Local Weather Historian Amazed by Hurricane Sandy
Dr. Jerome Thaler of Yorktown has been observing weather for about half a century and even he was astonished by the destructive force of Hurricane Sandy.
“To me, this is a first. I have never seen this much damage,” said Thaler, who, like most residents in northern Westchester, suffered a lengthy power outage from the vicious winds that snapped trees and utility poles like toothpicks. “Tropical Storm Irene was mild compared to this. When you get steady winds more than 40 miles per hour and the ground is saturated, you can get a lot of trees down.”
Thaler has written four books on weather in the Hudson Valley, Westchester County, Catskills and Adirondacks. He also has 100 years of daily data of weather records for New York State. He explained the ocean level has raised a foot during the last century and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is greater than it has been in the last 600,000 years.
He said carbon dioxide, which is created from burning wood, oil and fossil fuel, is the main culprit of the severe weather events experienced in recent years.
“People are burying their head in the sand. Some of the hottest years on record have been in the last 10 to 20 years,” Thaler said. “There’s more melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica. It’s from human activity.”
Rick has more than 40 years’ experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, running the gamut from politics and crime to sports and human interest. He has been an editor at Examiner Media since 2012. Read more from Rick’s editor-author bio here. Read Rick’s work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/pezzullo_rick-writer/
