Hot August Frights
Took an extra few days to get back to my desk. Part of the delay: processing the onslaught of anecdotal and statistical evidence that climate chaos is accelerating at an alarming clip. 42 million southern Californians experienced Tropical Storm Hilary, which dumped a year’s worth of rainfall on some parts of the Southwest. In British Columbia, 380 active wildfires are wreaking havoc throughout the Province, prompting the declaration of a state of emergency, as well as the evacuation of thousands of residents in Kelowna, a city of 150,000. In the American Pacific Northwest, while fires for the time being remain comparatively mild, hot nights disturbed sleep for physical as well as existential reasons. For the first time in the history of Seattle’s weather record, for three consecutive days, the temperature never got lower than 67. Higher nighttime lows are a harbinger of an atmosphere overloaded with greenhouse gasses.
Park Service Wildfire
In Juneau, Alaska, on August 4-6, in the midst of a record hot summer, an outburst flood at the Mendenhall Glacier just north of town bumped the outfall of Mendenhall lake to 25,200 cubic feet per second, flooding the popular campground adjacent the glacier and destroying several buildings.
Both June and July of 2023 were the hottest on record, and the first week of July was the hottest 7-day stretch in recorded history. A recent study found that weather events that have historically been considered rare or extreme are no longer so.
The ocean off the upper left corner of the country is also hot. One of the most significant marine heatwaves on the planet has arrived off the coast of Oregon and Washington, with water temps a jaw-dropping five to seven degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
The reprieve that the Pacific Northwest lucked into with consecutive La Nina weather years is over. Citizens of the region will be joining the rest of the world in the horrifying reckoning that the earth is very quickly moving into the anthropocene.
What can be done? Fight like hell. Some kids in Montana, with the aid of Our Children’s Trust, successfully sued the state last week, affirming the constitutional right of future generations to reside on a livable planet.
In the press, venerable Oregonian columnist Steve Duin pointed out that Oregon Governor Tina Kotek’s efforts to undo the state’s legacy of environmental protection is both morally blind and guaranteed to be a glaring policy failure.
The Deschutes River Alliance has been similarly hellbent on pointing out Portland General Electric’s moral and policy failures, posting a blog last week about the absurdity of the state’s largest utility claiming it cannot cool the Deschutes River because of an apparent need to “save” cold water at Reservoir Billy Chinook. As the DRA’s blog post points out, the claim is akin to fighting a wildfire with unlit matches.
That last item will be the subject of the next blogpost here. Thanks for sticking with me through the dog days of summer. More to come as the days get shorter.
If you enjoy what you’ve read, and you want to support my mission to remove dams throughout the US, please consider purchasing my latest book, Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot Chaotic World.
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