Western Drought

The state of California continues to be hammered with historic and record-breaking mountainous snowfall which turned into a blizzard, followed by flooding. And along the Northeast part of the U.S., winter storms have impacted dozens of states. Power has been knocked out for millions of people along both coasts.

At Final Call presstime, residents in parts of New York and the New England states were digging out from feet of snow. According to Associated Press, some of the highest snow totals reported were 35 inches in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and in Ashby, Massachusetts, about 15 miles away, the National Weather Service said. At least two feet of snow fell in parts of northern New York and the Catskill Mountains, with Indian Lake in New York’s Adirondack Mountains recording 31 inches, AP reported.

“It just snowed, and snowed, and snowed,” said Geoff Settles, a supervisor at a manufacturer who lives in Peterborough. “My wife and I were helping some of the neighbors dig out. Literally, we had to shovel five and six different times just to keep it from being basically up to our chest.”

Mr. Settles, who grew up in Leominster, Massachusetts, remembered blizzards there in the late 1970s. “I would say this is the most snow I’ve seen all my life,” he said on March 15.

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Floodwaters surround homes and vehicles in the community of Pajaro in Monterey County, Calif., on March 13, 2023. Record snowfall and rain have helped to loosen drought’s grip on parts of the western U.S. as national forecasters and climate experts warned Thursday, March 16, that some areas should expect more flooding as the snow begins to melt. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

Severe weather continues pummeling the U.S. and conditions will continue to get worse because of her wickedness as taught by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

The Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam warned in his monumental book, “The Fall of America,” that Allah (God) is using the forces of nature to punish and humble America. “Woe to America. her day has arrived. She would not heed the warning. I begged her to let us be separated from her on a little territory and a state to ourselves and let us be responsible for our own survival, only to get out from under her injustice; but she refused,” the Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote in the chapter titled, “The Judgment of America.”

“So it was with Pharaoh in the time of Moses, God went down to Egypt to make Israel and her enemies, the Egyptians, an example for a future people so that this may serve as a sign of what we see going on in America today,” He added.

Mr. Muhammad’s top student and National Representative, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, like his teacher has been a voice of warning and guidance for not only the Black man and woman in America, but the entire world. Allah (God) is using the forces around the world, the Minister told a packed audience of over 10,000 people on Feb. 26 at the Wintrust Arena in Chicago where he delivered his Saviours’ Day message titled, “The War of Armageddon Has Begun.”

California Storms

“God is whipping the world with forces of nature, letting you know it’s going to get worse.  And I am here to tell you: You haven’t seen nothing yet!  Many of us may not live to see The Hereafter, to see the day when the power of this world is broken and a new world of righteousness is coming in.  But try your best to learn how to eat to live, because in a short while America, America … ‘America is fallen,’” the Minister warned.

The storms whipped through California’s wine country, liquefying fields and turning vineyards into wading pools, and thousands of farm workers were forced to stay home.

One farm worker, Isidro Rodriguez, stated to the UK-based Guardian, “The storms caused me to lose half my monthly income, about $1,100. For nearly two weeks, it was too wet and windy to safely prune the pinot noir vines at the estate vineyard where I worked. The storms were ugly, and still we had to find a way to survive.”

Mr. Rodriguez continued, “I am a single father and I had to drain my savings to make rent, and feed my two children with provisions from the food bank. It’s sad sometimes because my kids really understand, for us farm workers, disasters will strike.”

The Guardian also reported, “In recent years, Rodriguez, 43, has been called off work periodically, due to extreme heat waves in the summer and wildfires in the fall, and storms in the winter.”

Record amounts of snow this winter along with an equal amount of rainfall have relieved most of the state of drought. But the National Weather Bureau in San Diego stated that the recent snowfall has exceeded records set in the 1970s, when many parts of the state last saw snow.

The National Weather Service said the powerful winter storm that took place on February 24, was one of the strongest storms to ever hit southwest California and even as the volume of wind and rain dropped, it continued to have a significant impact including snowfall down to elevations as low as 1,000 feet.

Members of a Cal Fire crew clear snow off the roof of the town’s post office after a series of storms on March 8, 2023, in Crestline, Calif. Parts of California are under water, emergency flood declarations are in place in Nevada, and water is being released from some Arizona reservoirs to prepare for a bountiful spring runoff. Climate experts say all the snow and rain over the winter months helped alleviate dry conditions in many parts of the western U.S. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website: “The abnormally wet winter will further improve drought across much of the western U.S. as the snowpack melts in the coming months. Winter precipitation, combined with recent storms, wiped out exceptional and extreme drought in California for the first time since 2020, and is expected to further improve drought conditions this spring.”

Due to the heavy snowfall, some mountain communities saw residents trapped in their homes and vacation homes, leaving them with little supplies such as food and other necessities,while gas stations in the area ran out of gas.

San Francisco International Airport’s (SFO) Twitter account reported, “Due to weather/wind and weather/wind traffic management program causing some arriving flight delays averaging 1 hour and 20 minutes.” The delays and stops are due to high winds impacting the Bay Area (Northern California), as gusts reach a reported 74 mph at the airport.

The website calmatters.org reported, “While touring flooded regions, including the inundated farmworker town of Pajaro, Gov. Gavin Newsom said that $42 million is available from the United Way for emergency payments to farm workers, regardless of immigration status. He said the nonprofit will start sending out $600 checks as requested. 

“Those dollars will start going out today,” Gov. Newsom said. The funds come from a grant announced in October by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to provide economic relief to farmworkers and their families.  

On February 22, Detroit experienced an ice storm that brought freezing rain leaving 700,000 homes and businesses without power, closed schools and offices, downed trees, caused car crashes, delayed air travel, and killed a firefighter in Paw Paw, Michigan. 

The ice, National Weather Service meteorologists said, was between a quarter inch and more than a half-inch thick, and utility executives added that when there is that much ice on the power lines, the effective stress of 20-mph winds is as if they were gusting at 60.

In his book, “A Torchlight for America,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan pointed out that Allah (God) has a way of showing his disapproval to those who are wise enough to read the signs. Natural disasters are God’s way of indicating His displeasure and are a sign of impending doom, the Minister wrote in the chapter titled, “Greed and Leadership’s State of Mind.”

And government agencies don’t have the money to continue paying for the damages caused by these weather disasters. “All of these catastrophes increase the budget deficit. And more of these catastrophes are on the way to America with ever-increasing rapidity.

This is God’s way of nudging or forcing governmental leadership to accept real solutions to the country’s problems. Jehovah used ten plagues against Pharaoh. Those ten plagues, including natural calamity from snow, rain, hail and earthquakes, are seen in the world today, particularly in America,” the Minister wrote.

Student Minister Abdul Haleem Muhammad serves as the Southwest Regional Representative of the Nation of Islam. He also has a PhD. in urban planning. In a previous interview with The Final Call, Student Minister Haleem Muhammad explained how severe weather can impact other aspects of the country, including infrastructure, food production and more.

“Because of greed and inordinate self-interest as the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan points out, in his monumental book, ‘Torchlight for America,’ leadership has ignored the infrastructure and ignored the Divine warnings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, in terms of the Four Judgments of America, therefore, the infrastructure is not prepared for the natural calamities that are taking place. Unfortunately, nor are the people,” stated Student Minister Dr. Haleem Muhammad.

Rain, hail, snow and earthquakes are the four Great Judgments that Allah (God) will use to destroy America, warned the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, in “The Fall of America.”

“Allah (God) has reserved His treasures of snow and ice to be used against the wicked country America in the day of battle and war. There are some of Allah’s (God’s) weapons, the storms that we see going on,” He wrote.

Final Call staff and Associated Press contributed to this report. Shawntell Muhammad can be contacted at [email protected].