Guest post: The armadillos were showing a lot of promise

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Catastrophic inland migration.

Meanwhile in South-Eastern Norway, where the bulk of the population lives, 2021 still stands as the last somewhat “normal” year so far. In what we used to think of as a “normal” year the water flow in our rivers would increase something like five-fold, and the levels in our reservoirs (i.e. lakes) would rise several meters above the “highest regulated water level” around the second half of May due to snowmelt in the mountains. This “spring flood” was considered so reliable that hydropower companies would lower their reservoirs towards the “lowest regulated water level” during the winter season (when the demand for power was high and prices were good), knowing that they would be filled up again in May [1].

Well, the old “normal” ended in 2022. That’s when the trusted spring flood remained completely absent due to record low levels of snow in the mountains. Along with the European energy crisis following the Russian attack on Ukraine this had the effect of pushing energy prices for the consumers up to economy-breaking levels, and if not for heavy rainfall in late September/early October we would almost certainly have faced energy rationing during the winter of 2022/2023.

By contrast the next two years were practically the polar opposite, with the extreme weather event “Hans” totally dwarfing the spring flood in August of 2023 (usually the driest season of the year!), leading to widespread flooding damages and pushing energy prices for the power companies down to record-low levels [2]. 2024 may very well have been even wetter on average, with “flood-ish” condtions from early April to late October (!), but more manageable since we didn’t have a single concentrated deluge comparable to “Hans”.

Well, guess what. We’re back to the same situation as 2022, with hardly any snow in the mountains, no spring flood, and bone dry conditions. At least we were a little more prepared this time (I like to think I had a tiny hand in that by sounding the alarm bell already back in February) and began holding back water before the reservoirs managed to sink too low…

As I have previously pointed out, most people I talk to still seem to think of each new extreme as a temporary “freak anomaly” (occurring in a vacuum), or conclude that two record-dry and two record-wet years in a four-year period “cancel out”, leaving everything “normal” on average. And, to be fair, four data points is hardly a basis for making any strong inferences about the future. I’m pretty sure it won’t be good though. On a “brighter” note, one of the few many things the MAGA crowd and the woke crowd both have in common, apart from besides post-truth politics, identity politics, intolerance of opposing views, cancel culture, mob justice, arguments from sound volume/number of repetitions etc. etc. is the same commitment to make sure the world (or at least the man-made part of it) is not worth saving anyway. As I keep saying, I do feel bad about all those other species doomed to go down with us, though. I always thought the armadillos were showing a lot of promise…

[1] This didn’t just make sense from a purely economic point of view: Even back then there was a real danger of flooding populated areas if snowmelt coincided with heavy rain. You definitely don’t want all that water to go straight into the rivers at the same time with no buffer, and filling up a lake is a great buffer!

[2] Sunday the 16th of July between 2 PM and 3 PM spot prices reached an all time low of -61,84 € per Mega-Watt-hour. I.e. that’s how much power companies had to pay for every MWh of energy produced! (Due to changes in my workplace, I haven’t been paying close attention to the spot prices in the last two years, so for all I know this all-time low may very well have been surpassed since then).

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