Climate Changing

The Pacific Northwest should have a mild and pleasant Independence Day weekend, which is a far cry from what the region just went through. 

As this chart from last week shows, the Pacific Northwest experienced temperatures as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, with Portland, Oregon setting an all-time record of a 116 degrees and Seattle topping out at 107 degrees.  Lytton, British Columbia, just northeast of Vancouver, hit 121 degrees, setting an all-time record high for anywhere in Canada.

If this had happened two years earlier, Washington State governor Jay Inslee, not Joe Biden, might be President today.

Or maybe not.  Even though these temperatures were higher than anything Atlanta has ever recorded, climate-change deniers still heavily populate the Republican Party, and they share seats at Trump rallies with QAnon followers and alt-right extremists who probably agree with them that climate change is a hoax.  If they believe the 2020 election was stolen, what could get them to change their minds about climate change?  Maybe not even a heat wave in a region where the overnight low is above where the daytime high is supposed to be.

As with everything in this planet at this time in history, it could and probably will get worse, and I don't mean heat waves.  What could be our first hurricane of the season has formed as Tropical Storm Elsa, and some computer projections have it curving up along the Eastern seaboard and coming within only a hundred miles or so of the Greater New York area, where I live,  by next weekend.  That hurricane threat predicted for early August for my area may be ahead of schedule. 😮