E. C. (Gene) Ayres Blogspot

 I am in Florida now, revisiting my old home turf, where I raised my son, and wrote my five Florida-based mystery novels, including my newest novel, RED TIDE . The weather has been weird, just as it has been weird in Seattle, now my primary residence. Seattle has been experiencing the hottest summer in recent history, unprecedented DROUGHT , and this following a winter with the lowest snowfall on record: only 16% of normal snowpack in the Cascade mountain range last winter. Meanwhile Florida is under an almost constant threat of flooding, which is occurring in the Tampa Bay area, where I stay, on an almost daily basis. Several rivers in the area have flooded to the point that hundreds of people have had to evacuate their homes, and there is no end in sight. Back when I first started writing my Tony Lowell Mystery series, beginning in the 1990s, Seattle had the wettest CLIMATE in America, and summer weather in Tampa Bay (or in St. Petersburg, where I lived) was actually

For those of us who live near the Coast—any coast—the latest news, on top of continents of plastic waste, oil spills, and the kind of criminal chemical dumping I wrote about in my latest eco-thriller, REDTIDE , is disturbing: scientists have now discovered a mysterious warming trend in both the Atlantic and Pacific. We are already experiencing weird weather. Last winter's snowfall in Boston was unprecedented. On the West Coast, California continues into the 4 th year of it's terrible drought . And this drought his now spread north all the way to Seattle and beyond. Seattle, my current home, has long been known for being wet. Not any more. This past winter the Cascade Mountains received only 16% of it's normal snowfall, which needless to say decimated the ski industry. The farms in the dry agricultural regions east of the Cascades are starving for water, and there has been almost no rainfall since winter. What more do we need to know--to do--before it's too