Rolling Thunder, Lightning, Torrential Rain...

So then, what conceivably might Uganda and Canada have in common? Brutal weather. Canada, in North America, and Uganda in darkest Africa. The skies over Ontario have grown incessantly dark of late with an unaccustomed and extremely violent series of rolling thunderstorms. Never have we seen the skies grow quite as dark and threatening as those black clouds roll in. And never can we recall experiencing such a succession of loudly rumbling thunder with accompanying lightning strikes.

News comes out of Kampala that a lightning strike at an elementary school in western Uganda killed 19 students and injured 50 more. The Runyanya elementary school was hit by lightning in a violent thunderstorm. "In Uganda we have had these events and these strikes before but never as severely as we have seen over the past few weeks", according to Charles Basalirwa, head of the meteorological unit at Makerere University in Kampala.

A sharp increase in the frequency and power of lightning strikes represented yet another signal, along with droughts and flooding events, of extreme weather conditions obviously caused by climate change in the region. Mr. Basalirwa feels the Uganda government must put in place measures to deal with such weather extremes, such as building more lightning rods.

In Canada lightning rods are commonly installed in all domestic buildings, inclusive of private homes. In Canada, it has been an inordinately wet spring, with far more violent storms and torrential rainfalls resulting, sometimes with huge hailstones, than might be considered normal. In Uganda too, the country is experiencing unseasonably heavy storms. Ugandans are demanding answers.

Here are some answers given to Ontarians by environmental engineers and climatologists. That's life, and weather. Nothing can be done about it. Lightning will strike where it will and lightning rods won't solve the problems of unpredictable lightning patterns. "It strikes where it wants to strike. I don't think that there's any foolproof method of protecting yourself against lightning", according to an Ottawa firefighter.

For a storm that hit a few days earlier had set five houses on fire, with lightning setting fire to their roofs, and putting eleven people out of their burned-out homes. Granted, this is not comparable to the deaths of 19 schoolchildren, but the issue is still one of violent, unaccustomed-violent thunderstorms and the damage they wreak. Over 2,000 lightning strikes an hour hit during that massive storm.

"The scientific evidence is that there has been an increase in the number of intense precipitation events in Canada and in many other places in the world." Gordon McBean, member of Ontario's expert panel on climate change adaptation.

A series of extreme thunderstorms the week before had created immense washouts on the road systems, cutting off access and closing down highways. "We saw a series of thunderstorms tracking over the area hour after hour. That's why we saw the differences, even between locations that are not that far away", of rain between 200 and 240 millimetres falling in the area.

The torrential rain and its frequency has caused massive erosion and sinkholes to appear.

We feel threatened, insecure and vulnerable. And that's just the way it is, and the way it seems to be increasingly going. One can only suppose we shall have to become accustomed to it, and most certainly hope for the very best. Defending ourselves as best we can.