions” in many areas around the world. So why is this happening? For decades, we could count on weather patterns falling within fairly predictable parameters, but now that is completely changing all of a sudden. All over the globe we are seeing things happen that we have never seen happen before, and the weather just seems to get even more crazy with each passing month.
Just consider what has been going on the past few days. Let’s start with the “life threatening” heatwave that is currently hammering the west coast…
The West Coast is in the grip of a ‘life threatening’ triple-digit heatwave that is set to continue well into next week, raising the risk of wildfires.
The National Weather Service has issued excessive heat warnings for southeastern California, southern Nevada, western and southern Arizona, western Oregon and far southwest Washington.
From Oregon to Nevada temperatures are set to top 100F tomorrow and into Monday, with Phoenix, Arizona, predicted to top out at 116F.
These are temperatures that you might expect to see in July or August, but right now summer has not even officially begun yet.
Continue reading “Why Is The Weather So Crazy All Of A Sudden?”
East Coast Celebrates Christmas With Warmest Weather On Record
Guess whose 20 year old air conditioner stopped working in the middle of their Christmas eve party? And Santa didn’t bring me a new one. I guess I was naughty.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/25/2015 09:45 -0500
It was just 10 months ago that Boston smashed its all time snowfall record, and the US was blanketed in freezing weather from west to east as the Polar Vortex unleashed cold air for the second year in a row. It was so cold, the GDP report for the winter period had to be double-seasonally adjusted as the sharp economic slowdown, which was blamed on the “harsh weather”, simply did not make sense otherwise.
Fast forward to today when according to AccuWeather, Christmas felt more like Memorial Day across much of the eastern United States as temperatures rose between 20 and 35 degrees above average and 5-15 degrees above previous record highs.
While unlikely that it was the hottest Christmas ever – temperature recordings only go so far – records were broken all along the Eastern Seaboard, from the Southeast to New England with some areas breaking their previous record high by more than 10 degrees F. Some records were broken from the 1800s.
The highs that occurred on Thursday are more typical of late spring and early summer.
Continue reading “East Coast Celebrates Christmas With Warmest Weather On Record”
DID IT SNOW IN APRIL TOO?
You may have heard the standard Wall Street storyline about bad weather from December through March depressing consumers and keeping them from spending money they don’t have on shit they don’t need. The corporate mainstream media obligingly regurgitates the storyline in order to maintain their advertising revenue from Wall Street and corporate America.
Did you notice all that snow in April? How else can we explain the disastrous retail sales numbers reported this morning? Maybe the temperatures were too moderate to shop. Maybe the pollen storms created an allergy to shopping. Maybe it was those nasty Spring showers bringing May flowers. Watching the nimrods, economist hacks, bimbos and boobs on bubblevision attempting to spin the decline of the American consumer is priceless. They reveal themselves to be nothing but captured teleprompter readers. Journalism is dead in the corporate media realm. The only truth is found in the blogosphere.
Below is a chart that doesn’t even reveal how bad the numbers really are. The country is in the midst of a recession as markets reach all-time highs. This fact alone unveils the criminality of the Federal Reserve and their sole purpose of propping up and enriching their owners on Wall Street. The suffering and impoverishment of average Americans is revealed in the true jobs numbers, credit card usage, and retail sales. The entire house of debt is built upon Americans accounting for 68% of GDP by buying shit. If they don’t borrow and spend, the shark dies. This shark looks sick.
RETAIL SALES SUCK THE BIG ONE AGAIN
So on-line sales FELL in March versus February. Was it the weather? The MSM pundits and Wall Street shyster economists have used weather as the excuse for the avalanche of horrific data pouring in since November of last year. Of course this winter was warmer than normal and far warmer than last year’s Polar Vortex winter of discontent. But we all know facts are meaningless when you have a storyline to peddle and stocks to sell to muppets.
If the weather was so dreadful, wouldn’t on-line sales benefit greatly? Why would internet sales fall versus February and only rise 3.9% versus last year. Why would internet sales only rise by 4.5% in the first 3 months if the consumer is back, jobs are plentiful and consumer confidence is at 7 year highs? Declining internet sales surely bodes well for Amazon and its $385 price and PE ratio of infinity.
Existing Home Sales Plunge (and Don’t Blame The Weather)
Truth is treason in an empire of lies.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/23/2015 10:07 -0500
With homebuilder sentiment slipping, blamed on the weather (despite improvement in the Northeast), Architecture billings down, and lumber prices down, it should not be totally surprising that existing home sales collapsed in January, which they just did tumbling -4.9% against expectations of -1.8% to a worse than expected 4.82 million SAAR (4.95 expected). This was the biggest January drop since 2010, and is the lowest existing home sales since April.
Oh – and before the talking heads blame the weather – the biggest drop in home sales was in The West (with its warm, dry, sunny home-buying climate). Considering that existing home sales most recent peak in 2014 failed to take out the previous government-sponsored peak in 2013 and remains 30% or more below the 2005 peak, and claims that the housing recovery is in tact are greatly exaggerated.
Lower highs and the weakest sales since April 2014
Last year it was the “weather’s” fault, when California led the decline. Guess what: in January 2015, California, aka the “West” again saw the biggest drop:
Continue reading “Existing Home Sales Plunge (and Don’t Blame The Weather)”
WARM WEATHER DOES WONDERS FOR HOUSING IN JUNE
Remember the cold and snowy winter? It was used as the excuse for every negative economic report over the last six months. It’s now July. If housing starts were delayed due to bad weather, there should have been a strong bounce back in the Spring and Summer. Plus, this is when people buy and sell houses because they don’t like to move when their kids are in school. Maybe it was too warm. Maybe it was too sunny. Maybe the corporate MSM propaganda machine has to come up with a new storyline to feed the ignorant masses.
The June figures were released today and they show a collapse in housing starts and permits. Housing starts were 13% BELOW the expectations of the millionaire Wall Street economists. They were 9.3% BELOW the DOWNWARDLY REVISED May numbers. The single family home starts were the lowest since November 2012. April was revised lower too.
So let me get this straight. Home prices have risen 25% since 2012, but housing starts are exactly where they were in 2012. Yeah, this is a strong healthy market driven housing recovery. No Federal Reserve/Wall Street scheme to enrich the oligarchs here. This surely benefits first time home buyers with trillions in student loan debt.
Please show me the housing recovery on this chart. The current level of single family housing starts is at the same or lower levels of every recession dating back 45 years. They are 65% below the most recent peak. They are 50% below the long term average. With the lowest mortgage rates in 50 years, this is all we got?
The housing market is rolling over and headed down again. Any dupe that got lured into buying a home in the last two years is going to get it good and hard as prices tumble again. Some people never learn.
