Crazy weather

BREAKING CLIMATE NEWS
Locals near Everest fret about Mother Nature’s next surprise
Photo: SNOWED UNDER: Namche Bajar last week under a metre of snow

March 27,2 006
If there is all this global warming how come it snowed so much this spring? That is what trekkers and Sherpas in Khumbu were asking last week as an unprecedented and unseasonal blizzard dumped heavy snow at the tail end of a bone-dry winter. Meterologists explain it is not so much climate change but climate variability associated with the greenhouse effect. No one we spoke to in Khumbu last week could remember a winter like this without snow, or a spring with so much. “This is something we never saw and heard about,” said 80-year-old Jangbu Sherpa, at Namche Bajar. “It’s quite ominous.”

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