DENNIS – Hydrologists mark a different start to the new year than the rest of us. The “water year” starts Sept. 29, and marks the end of the drawdown of groundwater levels by evaporation, trees and lawns, and the beginning of the recharge of our aquifer by rain and winter snow.
This water year began with over half of Cape Cod and the Islands in the grip of extreme drought and the rest in severe drought. With little snow this winter and not quite enough spring rain, the region stands on the threshold of its high-use season with every town except Bourne, Mashpee, Sandwich, Falmouth and Martha’s Vineyard classified in the U.S. Drought Monitor as abnormally dry.
For Sale? Not much, with Cape workforce ‘desperate for housing’
A push to overhaul zoning & keep year-round residents dominates summit
Patrick Flanary
YARMOUTH Cape Cod is running out of places to live: only 394 houses are for sale.
Twenty-eight of those are in Yarmouth, where just a year ago available homes outnumbered those in every other town except Barnstable. Listings are now scarcer than ever, and more are being snatched up as seasonal properties, often in cash and above the asking price.
The year-round workforce already struggled to compete with second-home buyers, but the pandemic has rapidly diminished the stock of single-family homes, down 75% in April from the same period last year, according to the Cape Cod and Islands Association of Realtors.
The heart of the problem with climate change is that we are putting too many gases into the atmosphere, creating a layer that does not let heat escape.
Imagine putting a dome-like greenhouse over your home where it trapped the hot air to the extent that your home overheated and there was absolutely no relief from it. Just as a car overheats when it is sitting out in a sun-exposed site, this greenhouse would overheatâeven when it is cold outside. Infrared rays (heated-up rays) cannot escape the car until you open a window. The same effect would happen with the dome over your house, and it is happening on the globe.