CHANGING CLIMATE BRINGS “COMEDY WEATHER”

But it’s no laughing matter!

Overlapping and mutually reinforcing environmental crises are moving the planet closer to unprecedented atmospheric events, according to a new report signed by more than 149 international scientists.

The results sound scary, bu they are also hilarious. 

“We have seen the bush fires, the hurricanes, the coastal flooding,” said Ferris Everly, a climatologist at the university of East Scale. “They are all terrifying. But there are other rarer events that spring from the same causes but are significantly more entertaining.”

For example, Everly said, there’s “Clown Rain.” “This is a precipitation that originates in snow-like conditions but takes on dust and other particles and results in small, soft, red globes falling out of the sky. “The first time it happened, one of our scientists was looking up, and one of these slush spheres fell right into his face. It looked exactly like a clown nose. Who was it? Was it Brian?”

Clown Rain is highly acidic and toxic, and contains potentially problematic levels of radioactivity. 

NOT JUST THAT

Clown Rain needs a human assistant for full effect, but other weather phenomena work on their own. “Take Emoji Lightning,” Everly said. “There are certain cloud formations that look exactly like emojis. There’s a round altostratus that looks like the smiley face, and a pyramidal cumulonimbus that looks like the poop. This lightning I’m talking about is like a sheet, illuminating one patch of cloud. It creates the impression of an emoji in the sky. Delightful!” Everly adds that Emoji Lightning usually is usually an early warning sign for a Volcanocane, a hurricane that rises out of the open mouth of an erupting volcano. 

And then there’s what Everly calls Chattering Teeth, a wind that is alternately violent and absent. “We think of it as a series of miniature air tsunamis,” he said. “But it makes a very comic noise, like those plastic chattering teeth.” The on-again, off-again wind can kill crops and livestock.

TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY

Everly and his team are trying to raise awareness of these weather events, partly to warn people about the state of the planet, and partly to entertain. “It’s a critical time, to be sure,” Everly said. “But just because something is dire doesn’t mean that we can’t all laugh about it. Someone on the team put it more succinctly: ‘Laugh now, die later.’ I think it was Brian.”

Brian passed away in November.