The Heat Is On

I have lived my entire life in Western Washington, and there is a good reason I stay here… the moderate climate. It’s not too hot, and it’s not too cold, and we have a nice variety of weather… some sunshine, a little snow, hail, wind, fog, and less rain than they have in Chicago. Despite the reputation of Seattle being a rainy town, it’s not all that true. What we do have is a lot of gray cloudy days.

That’s all going to change tomorrow. A heatwave like we haven’t seen in years will start tomorrow afternoon and last well into next week.

Seattle will possibly see temperature reaching 110 and just 100 miles north in my little town; we will see temps in the 90s. People here bitch when it gets 75; the natives are gonna go bonkers with this.

When I was a kid, it got really hot (probably in the 90s); the old folks said it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. So we tried. It didn’t work.

But these temps seem like they will hotter than anything we saw when I was a kid. We need to find ways to stay cool and not get heat stroke or heat exhaustion. Years ago, I got heatstroke on a trip to Hawaii and had to go to the hospital. Not a fun way to be on vacation.

Fortunately, we don’t have to cope with this all summer, but I can’t help wonder what August will be like if we have temps like this already in June.

Temperatures are hot all over the country, and it seems like every summer, they get hotter and hotter all over the planet.

I have no doubt these are caused due to climate change, a phenomenon we started hearing about 50 years ago. The concern of global warming is what created the first Earth Day in 1970. So have had a lot of time to do something to prevent what is happening today, but we didn’t do it.

“Climate change is a change in the pattern of weather, and related changes in oceans, land surfaces and ice sheets, occurring over time scales of decades or longer. Weather is the state of the atmosphere—its temperature, humidity, wind, rainfall and so on—over hours to weeks.”

The same people who are in denial of Covid 19 and vaccinations of all kinds and evolution are also in denial of climate change, also known as global warming. They haven’t believed it was ever going to happen, and now it is. They think that because it snows (and more than usual) in the wintertime, there is no such thing as global warming.. how can it be since it is so cold. But the snow is due to weather, not climate. The climate is changing, making the glaciers melt, which makes the ocean rise and changes the salt level in the water, affecting the weather patterns, making temperatures hotter and colder and more unstable weather like tornados and hurricanes. And it’s only going to get worse.

“Today, in Texas, people are being asked to curtail cooking to reduce the strain on their utility systems. In the southwest temps are near 120. The southeast and Texas (again) are facing tropical weather that will drop 10+” of rain on an already sodden region. Forest fires will ravage the West coast again.

Meanwhile, Republican politicians and evangelicals deny reality and pray. I actually do not think most Republicans pray but that is my opinion. Nevertheless, we are screwed and we are not dealing with it.”

Prayer hasn’t worked in the past 50 years; why would it suddenly help now?

“The bet was that denial would rule. And they were right. It happened gradually, which made it a lot easier to deny. Things would happen gradually. But right now, the gradual period is over.

See you later Miami. Sorry, forests of California. Farmers in the Midwest, good luck. And on and on. Btw, Billings, Montana was 115 degrees yesterday. Just saying.”

Let me know if you try to fry an egg on the sidewalk.