Hurricane Ida started on Aug. 24 to the northwest of Trinidad and Tobago as a tropical storm. On Aug. 29, it traveled to the Gulf of Mexico and hit a category four hurricane in that area. Soon after, it hit Louisiana also as a category four.By the time it hit Pennsylvania it was a tropical depression however it still did a lot of damage in Southern Pennsylvania. All of that damage came to approximately $100 million to repair . There is currently a Hurricane Ida relief fund, and you may apply for it. There are also Red Cross shelters for those who lost their home. This natural disaster broke a few records such as being the second costliest hurricane and also tying with the strongest recorded cyclone on record to hit Louisiana. No one will forget about this soon.

Hurricane Ida has also impacted agriculture and hunting.The Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, program has had trouble growing certain fruits and vegetables and supplying them to their subscribers. Gary Borrow, the farm manager of Brenckle’s Organic Farm and Greenhouse, made several comments as to how the extreme rainfall impacted agriculture and the CSA. To fill up bags for its subscribers, the company had to source some produce from River Organic. 

“This year for many farmers tomatoes were the hardest to grow. With all of the rain, diseases such as blight and bacterial wilt spread very fast throughout the fields. We knew the hurricane was coming but we didn’t see much physical damage to crops. Most of the damage has come after the result of so much rain and diseases and fungus problems. The rain helped the peppers get very large, however it also spread fungus to the plants. From what we have heard from other farmers this season tomatoes were bad this year ( low yield, texture issues) The hail in the spring destroyed many early crops for farmers. The extreme heat made many corn fields ripen at the same time which resulted in loss of profit. I would also like to add that we are seeing pests and bugs that we wouldn’t have in previous seasons. Warmer weather in the winter due to climate change allows more southern pests to overwinter and do more damage,” Borrow stated.

Hunting was one of the sports that the rainfall impacted, though it is a very small inconvenience. The only prey that was in season was doves and the flooding of fields impacted the birds because usually they would crowd in the field and once they were scared they would be shot down. It is much more difficult to spook them when they are in trees.

Tropical storm, now depression, Hurricane Nicholas has been active since Sept. 14. It briefly turned into a category one when it hit landfall but quickly went back to tropical storm. It mainly impacted Texas and Louisiana and took out power from around 100,000 homes in Texas.

Climate change is just making the weather worse each year, and eventually it may go beyond a category five hurricane. Increases in greenhouse gases, decreases in air pollution, sea level rising all cause tropical cyclones to become more intense. Some people do not believe in climate change, and others are attempting to go green and slow down the process that the human race is speeding up.