via youtube.com
The Burning Bush
Poetry Prize, 2011
$200 First Prize and Publication in
the Fall 2011 In Our Own Words
Writer's Guidelines
To reward a poet whose writing1. Inspires others to value human life and the natural world instead of values
based on short-term economic advantage
2. Speaks for community-centered values,democratic processes, especially those whose voices are seldom heard
3. Demonstrates poetic excellence
4. Educates readers of the relevance of the past to the present and futureSubmission Deadline: 6/1/11.
Poems should be typed, and formatted as desired. Three poems maximum, any style or form. We prefer unpublished work, but published poems may be submitted.
If published before, please include where, when and any acknowledgement information we may need. While we take reasonable care with all your work,
be sure not to send your only copies.Send a stamped self addresses envelop with enough postage to return your work. Send an index card with your name, mailing address, email, phone and title of each poem submitted listed on it.
If your poem is selected for the Poetry Prize, we will need a brief (50 word) biographical statement from you.
That's it. Winners will be selected each July. Good Luck!Reading Fee: $12
Closing Date: 6/1/11
Mail to (snail mail ok):Burning Bush Publications
Poetry Prize
P.O. Box 4658
Santa Rosa, CA 95402Please note that submissions
without a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope will not be returned.
Check out our previous years' winners:
2010 Award: Winner
Connie Vaughn for
"I, Colony"
Honorable Mentions:
Carolyn Ingram for "For Elena my Sister in Itzapa, Guatemala"2009 Award: Winner
Lesléa Newman for
"What the Angel Really Said"
Honorable Mentions:
Erna Hennessy for "On Going to Prison"
Dion Farquhar for "Choice Bits"2008 Award: Winner
Anthony Russell White for
"The First Day of the New Era"
and two honorable mentions:
Sherry Weaver Smith: "Salvage: 'Aid Worker Report,'
Tondo, Manila, the Philippines, 1995",
and
Persis M. Karim: "Dawn on the Fall Equinox"2007 Award: Winner
C.S. Cooley
for "By Littles"
and two honorable mentions.2006 Award: Winner
Laura LeHew
for "Beauty"
and three honorable mentions.2005 Award: Winner
Sarah Browning
for "The Fifth Fact."2004 Award Winner:
Jon David Andersen for "Green World."2003 Award Winner:
Leonardo Alishan for "Tired Thoughts"
and three honorable mentions.2002 Award Winner:
Meliza Bañales for "Generations,"
and three honorable mentions.2001 Award Winner:
Drew Cherry for "Nunauguluk vs Icicle Seafoods,"
and three honorable mentions.2000 Award Winner:
Aya de León for "Grito de Vieques"
via bbbooks.com
Saraba Literary Magazine:
Issue 8 and Call for Submissions
(Nigeria/ Africa-wide)
Saraba, an electronic literary magazine, currently based in Ile-Ife, Nigeria is in its 8th Issue. In these issues, we have exlpored themes as diverse as Family, City Life, Economy, Niger Delta,
Religion/God,Technology, and Fashion.Our goal, from the onset, has been to encourage young emerging writers - although our contributors have ranged from unknown writers to well-known ones. We are proud to assert that our contributors are mainly young writers, whose writing are previously unknown, and whose talent and promise are overt in their works.
We have published writers mostly from Nigeria. But in addition, our contributors are writers resident in London, Paris, South Africa, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Kenya, India, USA, Zimbabwe, Russia, Cameroun, Australia, and so forth.Our 8th Issue, which is our most recent, was released on 15th April 2011. It is our proudest effort till date. In the Issue, we explore the knotty issue of fashion, and state that "... we failed in securing a unanimous perspective for fashion; how we succeeded in multiplying the richness, the effusiveness, the feverishness and sometimes agonizing details of fashion."
Writers in the issue include Yemi Soneye, Donald Molosi, Michael Lee Johnson, Chitzi Ogbumagba, Emmanuel Uweru Okoh Luso Mnthali, Lauren Henley, Victor Olusanya, Yolanda Mabuto Sokari Ekine, Damilola Ajayi, Tola Odejayi, Emmanuel Iduma Karen Chandler, and Kesiena Eboh.
The issue can be downloaded from http://sarabamag.com/featured/issue-8-fashion/
Our Issue and Chapbooks are published on www.sarabamag.com and can be downloaded free. We call on literary enthusiasts and the general reading public to explore the wide talent on offer. More importantly, we encourage readers to subscribe to the magazine. From our next issue, only subscribers would have access to the full content of the magazine. Subscription is free.
Submissions
Entries are received only for the e-magazine and chapbooks. Our site is improved continually to represent and reflect the best of emerging writing from Nigeria, Africa and the world. Interested contributors should read the following guidelines carefully.
Saraba’s staff is a small number of committed and enthusiastic but busy professionals. As such, entries that do not conform to these guidelines would not be considered. Our goal is to give emerging writers a voice and confidence, to give them the opportunity of having their works published.
For the magazine, we would, from the June Issue, publish content in two ‘portfolios.’ The first portfolio would be theme-based. Please see our themes for the year. We would publish, also, content of a general literary nature, but this portfolio would be smaller in size than the first.
Please send your work in an attachment in any of our three major categories: Fiction, Poetry and Non-Fiction. Send no more than one work at a time, and wait for our response before you send another. Word count for fiction works is 5,000, except otherwise announced. We’d accept no more than 3 poems at a time. For Non-fiction, we expect a broad range of new creative writing, including short memoirs, interviews, reviews, creative non-fiction, creative journalism, etc. Word count for this is 2,500.
We are also open to digital art including photographs, illustrations, paintings and so forth. Please send in high resolution jpeg files (not larger than 4 MB).
Please send alongside a bio of not more than 50 words (in third person).
Unsolicited poetry would not be considered for the chapbooks. If interested, please send a query and we would reply accordingly. Poems submitted would be generally considered for the magazine, on either of the portfolios.
Although we strive to highlight the talent and hard work of contributors, please note that we cannot afford to pay contributors.
Contact Information:
For inquiries: publishers@sarabamag.com
For submissions: http://saraba.submishmash.com/
Website: http://sarabamag.com
Call for Chapter Abstracts -
WHIRLWINDS Anthology:
Emerging Communities of
Sexual Minorities in Africa
Deadline: 31 May 2011WHIRLWINDS: Emerging Communities of Sexual Minorities in Africa will be an anthology that will examine the ways that sexual minorities are organizing themselves in new ways to create groups, networks, organizations, and movements across sub-Saharan Africa. By sexual minorities, we understand not only lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex groups but also localized endogenous sexual minorities, such hungochani, gor jigeen, dan daudu, and infinitely many others.
Scholars, writers, and activists are invited to submit abstracts for chapters that will contribute to an upcoming book project entitled WHIRLWINDS: Emerging Communities of Sexual Minorities in Africa, edited by Mark Canavera and Charles Gueboguo.
Editors’ Biographies
MARK CANAVERA is a writer, humanitarian aid worker and activist who works primarily in West Africa. His humanitarian efforts focus on youth empowerment and child and family welfare in settings impacted by conflict such as former child soldier reintegration in northern Uganda, small arms control in Senegal, girls education promotion in Burkina Faso, and child welfare system reform in Côte d’Ivoire and Niger. Mark was a founding editor of the Harvard Africa Policy Journal and served on the editorial staff of the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy. He writes features and op-ed pieces on African affairs and writes for The Huffington Post, America’s most widely read online newspaper. He received Harvard University’s prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Award for Public Service in 2008 and the Best Feature Writing in 1996 from the South Carolina Press Association.
CHARLES GUEBOGUO is an African scholar and author whose has developed pioneering research around sexual identity in French-speaking West Africa. His first book, La Question homosexuelle en Afrique: le cas du Cameroun (The Issue of Homosexuality in Africa: The Case of Cameroon), published in 2006, was the first French-language book-length study of African homosexuality and the first of its kind published by an African scholar. It was followed in 2009 by Sida et homosexualité(s) en Afrique: Analyse des communications de prévention (AIDS and African homosexualities: An analysis of preventive communication strategies), a critical reflection on the lack of appropriate HIV-prevention communication strategies for sexual minorities. He recently co-edited a special edition of the Canadian Journal of African Studies, which presented cutting-edge research and perspectives on sexualities in Africa. He was the recipient of the 2007 Fraser Taylor Award of the Canadian Association of African Studies and the 2009 International Resource Network Africa Simon Nkoli Award in recognition of outstanding contributions in the study of sexuality in Africa.
Overview
WHIRLWINDS: Emerging Communities of Sexual Minorities in Africa will be an anthology that will examine the ways that sexual minorities are organizing themselves in new ways to create groups, networks, organizations, and movements across sub-Saharan Africa. By sexual minorities, we understand not only lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex groups but also localized endogenous sexual minorities, such hungochani, gor jigeen, dan daudu, and infinitely many others.
As the book will be primarily descriptive and analytic in nature, the chapter abstracts submitted should not take the form of personal narratives or descriptions of the activities of a single organization. Rather, they should provide a descriptive, critical analysis of groups, organizations, or movements. While remaining accessible to a wide readership, WHIRLWINDS will be grounded in empirical research and thorough investigation.
The book will bring together chapters about both country-level studies and transversal analyses of major themes or trends across countries.
The editors have identified the following countries as likely chapters in the book and are seeking submissions for chapter abstracts related to them:
* Cameroon
* Democratic Republic of Congo
* Nigeria
* Senegal
* Uganda
* ZimbabweWriters submitting chapter abstracts about the above countries should include the following in their abstracts: a basic overview of the way that groups, organizations, communities, and networks are emerging among sexual minorities in the country; a description of the methods that the writer will use to gather the relevant data (e.g., how will she or he write about the given topic with a sufficient and credible evidence base?); and key points of analysis about the current state of communities of sexual minorities in the countries. If writers would like to submit an abstract for a country not currently identified on the above list, notably in the Maghreb, she or he is welcome to do so.
Transversal themes for which the editors are seeking submissions include:
* HIV/AIDS and communities of sexual minorities
* The interplay of Western and African organizations
* The role of women’s groups and organizations in sexual minority movements
* Transgender issues
* Historical precursors to current-day movements, groups, or organizing effortsWriters submitting thematic chapter abstracts should include the following in the abstracts: a brief presentation of the major issues to be considered in the chapter; a description of the data set (e.g., which countries, movements, or groups will be considered in the analysis) and of the methods that the writer will use to gather the relevant data; and key points of analysis that will be undertaken. If writers would like to submit a transversal theme that is not included in above list, she or he is welcome to do so.
Writer ProfilesGiven the book’s analytic nature, the editors are seeking writers with strong skills in research, critical analysis, and argumentation. Writers with journalistic and activist backgrounds are welcome to submit chapter abstracts although they must clearly lay out how they will ground their analyses in rigorous research and investigation and how they will make links to the wider body of literature around sexual minorities in Africa.
Strong preference will be given to writers from African countries and research institutes although writers of any background are welcome to submit. As the book must present a common tone, writers whose abstracts are selected for the book project should expect to work closely with the editors to revise their chapters as the project progresses. At the current time, the editors cannot guarantee any payment for work related to this book.
Instructions for SubmissionChapter abstracts should be sent by May 31, 2011 to whirlwinds@rocketmail.com.
Chapter abstracts can be submitted in either English or French although French-language writers should know that the editors will seek to publish the book through an English-language press. (Both editors speak French and will work with French-language writers on translation.)
Abstracts should be no longer than one page long, and they should be accompanied by a brief biography of the author. Writers are welcome to revise former speeches and presentations for submission as chapter abstracts as long as they have not been previously published.
Potential writers should note that the language of the chapters should avoid jargon as the book will seek to present nuanced ideas in clear, straightforward language that will appeal to a broad readership beyond academia.
Contact Information:
For inquiries: whirlwinds@rocketmail.com
For submissions: whirlwinds@rocketmail.com
Breakin’ Convention ' 11 - International Festival of Hip Hop Dance Theatre in London
The three-day international festival, Breakin’ Convention in London is back with performances from some of the world’s best poppers, lockers, house dancers, b-boys and b-girls.Date/place: 28 April - 2 May 2011 - Sadler's Wells,Rosebery Avenue, Islington, London EC1R 4TN.
Hosted and curated by Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Jonzi D, Breakin’ Convention is much more than just a spectator sport, there will also be dozens of extra events taking place including workshops, film screenings, DJ demos, impromptu foyer freestyle sessions and even live aerosol art.
Breakin' Convention has been producing the critically acclaimed International Festival of Hip Hop Dance Theatre since 2004 at SADLER'S WELLS, featuring the very best, most influential artists from around the corner and around the world!With tickets on sale for just £20 or £15 standing, book early to make sure you don’t miss out! Website www.breakinconvention.com
Breakin’ Convention ' 11
- International Festival of
Hip Hop Dance Theatre in London
The three-day international festival, Breakin’ Convention in London is back with performances from some of the world’s best poppers, lockers, house dancers, b-boys and b-girls.
Date/place: 28 April - 2 May 2011 - Sadler's Wells,Rosebery Avenue, Islington, London EC1R 4TN.
Hosted and curated by Sadler’s Wells Associate Artist Jonzi D, Breakin’ Convention is much more than just a spectator sport, there will also be dozens of extra events taking place including workshops, film screenings, DJ demos, impromptu foyer freestyle sessions and even live aerosol art.
Breakin' Convention has been producing the critically acclaimed International Festival of Hip Hop Dance Theatre since 2004 at SADLER'S WELLS, featuring the very best, most influential artists from around the corner and around the world!With tickets on sale for just £20 or £15 standing, book early to make sure you don’t miss out! Website
Winnie The Opera
R10 million funding, four years of planning and six weeks of intense rehearsal will see fruition as Winnie The Opera takes to the stage at the Pretoria State Theatre for five performances only on April 28. Producer Mfundi Vundla tells us about casting, his on-stage moving moments and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s reaction to the production. Read more about the production by clicking on this link.
__________________________
South Africa: Winnie the Opera - Casting Winnie, Cont'd
... opens at the South African State Theatre, Pretoria on April 28, 2011, no doubt in time for her hollywood debut, which we guess makes 2011 officially the year of the Winnie. Opera composed & produced by Bongani Ndodana with libretto by Warren Wilensky and Mfundi Vundla. Directed by Shirley Jo-Finney with the Kwa Zulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra. Promo:
Winnie's appearance on the ninth and final day of her hearing before the TRC court and bishop Tutu appears to be the stage and book marker, from which the accused Winnie will take flights of recollection, re-living her journey and South Africa's up to that point. Opera's plot - here. A ton of workshop videos - here. Below, composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen talks about putting the Archbishop to music:
H/T: Africlassical
>via: http://bombasticelements.blogspot.com/2010/12/south-africa-winnie-opera-casti...
__________________________
Giving a new voice to the life of our Winnie
Mfundi Vundla's opera pays respect to an icon, writes Jackie May
Apr 20, 2011 10:02 PM | By Jackie MayOpera has its political heroines. There's Aida, Tosca, Leonora and Abigaille. Now a new name has joined the list of magnificent operatic characters. Winnie debuts tomorrow in South Africa's Winnie the Opera.
MADIKIZELA-MANDELA TO MUSIC: Mfundi Vundla is the producer of 'Winnie The Opera', a project he says is the biggest he's taken on in his career. 'Winnie The Opera' runs until May 3 at the State Theatre in Pretoria Picture: BRAM LAMMERS
'Her life is inspiring, almost Napoleonic'
RELATED MULTIMEDIA
"I feel that attempting to portray Winnie Madikizela-Mandela in a more straightforward medium might diminish the complexity of this South African icon," says producer Mfundi Vundla.
The self-proclaimed Winnie scholar and creator of long-running soapie Generations says he's scared for opening night, which Madikizela-Mandela is attending in Pretoria on Freedom Day.
"I've never done something this huge. It's exciting. Generations is also big, but in a different sort of way. Here we're dealing with a living icon and tackling her not-so-distant past, which makes it intimidating."
Madikizela-Mandela has not seen the script nor sanctioned the story. That she hasn't interfered in the making of the opera is "the best situation a writer and artist could want. We're delighted we can't be accused of producing a sanctioned story, nor that we whitewashed it. We can't be accused of writing a product that 'rehabilitates' her."
When Vundla pulled out of a Winnie film project three years ago, he read news of Madikizela- Mandela being denied a Canadian visa. She had planned to watch a workshop for an opera on her life.
"I approached the producers and started to collaborate with them."
The work needed a complete rewrite. It took the team of Vundla, composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen and director Warren Wilensky two-and-a-half years to write and compose Winnie the Opera.
Vundla says: "I was really looking forward to writing a Winnie story the way we [South Africans] see it. Her life is almost Napoleonic. Great historical figures have always inspired artists. Beethoven was inspired by the colossal figure Napoleon. We are no different.
"Here we have a social worker who married a revolutionary and was thrust into liberation politics. A new persona emerged in the process. Now she is both hero-worshipped and reviled.
"We look at the complexity of her life, look at the whole thing through music. There is African choral music, minimalist music, folk and romantic sounds."
What will most people be thinking when they leave the opera?
"I think respect," says Vundla.
"Winnie deserves respect. I don't know how I would have responded to torture, to being sent to a gulag in the Free State, to raising two children on my own. I don't know how I would have responded. I have the greatest respect for somebody who can survive that."
Winnie the Opera opens on Wednesday at the State Theatre in Pretoria.
__________________________
South Africa:
"Winnie the Opera" - Excerpts
Official trailer for "Winnie the Opera" + a load of excerpts over atpaultilsley1. Backstory - here. Opens at the State Theatre, Pretoria, South Africa April 28 - May 3.
Below, excerpts from the "opening"...:
Below, excerpts from the "opening"...:
Madikizela-Mandela has not seen the script nor sanctioned the story. That she hasn't interfered in the making of the opera is "the best situation a writer and artist could want. We're delighted we can't be accused of producing a sanctioned story, nor that we whitewashed it. We can't be accused of writing a product that 'rehabilitates' her."
H/T: Africlassical
afro-creative: Andrew Dosunmu
ANDREW DOSUNMU / RAISED AND EDUCATED IN NIGERIA / BASED IN NEW YORK & LAGOS / STARTED HIS CAREER AS A DESIGN ASSISTANT FOR YSL / WORKED AS A CREATIVE DIRECTOR AND FASHION PHOTOGRAPHER / SHOT FOR THE LIKES OF VIBE, CLAM, THE FADER, INTERVIEW & i-D MAGAZINE / DIRECTED DOCUMENTARIES & MUSIC VIDEOS / SUCH AS THE AFRICAN GAME, RESTLESS CITY & HOT IRONS.
IF THE WORD AFRO-CREATIVE WAS IN THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY, ANDREW DOSUNMU'S NAME WOULD BE WRITTEN AS AN EXAMPLE!
SOURCE: ANDREW DOSUNMU
Blowback:
Israel's bogus narrative
on Palestinian refugees
Ghada Karmi, author of "In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story," responds to The Times' April 7 article on Lifta, the last intact pre-1948 Palestinian village. If you would like to write a full-length response to a recent Times article, editorial or Op-Ed, here are our FAQs and submission policy.
What a timely article, “Israel and Palestinians have conflicting visions for village's future.” April is a good month for recalling the abandoned homes, towns and destroyed villages of what was once Palestine. It was the month in which my own family was forced to leave our home in Jerusalem. Contrary to the official Israeli version, still largely believed, that the Palestinian exodus of 750,000 people -- without which there would be no Israel today -- happened in the fog of war, people like me are living proof that many of us had been forced out of our homeland months earlier.
The Israeli version claims that during the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, the Palestinians fled, as happens in wars everywhere, or were panicked into leaving by their leaders. For more than 60 years, this has served to absolve Israel of its culpability for that tragedy.
In fact, between January and May 1948, thousands of us were already leaving because of the violence and the deliberate tactics of the Jewish leadership intent on creating an empty space in which to erect a state. As a child, I remember seeing a poor Bedouin man walking down our street shot dead by Jewish snipers from an empty house opposite ours.
The people of Lifta (the village that The Times features), which is just three miles from my old neighborhood in west Jerusalem, were already fleeing in December 1947. The Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah and the Stern Gang, a Jewish dissident group, attacked the villagers with guns and hand grenades. By February 1948, most houses on the edge of the village had been demolished; the inhabitants fled in terror.
The same fate was intended for Katamon, where we lived. Increasing attacks on our street and its vicinity had the same desired effect as in Lifta. After January 1948, when the Semiramis Hotel on a street near ours was bombed by the Haganah, killing 26 people (a nightmare of horror that I dimly remember), the attacks against our neighborhood escalated. Families started leaving, fearful for their children and believing it would be a temporary evacuation. By the time we left, hardly any of our friends remained. The increasing danger around us forced my parents to leave. We took nothing with us, convinced it would not be long before we returned.
Terrible as this was when I look back, at least our street and our house still stand today. They were taken over by Jewish settlers and underwent various changes, but they largely remain. Yet I do not know which is worse: the hundreds of Palestinian villages Israel wiped out after 1948 and whose previous inhabitants can only hope to find through faded memories; the dozen villages left such as Lifta, still standing but ruined and depopulated; or, as in my case, my house being in the possession of strangers (New York Times correspondent Ethan Bronner lives in an upper story added on later), who do not recognize my history or my right to my family home.
On setting up its state in 1948, Israel set about demolishing every vestige of Palestinian life and history in the land. The physical destruction of the villages, the replacing of Palestinian names with Hebrew ones and the wholesale takeover of Palestinian culture, whether in food -- "Israeli falafel" -- or in the traditional Arab dabke dance, renamed the Israeli "hora," were all aimed at making the world forget there had ever been anyone other than Jews in the Holy Land.
Through the work of Israeli filmmaker Benny Brunner, I have discovered another refinement of this cultural theft: the takeover of private Palestinian book collections, including ours. After 1948, Israeli officials took what books they found from abandoned Palestinian homes. Tens of thousands were looted in this way. Some of them remain in the Israeli National Library today, designated abandoned property. Brunner is currently making a film of this, "The Great Book Robbery."
Palestinians have never accepted our enforced oblivion. We are fighting to tell our history, win a future of political freedom and secure the return of refugees forced from their homes and never allowed to return. For these reasons, the battle to preserve Lifta must be won -- its remains a physical memorial of injustice and survival.
-- Ghada Karmi
RELATED:
Israel and Palestinians have conflicting visions for village’s future
Letters to the editor: Richard Goldstone's backtracking
Photo: Lifta is the last intact, albeit vacant, pre-1948 Palestinian town in Israel. Credit: Edmund Sanders / Los Angeles Times
Strange Spring:
Explaining This Year's
Wild Weather
We've seen snow in the Midwest, wildfires in Texas and a surge of tornadoes across the country. What's going on with the weather?
- By Emily Sohn
Thu Apr 21, 2011THE GIST
- Spring has not been very spring-like throughout the United States this year, and more wild weather is likely to come.
- This season’s weird weather patterns are a result of multiple forces, including La Niña and climate warming.
- Predictions are for one of the worst tornado seasons on record.
State troopers are on the scene as a wildfire rips through Graford, Texas. / Getty Images
Even though May is right around the corner, recent weather reports have been far from spring-like.
Snow fell this week on Minneapolis and Green Bay. Record-setting cold has settled on Seattle. And historic wildfires are burning in Oklahoma and Texas, where temperatures in the 90s are threatening to topple heat records. Meanwhile, 272 tornadoes swept the nation in the first half of this month – already breaking the all-time twister-count for April.
So, what's up with the weather?
According to experts, this season's higher-than-normal highs, lower-than-normal lows and extreme storms are, to some degree, symptoms of what tends to be a volatile time of year. But there are also some more insidious factors behind the latest round of weather grief, including an unusually strong La Niña, a strange pocket of warm air in Arctic, and overall climate warming.
"The weather is inherently wacky," said Paul Douglas, meteorologist and founder of Weather Nation, a weather outsourcing company in the Twin Cities, Minn. "Personally, I'm seeing an increase over time in the wackiness."
Spring is traditionally a fickle and unstable season as winter makes its slow and often ugly retreat, said Deke Arndt, chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. Violent storms are common. And it's not unusual for temperatures and precipitation levels to be higher or lower than normal. After all, that's how we end up with the artificial line called normal.
But several trends set apart the spring of 2011 from pervious years, Arndt said. For one thing, there has been an unusual stalling of weather patterns that has divided the country in two. Draw a line from Washington D.C. to Denver and down to Phoenix. North and west of that line, it has been cold and wet. To the south and east, it has been hot and dry.
"You see red blobs and blue blobs in any season, but it has been pretty entrenched for weeks to months," Arndt said. "A high-pressure ridge that has set up over the Southern Plains has been really persistent there. It has pushed a lot of active or violent weather to the east."
"It is no coincidence that there are heat and drought in Texas and Oklahoma at the same time as there's violent weather east of the Mississippi," he added. "They are not unrelated."
The current weather map fits pretty well with a typical La Niña year, in which cooler than normal waters gather beneath the surface of the eastern equatorial Pacific off the west coast of South America. The phenomenon influences the positioning of the jet stream. And that, in turn, affects weather patterns around the globe.
This year's La Niña started building late last summer and was mature by January, Arndt said. While the effect is beginning to weaken now, it remains generally strong, which helps explain why the Northwest, Northeast and Northern Plains of the United States, along with parts of Europe and Asia, had particularly harsh winters this year. It's also why many of those places are still waiting for spring to arrive.
But La Niña, which is natural and cyclical, is not the only driver behind weird weather reports lately. For the last two years, for reasons climatologists do not yet understand, a strange pocket of warm air has lingered over the Arctic, Douglas said, making the dead of winter a full 10 to 20 degrees warmer than normal in Greenland and northern Canada. The bubble has displaced cold air southward.
"If you leave the refrigerator door open, you warm up the refrigerator, and all that cool air kind of spills on to the floor," Douglas said. "That's what's happened."
On top of all that, a general rise in global temperatures has boosted levels of water vapor in the atmosphere by four percent, Douglas said. That basically loads the dice for more storms to form. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook can accentuate and accelerate the sense that severe weather is worse than it is.
As for what's to come, current weather patterns are poised to linger for a while longer. The atmosphere is energized, Douglas said, and jet stream winds are stronger than any other April he can remember. That means that volatility is guaranteed for the next 60 days. One meteorologist has predicted that another 300 more tornadoes will strike in the next two weeks. Whether that many pan out or not, Douglas expects this to be one of the top three tornado seasons on record.
Since we can't change the weather, the most important thing Americans do is plan for what to do when dangerous weather strikes, Douglas said. He also recommended buying a $30 NOAA weather radio, which according to the NOAA National Weather Service website, "broadcasts warnings, watches, forecasts and other hazard information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
An emergency radio may be one of the best forms of life insurance available, according to Douglas, who insisted that he does not make a commission for radio sales.
"Everyone needs to sit down and talk about tornado preparedness and flood preparedness," Douglas said. "It's going to be a busy spring."
