Yeah. I'm talking about Miami, Florida - that place with the subtropical climate. That place where the humidity hits you like a mugging when you open the front door?

That Miami.

We lived there for a few years after Daddy got out of the Marine Corps and started flying for Eastern. It was a tiny box of a house in a development freshly carved out of the swamp, our street ending at yet another ubiquitous South Florida canal. We were in the wilderness in our little bungalow in the swamp. 

Even when we moved north, we were back at least a couple of times a year because my grandmother was still in Miami Shores. One of my fondest memories is booking out of her pool for the safety of the house at the first rumbles of thunder on a steamy afternoon. As a little person, it was pretty thrilling watching the deluges bursting from the sky - flinching as lightning flashed and crashed - safely through the jalousie windows in her sunroom. 

Then begging "pleasepleasepleasepleasePLEASE" to get back in the water the second the first hint of sun peeked through 10 minutes later.

Lather, rinse and repeat every half hour or so. That juicy atmosphere fed repeated thunderstorms almost every afternoon.

So I am pretty familiar with the climate there, even if not with the area built up as it is all these decades later. 

I look at maps now in amazement, but considering what the population of Miami-Dade County has done in just the past 35+ years?

1990 POPULATION

1,943,717

2022 POPULATION

2,673,837

Holy smokes. They had to put all those people somewhere.

"Somewhere" means more housing, and "housing" means concrete for that, shopping centers, etc., and roads to get almost a million extra people who've moved to the area in the past couple of decades to their new homes or apartments. Not to mention a booming tourist industry and the revitalization of the older parts of the city.

Tampa and other SoFL cities have experienced the same, as well. They've boomed, and in some consecutive decades, their population has grown by over 4%.

So when a rain "event" happens as opposed to the everyday downpours or thunderstorms, the water has no place to run off to and be absorbed anymore. This is true not only in Miami, but all up the FL coasts on both sides. It causes serious problems, which is what happened yesterday.

A tropical system moving over the lower part of the state stalled out and did what they do best - dumped water.

In no time at all, South Florida, from the Gulf to the Atlantic, as one might expect was awash.

What a pain in the butt, right? Oh, it's better than that.

WHAT AN EXCUSE FOR SOME CLIMATE CHANGE FEAR-MONGERING

Besides the national news hopping on the bandwagon - 

"...A once in a ONE THOUSAND YEAR event..."

- FL Democrats took smug pleasure in wallowing in their cheap shots and lighting their hair on fire.

So much rain immediately ruined the effect, though.

Florida Dem spox doubles down after a HISTORIC ratio. The Bronx transplant insists that rain isn't a normal part of living in Florida. If you elect his preferred candidates, they can turn the rain off
-- you'll just need to pay more taxes, give up your car, and eat the bugs. https://t.co/3GvPNkqpbH

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) June 13, 2024

Democratic state senators pitched in to help raise the false alarm.

Rain. What you’re looking at is rain.

— Florida Dad (@FloridadadD) June 12, 2024

What is truly fun about the free flow of information now is that low-information gas-lighters can be ruthlessly and immediately schooled with facts.

Facts like "a lot of rain in South Florida" which, as hard as it is to believe, has "actually happened many times before."

[CUE: sad trombone]

I was more than happy to pile on with unsolicited facts about the Florida Panhandle, which also receives "rain." Sometimes in copious amounts that causes problems that have absolutely nothing to do with "climate change" or even tropical systems.

It just rains a bunch because?

WEATHER

The 2014 event up here was wild but none of us were sacrificing chickens to the climate gods. We were just pissed about our crappy luck.

Freak “S” shaped storm unleashes biblical rain in Pensacola, Mobile

A rare and extreme weather pattern has produced obscene and devastating amounts of rainfall from Mobile, Alabama to Pensacola, Florida.  Up to 2 feet of rain fell in the last 24 hours in isolated locations in this region.

...The Escambia Sheriff’s Office in Pensacola logged over 26 inches according to WeatherBug.

Remarkably, these rainfall totals bested scores of moisture-laden tropical storms and hurricanes that have come through this region over the last century.

FTR, Pensacola also retains the Florida state crown for "wettest year eh-vah": 127.24 inches in 1878. We are a perpetually soggy bunch of rednecks.

The climate change thunderstorm and tropical expert never did get back to me. 

I'm sure this takes all the drama out of a juicy story for fellow climate cultists while taking nothing away from what the folks in the middle of all that water are putting up with right now.

Even our 2014 event was "rare," as in it "had happened before." It was not "unprecedented."

So stop with the constant Henny Penny sky falling would you all?

Unless you can prove it's not just the weather. 

For all your caterwauling, facts still prove it is.