The Witness Chronicles, 1/15/25

Storms beyond comprehension, Hegseth, and Merrick Garland

Brush in Pacific Palisades before the fire. Photo by Beau Horyza on Unsplash

They Are All Perfect Storms Now

The weather has changed in the past five years and changed drastically

There have always been dangerous storms. Nor’easters, hurricanes, catastrophic rainfall, droughts, tornado outbreaks- all were destructive and took lives. But the storms we are experiencing today are orders of magnitude worse than ever seen on a regular basis.

We used to define bad storms based on how often their level of destruction was seen over time. The so-called hundred year storms that only happen every one hundred years, or even a thousand year version, which basically says we have likely never seen anything as bad.

Those descriptions have been thrown out the window as we see hundred year storms nearly every year in vulnerable regions like Southern California, the Southwest, the Southeast, and the Mid-Atlantic regions of our country. Hurricanes like Helene and Milton that came back to back and ravaged one quarter of the country with effects lasting months and years.

We saw cities like Asheville, North Carolina reduced to ruins by flooding and Coastal Florida cities experiencing destruction so widespread and frequent that homeowners cannot insure their homes and those whose have been destroyed, giving up on rebuilding.

My first inkling of the scope of this, as an amateur weather watcher, took place in October of 2023 when, with virtually no warning, a tropical storm exploded into a Category Five hurricane in just hours and hit the Mexican coastal city of Acapulco directly, causing massive destruction.

A nondescript tropical storm became a deadly hurricane in hours due to a perfect storm set of circumstances that did not exist previously. These events, including the Florida hurricanes, are driven by very high sea water surface temperatures, much higher than any on record. But the ongoing fire disaster in Los Angeles takes that kind of storm to a next level.

We are in the second week of that conflagration and there is no end in sight until later this week. The conditions that led to these explosive and widespread fires in a densely populated urban area include a wide range of weather-related contributors.

Southern California has been in a severe drought for months. Any rain that fell, fell in huge amounts in very brief time periods followed by more drought conditions. The result, to get weather wonky, was rapid growth of grasses and shrubs due to heavy rain, and then that undergrowth dried out and died leaving a region carpeted with fuel that could ignite in moments.

And then the Santa Ana winds, which are seasonal in SoCal, started up but at wind speeds rarely seen before, which turned that fuel into blowtorch fires that burned homes in moments and left burned out shells of cars and buildings across parts of LA.

Santa Ana winds are funneled by the configurations of mountain ranges east of Los Angeles. This time, climate change conditions combined to increase the power and speed of these gales.

You’ll note that the mention of climate change in that paragraph is the first time I have used that phrase, but it is the direct cause behind all of this, despite the ridiculous claims to the contrary that defy all climate science. This thing is more real than anyone can imagine, unless they have felt the impact being experienced now.

Entire towns and cities destroyed in hours. That only 24 people have died in LA, so far, is almost miraculous, perhaps the one thing we can be grateful for. But the denial of global warming is not just politics, it is criminally dangerous and people are dying as a result. The recent politicization of the LA storm by the right, including the President elect, is more than shameful. It just makes a terrible situation far worse as they cast doubt on reality, for personal gain.

Changing gears, the arrogant performance of Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth in his confirmation hearing only served to reinforce the cynicism of Trump’s choices for his leadership team. The man is a walking disaster zone, disdainful of women, a bad drunk, an alleged sexual abuser, and completely unqualified to manage anything. Yet Republicans, maintaining straight faces, extoll his virtues.

I don’t know, or want to know, what world they live in.

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith released the evidence in his case, now dropped, against Trump for his backing of the January Sixth insurrection. I have no interest in writing about it because anyone paying attention already knows the details. He was guilty.

The real story as far as I’m concerned is that Trump found a way to circumvent the law even, when blatantly guilty, through marshaling armies of lawyers to delay and leveraging his corrupt judges to block every turn. And the Republican Party paid the legal bills. But the truly guilty party here is Attorney General Merrick Garland who let this happen.

Garland could have stopped the farce and held Trump to a trial schedule like any other citizen. Instead he deferred to an unwritten Justice Department rule (not law) that gives candidates a break during elections. Trump’s team seized that idea and used it to demolish the rule of law that holds our democracy together.

Garland’s failure to act may be the single worst consequence of the Trump years.

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Thank you,

Martin