25 September 2026
The road to Rodanthe, North Carolina on the Outer Banks is closed today because storm waves have breached it near the Pea Island Visitors Center.
The waves are from a Nor’easter 300 miles out to sea. It’s not a hurricane. Maximum wind gusts are 45-50 mph.
Here’s what the ocean is doing in Rodanthe.
And here’s what that same road looks like in happier times (though maybe not the same section of it).
The ocean is unforgiving when you build your house on sand.
24 September 2026
While studying bat roosts in the eastern U.S., Joy O’Keefe found that natural roosting sites provide better protection from temperature extremes than artificial ones.
When it’s hot outdoors, bat boxes are even hotter inside. When it’s extremely cold, the boxes don’t retain heat.
As climate change makes weather more extreme there have been die-offs of animals and birds and even humans who couldn’t find shelter from the heat. O’Keefe wondered about the sheltering capabilities of tree cavities and artificial shelters. She led a study team that looked into natural cavities.
Their analysis revealed that these natural shelters consistently provided a buffer against both high and low temperatures. Daily maximum temperatures were around 2.7°C [4.86°F] cooler in the refuges than outside. On hotter days, when temperatures climbed above 30°C [86°F], that cooling difference grew to 4.1°C [7.38°F cooler].
These abodes also offered protection against cold. Compared to the lowest temperatures outside, the resting places were 2.8°C [5.04°F] warmer. On days when the mercury dropped below 10°C [14°F], the difference was slightly greater at 3.1°C [5.58°F warmer].
— Anthropocene Magazine: The humble tree hole turns out to be a remarkable climate refuge
If you have an old tree with holes in it, keep it standing as long as possible. For the birds.
If you put up a bat box or nest box make sure it’s protected from extreme heat and cold.
Read more at Anthropocene Magazine:
22 September 2026
St. Mary’s Glacier in Clear Creek County, Colorado is gone. The photo at top showed what it looked like nine years ago as seen from the shore of its glacial lake.
Here’s how it looked in Google satellite view.
By late last week, 17 September 2026, it was gone.
Technically St. Mary’s was a permanent snowfield, not a glacier. Glaciers are made of dense ice that flows downhill under its own weight. A permanent snowfield is made of layers of snow and granular compacted snow that does not move. However a permanent snowfield is one that survives summer’s heat. This is the first time Saint Mary’s Glacier has completely melted in over one hundred years.
In case you’re wondering this “glacier” was in Colorado, not Montana. (Click here to see where St. Mary’s Glacier was located in Colorado.) There is a St. Mary’s region in Glacier National Park, Montana but none of the glaciers bear that name. I visited Glacier National Park in 2016.
If you want to see glaciers, visit them soon. They are disappearing around the world due to climate change.
9 August 2026
A year ago, on 10 August 2025, a mega tsunami flooded the Tracy Arm fjord south of Juneau, Alaska. It began at the foot of the South Sawyer Glacier.
The tsunami was truly “mega” with a wall of water 1,578 ft tall (481m). To put this in perspective, the wave would have over-topped Acadia National Park’s highest peak, Cadillac Mountain (1,530 feet) and was almost twice the height of the U.S. Steel Tower in Downtown Pittsburgh.
The tsunami was triggered not by an earthquake but by a landslide where the South Sawyer Glacier has retreated.
Fortunately it happened so early in the morning that no one was there. At midday as many as 100 sightseeing boats would have been in the fjord. This simulation by Patrick Lynett shows what it would have looked like from a boat viewing the toe of the glacier.
simulation by Patrick Lynett on YouTube
Here’s a simulation of the tsunami from above.
Within days USGS scientists conducted aerial surveys of Tracy Arm to measure the tsunami and the force of the water. They were amazed at what they found.
Scientists have known for years that glacial retreat can trigger landslides.
As glaciers retreat with ever-increasing speed, ice that for millennia has held up potentially unstable mountainsides disappears, a process called debuttressing. Geologists debate specifics of the process, but they acknowledge it contributes to slides, some of which are big enough to block rivers or trigger deadly tsunamis in lakes or oceans.
— 1 Oct 2020, The Revelator: A recent string of massive landslides in Alaska and around the world bears the fingerprint of climate change, by Tim Lydon
In making a fjord, the glacier carves a steep U-shaped valley. As it does so it loosens rock and exerts pressure against the walls it is creating. When the glacier retreats, the pressure against the walls disappears. Loose material sags and becomes a landslide.
Here’s the origin of this image showing the life cycle of a glacier and the walls it created. The animation does not show the landslides.
Glacier Valley Formation, animation from Wikimedia
What’s disturbing is that the frequency of glacial-retreat tsunamis has increased dramatically in Alaska in the past 15 years. Where is it dangerous? Should sightseeing boats avoid certain glaciers? Which ones? And what about coastal towns within reach of the tsunamis?
As climate change heats up, glaciers are retreating fast and gets the brunt of it. Alaska is the poster child for climate change.
31 July 2026
This week, 25 July 2026, a massive iceberg floated into webcam view at Ilulissat on the west coast of Greenland (red arrow on map below ). The iceberg was so massive that it filled the camera screen.
In less than three hours — from 5:03am to 7:47am — it collapsed, flipped and largely disintegrated. Then its remnants floated away.
The video below from afarTV on YouTube condenses 2 hours and 44 minutes into just over 10 minutes by speeding up the boring parts and playing the excitement in real time.
It’s amazing and a little scary to watch something that big move so fast. The birds are unperturbed.
Check out other live and recorded feeds from Afar TV including live volcanoes.
19 July 2026
The photo at top shows the worst day in the Niagara Falls area as seen in St. Catharines on Wednesday 15 July. Pittsburgh’s worst day was Friday the 17th, shown in the video below.
The source is nearly 1,000 forest fires in northern Minnesota and western Ontario, most of them at least a 1,000 miles away. Across the continent there are many, many more. Here’s what’s burning in North America this morning according to NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System US/CANADA map.
On Friday Pittsburgh’s air was so bad it was Hazardous (Maroon color) …
… shown on the PurpleAir map(*), Friday 17 July 2026 at 6:42am EDT. I’ve made it tiny so you won’t confuse it with today’s map. Click on the image for a larger view.
Happily the air cleared Saturday at noon and air quality improved into the Orange zone (considered a high rating but alas fairly common Pittsburgh’s Mon Valley). I went out for a walk and, though it was nice to be outdoors, it was so humid I dripped with sweat.
Today’s air quality should be even better, right? Nooooo! It’s in the Red Zone.
Why is it worse? Why is it here at all?
This wildfire smoke comes to us on upper level winds that pass over the fire area before they reach us. (Wildfire smoke has risen that high!) This wind map from earth: a global map of wind, weather and ocean conditions shows the jet stream coming from the fire zone this morning (7:18am) and dipping south to reach us. Pittsburgh is the black dot.
On Saturday upper level winds were coming from the Great Plains so our air was better. (I’ve added a wobbly green arrow to Saturday’s map to point this out. Pittsburgh is the black dot.)
So I’m hoping the jet stream will wobble and give us good air. Then we’ll breathe easy.
And… a Huge Debt of Gratitude to Hudson Valley Weather on Facebook for their excellent description of the origin and persistence of the fires and upper-level transport. Their Facebook post is well worth a read.
p.s. (*) PurpleAir’s interactive map has a dot for each air quality monitor providing realtime data to their network. Some of the dots are government AQ monitors but most are individuals and organizations like GASP that want/need to know the air quality in their area.
17 July 2026
Yesterday while I wrote about the raging wildfires in western Ontario, 1000 miles from Pittsburgh, their smoke was blowing in our direction. By 8:00am yesterday I could see it as faint haze. By sunset it had turned the sun orange. The smoke was so thick that John English did not need a filter to photograph the sun, complete with sunspot.
Since then the air has gotten worse and is dangerous for everyone.
The PurpleAir monitor network shows a large swath of hazardous air (maroon color) from Western Ontario through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. Its path is amazingly well defined on the northern edge where you need only drive 50-60 miles to escape the smoke (green). I’ve drawn a white line at that edge. Click on the screenshot for a closeup of the white line. Click to see the live PurpleAir monitor map. Zoom in on their map to see the details.
Because of Pittsburgh’s frequent industrial bad air, the Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP) teamed up with six local organizations to place PurpleAir monitors in the gaps of Allegheny County’s air monitoring network. Here’s the GASP 06 monitor in West Oakland at 8:01am this morning, 17 July 2026. Find out more about the Allegheny County Community Air Monitoring Project here and see their real-time data here.
Observations:
Distant landmarks outside my window have disappeared. Notice the water tower in the sunrise picture is gone today.
I have seen very few birds flying. No hawks, no finches, no sparrows. Three chimney swifts came out this morning to check the air and went back to their roost. No swifts flying now.
Having lived in the Mon Valley airshed, I am all too familiar with the smell of Pittsburgh’s bad air. Yesterday it I was momentarily amazed the air does not smell like sulfur.
Indoor air quality is better that outdoors, but not best. Yesterday afternoon at 4pm I turned on my air filter and found out we were in the Red Zone. I’ve left it running since.
2 July 2026
We’ve been living with extreme heat in Pittsburgh since Monday and we’re learning to cope, but it’s worth pointing out Extreme Heat will continue in the City and Allegheny Valley through Sunday 5 July.
We won’t really be out of the furnace until the work week begins on Monday. See slideshow below. Click on a slide to zoom it. 🙁
Get the current and forecast heat risk by zip code, including actions you can take to protect yourself, at CDC Heat Risk.
p.s. If you want to help birds in this heat, set out a bird bath or mister.
22 April 2026, Earth Day
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. Pittsburgh had all four seasons in just four days, 17 to 20 April, 2026.
The graph below shows the rising and falling temperature in pale blue.
Every day we had to dress for a different season and quickly learned not to put away our winter clothes.
Spring, 17 April: On the day it was Spring the flowers bloomed and we wore long sleeves and light jackets.
Summer, 18 April: On the day it was Summer, summer flowers bloomed and went to seed.
We wore our summer clothes to the Frick Park Environmental Education Center’s 10th Anniversary celebration with Tessa, Brooke and Delia. It was 82°F.
Autumn, 19 April: On the day it was Fall the plants could not pivot so quickly to fall colors. They were still spring green.
Winter, 20 April: On the day it was Winter — only two days after Summer — it was so cold at Raccoon Creek Wildflower Preserve that we wore our winter clothes. (I had on two hats, two scarves and double mittens.) Brrrr!
In keeping with the winter theme we found fallen oak leaves and partridge berry fruit.
This shagbark hickory knew Spring wasn’t here yet. It continued to protect its new leaves.
However, the ground looked like Spring anyway.
56 years ago, on the first Earth Day, the seasons changed slowly. Now that we’re dealing with climate change the weather changes abruptly. Four seasons in four days.
This Friday 24 April it will be Summer again (81°F).
p.s. The trail pictured above was completely flooded on 27 March yet fully recovered by 20 April. See photo/video of 27 March on Facebook –> flood at Raccoon Creek Wildflower Reserve.
p.p.s. I corrected the names in this article on 26 April — people on our Frick outing.
8 March 2026
The woodland crocuses (Crocus tommasinianus) on Neville Street have been blooming for a couple of days but I didn’t notice until yesterday. My guess at their bloom date is Thursday 5 March.
This is not unexpected. The weather had been above 50°F for four days and yesterday topped out at 78.8°F!
During last year’s photo shoot many bees were visiting the flowers. None this year. 🙁
How does this year’s crocus bloom date compare to those in the past?
Crocus First-Bloom Dates in Pittsburgh’s East End range from late February to the first three weeks of March.
This year follows the early trend but is well within the cluster. Interestingly, the dates in February are earlier each time they occur. Repeated dates are circled in green.
Flowers are popping up all over.
