Weather Entering Campaign About More Than Just Global Warming Fight
Why? Well, the obvious — the responses to Louisiana and Hermine and perhaps what will still be some healthy hurricane threats. Just like summer in the East, the second half of the hurricane season needs to be played. But with a temperature of 79 degrees Fahrenheit, a dewpoint of 61, a relative humidity of 53% and *northwest* winds gusting to 28 MPH in Central Park yesterday at 10 AM, the idea that the weather was responsible for Hillary Clinton’s health crisis is far fetched to say the least. There were a lot of people gathered in NYC yesterday morning for the 9/11 events. I wonder, given the above normal amount of people at that time of the day, how many other weather-related events occurred due to heat problems.
Why? Well, the obvious — the responses to Louisiana and Hermine and perhaps what will still be some healthy hurricane threats. Just like summer in the East, the second half of the hurricane season needs to be played.
But with a temperature of 79 degrees Fahrenheit, a dewpoint of 61, a relative humidity of 53% and northwest winds gusting to 28 MPH in Central Park yesterday at 10 AM, the idea that the weather was responsible for Hillary Clinton’s health crisis is far fetched to say the least. There were a lot of people gathered in NYC yesterday morning for the 9/11 events. I wonder, given the above normal amount of people at that time of the day, how many other weather-related events occurred due to heat problems.
Here’s what is disturbing: It was darn hot in NYC on Saturday for this time of the year and it’s been a hot late summer. So the people running Hillary’s campaign and a complicit media were willing to, like in so many other cases, get a questionable explanation out there and then leave it to people who actually know what is going on (in this case the weather aspect) to respond to it. There are many people who are thinking this morning that maybe it was the heat, though Hillary’s pneumonia was later revealed as an explanation. I find it odd to stage a photo event with a little girl who has a family with an infant if you have pneumonia.
Obviously, the idea Hillary is a trooper and is fighting hard is a missive. In the world of competitive athletics, going till you fall over is looked at as a badge of courage. In my case, the occasions I have passed out were because I simply could not handle the workload or I was sick. On Feb. 5, 2014, I was in the hospital dehydrated because I worked out hard and had the flu and was exhausted because of a 10-day stretch where I was sleeping four hours a night keeping up with the weather pattern. I actually had to cancel an appearance with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto because of it.
In a way, that was weather related. But the weather conditions yesterday being passed off as the cause is a huge stretch. I wonder how many other heat-related problems EMS had to handle yesterday morning in NYC? It goes to show exactly how this machine works. Get it out there, let an unquestioning media simply swallow and follow, and then the truth comes out in bits and pieces later (and who knows if that is true). In a way it’s what we have seen in other things, but again my mandate is weather and climate commentary. In this case there was an intersection, but the intersection was because of people making up an unlikely cause, the weather. Then again, weather and climate get blamed for a lot of things these days, don’t they?
Joe Bastardi is chief forecaster at WeatherBELL Analytics, a meteorological consulting firm.
