We got the standard load of rain at the beginning of April, right on schedule. According to plan, our reservoirs began to fill up. We get our drinking water (don’t tell the Third World, but we poop in it too) not from snowmelt but from a pair of dammed-up valleys just this side of the big mountain. So those spring rains are important and everyone knows it, which means by the time it has continued well into May and June, people are looking trudgy and damp and tipping water off their hats and whining quietly, “It’s not the rain I mind so much, I just wish it would warm up a little.” What they mean by that is it’s totally the rain they mind, and also they wish it would warm up a little, but it doesn’t. Nobody puts in tomatoes until Memorial Day. Peonies bloom and are instantly flattened by hail. Kids skid around in the mud with soccer balls, and then the Rose Festival Parade happens on about the second Saturday in June, and the sun comes out the next day and sticks around until November.
A Portland child. |
That’s what’s supposed to happen. This year, it quit raining on April 15 and you couldn’t apply a postage stamp with the moisture we’ve had since. People smiled at first and made like they were going to try for early zinnias but mostly didn’t, but then it kept not raining, and it got a little warmer, and we had day after day of sunshine, mid-seventies, with a light breeze. Peonies went ahead and bloomed in all innocence and were not struck down for the sin of pride. The days were so pleasant I found myself thinking: this sure has been a nice summer. Hope it doesn’t get too hot later.
I dislike hot weather a lot. The juices that are designed to operate my personal physical plant settle into jam and strand me in a lawn chair, too morose even to ask someone to make me a gin and tonic. Even my creative juices begin to gum up in the heat. So I was feeling pretty pumped about this summer, so far.
Then I saw the weather forecast. After eight weeks of sunshine, we were due for a decent downpour, last Friday evening. It was going to rain hard Saturday. Sunday it would begin to clear up again. Of course! What happens Saturday? Why, it’s the Rose Festival Parade! It was going to be wet horses, soggy princesses, and drowned tuba players all day long. Right on schedule.
And that’s why it’s been such a nice mild summer so far. It isn’t even summer. I don’t recognize springtime unless the rain is sheeting off the roof and you have to re-park your car sometimes to even up the moss. We have completely bypassed spring. Everything’s all messed up.
All of which means it’s about time for The Oregonian to run another smug climate-change denial piece of crap by Dr. Gordon Fulks. Dr. Fulks has a string of vintage science degrees hanging off his resume like dingleberries and can’t see what’s right in front of him because his own ass is in the way, but The Oregonian likes to give him a platform whenever the tooth fairy is out of town.
But Saturday, at least, we could imagine that everything is still all right. Thunderstorms, which are rare here, even made the forecast, and we trotted off to stand in a puddle and watch the parade. Lightning! What is the highest point of the parade? Why, that would be the elevated dais on the float occupied by the Rose Festival Queen, wearing a metallic tiara. This could be fun.
But the Reser’s Fine Foods float caught on fire, the reservoirs aren’t anywhere near full, Dr. Fulks continues to fail to die, and the feckless chump in Washington is working his fanny off to suck the last fossil fuel out of the planet and put it in the air. Don’t be distracted by all the flowers: make sure there isn’t a horse’s ass under them.
Climate change is found in decades of charting…not incidental and current weather. But reading charts and graphs is not in favor with reality show fans.
Nope. Neither is trusting them smarty-pants scientists.
Our weather here in Delaware has changed noticeably in just the past few years. We used to have cold but relatively snow-free winters, followed by maybe two days of spring, then, BOOM! Hot, humid summer by mid-May… followed by our annual late-summer drought.
Our winters are still cold, but now we get snow. And we have a prolonged spring with WAY too much rain. So much so that the tomatoes that we planted the last couple years had blossom-end rot. We are way over our usual rain amounts. It is summer now that is brief. The last couple days, we actually had the windows shut and sweaters on because it was chilly.
I guess this is the new normal here for now… at least until something more dire takes its place. I am so glad that I am no longer young and that I never had kids.
I remember when I was in grade school in Wilmington and it snowed four inches. We didn't have to go to school for three days! Here in Minnesota four inches is barely worth shoveling. In the 35 years I have been here the changes are becoming very noticeable.
It's odd to be alive in the end days.
Four days ago it was 78, two days ago it snowed for two hours, today is supposed to hit 80. p.s. I used to swim in Bull Run during August, it was great.
Hope you didn't pee in it!
PS did they not keep people out back then? Or were you sneaky?
Lemme check the statute of limitations……
We've had the opposite here this spring, very cool days and frosty nights with a couple of hot days sprinkled in to remind us of the hell that summer will bring. At first I was all confused, until I remembered that this is what our spring used to be like ALL the time.
Is Dr. Fulks name really Fulks? If so, he is living up to it.
Shoot, I was going to Google him to make sure I got his name right, but I don't think I have to. He's been prominently featured in that rag often enough.
Over here we are having a MUCH milder winter. And a dryer one too. Incontinent pigeon rain (splat, splat and it is gone) is the best we can manage.
Mid 70s? I love the mid 70s and could happily live in them the rest of my life. Warm days, cool nights, bliss. We're having our usual autumn here, sunny days, not too hot, rainy nights, with an occasional grey rainy day thrown in. But we're closer to winter now, the calendar says we're already there and the mornings are a bit on the frosty side until about 9am, but glancing out my window I see blue sky and sunshine.
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