Weather Nail Art | Earth Day Challenge Day 4

Hey everyone! Its time for another Earth Day Challenge themed mani! Todays theme is weather, which you may or may not know this but I am a bit of a weather fanatic. Specifically when it's pertaining too tropical weather. Actually only when its tropical!





Ha, I'm not sure why but tropical weather fascinates me, probably because its so heavily related to the ocean and y'all know I LOVE the ocean! :) Soon as its tropical weather season tho, I spend a lot of time keeping up with The Weather Channel, and my NWS tweet notification. I pay attention to all of the storms within the Gulf and to Atlantic because potentially to could technically hit where I live or cause some sort of effect.

Now obviously any sort of Hurricane/Tropical Storm/Invest/Depression is not a good thing. They are scary, and very dangerous but also interesting to watch. The weird thing is that lately thunder storms scare me more. I have actually figured out why, but still isn't that weird. For me thunderstorms are more sudden/less predictable. Whereas a hurricane you can predict and you can flee the area with a good amount of notice, but a thunderstorm is so unpredictable and lets be honest we don't try to evade the area for a thunderstorm. Now this is all just my thoughts/feelings on the two compared side by side and I'm a bit biased because fire scares me and a house near us caught fire years ago from a random lightning strike in a pop up unpredicted storm and I guess thats sort of haunting me.

Hurricanes though we often have plenty of warning and time for preparing, yet at the same time they can be/are devastating and with the rising temperatures of the ocean, its bound to create even stronger storm in the future. In case you didn't know, Tropical weather is fueled by the heat of the ocean. As a storm enters warmer waters, it strengthens. Then makes the storm categorization go up, and just this past Fall we saw a Category 5 hurricane hit the United States. Its only the 4th Category 5 Hurricane to do so, and from what I have heard from meteorologists on The Weather Channel, they expect this to be an ongoing trend as the ocean heats up. In just the past 4 or 5 years there have been a more abundant amount of storms of high categories.


Climate change is causing this, and its also causing the extreme cold temperatures that were recorded this year. We are having major extremes in both realms of weather types. I can't speak for the cold/winter weather as much as I can thats why this post leans more on the Hurricane side of weather, but it does affect both.

The area of which I live in had not been hit in I wanna say 100 years, but in the Fall of 2016 we were hit with Hurricane Matthew. Sure there'd been tropical storms and hurricanes but none as close as Matthew. Plus as a newer Florida resident at that time it was also my first Hurricane. I saw things in a different way than I had ever before as I used to live in the midwest. Then in Fall of 2017 we had Hurricane Irma and that one was different than Matthew.More intense, more damage and caused flooding that had never been seen. Plus this Hurricane basically hit all of Florida by going straight up the middle. Maria was also that year and really wrecked so much of Puerto Rico.  Last year, 2018, we were very fortunate to not have any major Hurricane affect us, we got some rain from Michael but my area was fairly untouched.

However for a good chunk of the Panhandle of Florida, that cannot be said. Hurricane Michael was horrifying to see on the news. The gulf was so warm last year and it just created a monster of a storm. I watched it all unfold too as much as I could. I remember watching it and even all of those reporting on it saying they'd not witnessed a storm like that, and saying they were just sure it would come out later as a Category 5 and just recently that was confirmed. Complete areas were wiped out, so many lost their homes and from local news reports I've seen many are still without homes, tent cities have become a thing, FEMA doesn't have enough temporary housing, and everything is being dealt with in a very slow manor. Plus I've heard schools have had to permanently close, and its all just so sad to see.

I used to vacation in one of the hard hit areas a lot growing up, so some of the places they showed on the news I actually recognized which is probably one of the reasons I was so drawn to all of it as well. However, even if that had not been the case it's still very sad, and could easily happen again with the ocean temperatures rising, as well as the sea level rising. In Mondays post we spoke about Sea levels rising and I wanted to mention that this is also affecting tropical storms. White the storm levels rising, its causing stronger storm surges. Plus allowing for storm surges to travel further inland than before. This is happening at a rather quick rate too, yet codes of evacuation and flood level things that people have to consider for their houses are not changing in enough time for people to know.


There is just so so much that goes into all of this and I could go on and on, but I better wrap it up because I really don't have many photos for todays mani. Its actually a weird mani too. Ha! Its supposed to be a look at past of the Souths coastline, and a graphic of a storm with the cone of uncertainty. Which is the predicted path for a Tropical Storm.


This one was not based off of anything specific, just the idea of a cone of uncertainty. When its that close to the state you are most certainly preparing! We've now prepared for two big Hurricanes and we have been very fortunate. We're in an area where people evacuate too, so overall its been deemed as a safe zone. We haven't even lost power from a Hurricane yet, yay for underground lines. During Irma we lost cable and the internet for a few hours but really thats really good considering!


Well I think we best wrap up this post as I have chatted way more than expected ha! So lets chat again in the near future! :) Hope you have enjoyed this long read, and I'll talk to you again soon!

~25 Sweetpeas