July 29, 2009 was one for the record books in Seattle, Washington as the Emerald City (known for its rainy climate) and surrounding areas struggled to deal with history making high temperatures. Seattle and Redmond reached 103, Olympia hit 104, Vancouver got 107, and Bellevue clocked in at a blistering 108 degrees.
Thunder and lightening entered the picture, creating a bizarre weather pattern, the likes of which Washingtonians have never seen. Lightening knocked out a power grid in Tacoma, put 10,000 people out of power for several hours. Many stores sold out of ice quickly and hardware stores couldn’t keep enough fans and air conditioners on the shelf to keep up with the demand.
So, what else is in store for the Pacific Northwest? How bad will that region get clobbered by climate change?
Dramatic weather pattern changes have already started in the Northwest and will continue to get worse over the next few decades. According the climate report released by the White House on June 16, 2009—global warming is real and is caused by human activity. The Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States is the most comprehensive 197 page report done on the subject, which started in 2007 and involved the participation of 13 science and environmental groups.
The Northwest region will experience increased rain and snow in winter and hotter, dryer days in summer. The regional averaged temperature rose about 1.5 degrees during the last century and is expected to increase by up to 3-10 degrees over the next century.
The images of flooding in the Centralia/Chehalis area, which closed Interstate 5 for days during the last two winters, could become an annual scene. Long lines of trucks transporting products to Seattle were delayed for several days, losing approximately 4 million dollars a day. Record snow storms paralyzed the city of Seattle, which received massive criticism for the snow plow debacle and the reaction of a government totally unprepared for repeated back-to-back snow and ice bombardment.
All major rivers have flooded their banks in the past two winters, causing billions of dollars in destruction and damage. Intense thunder and lightening storms knocked out power to thousands of homes in most counties through out the Western region. Some areas were without electricity for weeks at a time, creating intense hardship on entire communities.
Conversely, during the summer, wildfires have increased dramatically, due to hotter, windier conditions and the increase of tree-killer insects drawn to drier climates, which leave large swaths of dead, fire-prone trees. The acreage burned in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, could double by the year 2020, according to a study released by the University of Washington in 2007.
The Northwest region’s water supply infrastructure was built with the expectation that water needed for summer agriculture, industrial, and recreational needs would be stored naturally in the Cascade mountain snow pack. Reduced snow pack in years to come will put a tremendous strain on the needs of the population, river flow, and food supply.
Aquatic ecosystems that protect salmon and steelhead will continue to degrade. Studies from the White House climate report suggest that approximately one-third of the salmon and cold water fish species will no longer have suitable habitat in which to reproduce and recover, if temperatures stay on the current path until the end of the century.
“Climate change and ocean acidification are already having major impacts on Washington,” said Senator Maria Cantwell, (D-WA), “Our $100 million shellfish industry is in crisis after four years of oyster reproductive failure from ocean acidification."
The potential for species extinction will become accelerated as more native plants, animals, and biodiversity fail to adapt fast enough to habitat, precipitation, and temperature changes.
Predictions are that warmer summers will also increase power demands as air conditioning becomes imperative to human health and comfort. The young and the elderly will be especially vulnerable to elements of climate change, pollution, and exposure to extreme hot and cold.
Furthermore, the White House report predicts higher sea levels in the Northwest, which would accelerate coastal erosion. The heavily populated areas of Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia, will be the most vulnerable. Also, countless coastal resort, fishing, and tourist towns like Ocean Shores, Westport, Neah Bay, and Sea Side, will eventually be in jeopardy, if global climate regulation isn’t implemented in time.
In anticipation of climate change impact; states, counties, and cities in the Northwest, have began making preparations and those plans are being accelerated as the need for urgency has increased. Strategies are under way to conserve water supplies, maximize hydroelectric power, preserve forests, protect infrastructure, improve flood prevention, stabilize aging levies, implement better response to snow fall and mud slides, and adopt measures to safeguard human health.
Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who recently announced energy funding for Washington has referred to the state as "the alpha and the omega of global warming.” Inslee said, “These investments will cut our national carbon emissions and keep Washington on the cutting-edge of the clean energy revolution.”
Meanwhile, the city of Olympia relocated their primary drinking water source to wells on higher ground and adjusted the plans for a new City Hall to be built at a higher location, with a one foot increase in the building’s foundation.
How bad, indeed--will Seattle ultimately become another New Orleans built over water or will the green state of Washington evolve into another golden California?
Comments
Come on people - you're acting like it has never gotten hot in the Northwest. Granted, there are some records lately, but it's gotten nearly as hot before. I lived on Whidby Island in 1982 and remember a fairly hot summer. And guess what? I experience my first thunder/lightning storm (moved from San Francisco). So yes, the current temps are hot, but it DOES get hot during the summer. Stop blaming every little thing (like a heat wave) on "Global Warming."
It's most unfortunately at this point how the media has dramatized this to the point where if we get a heat wave, we're all going to die a blazing death. Get to reality.
The sky is falling!
Everyone grab your pitchforks...
What about all the places in the US experiencing "colder than usual" summers?
Oh, I know, it's no longer called "global warming"...climate change is better because then no matter what happens (colder, hotter, wetter, drier, blah blah balh) you can say "climate change!"
Indeed the sky is falling, but it's our economic sky...bulging deficits, rising unemployment, so-called health care crisis. I wish you people would get upset about something that is REALLY happening.
2 words. cold beer.
Good article Jean.
There are a whole sect of contrarians who slink through the Internet looking for articles where they can write their snide and condescending remarks.
Most probably only skim through the piece they are complaining about and refuse to recognize any well documented scientific position that goes against what they ignorantly believe to be true.
before you say some know what you are talking about thanx mainstream am for f'ing us all
colder than normal summer= La Nina weather pattern in effetct this summer, drier around the equator, regardless global warming is in effect big time us this link data dot giss dot nasa dotgov/gistemp/maps to compare past and present temp worldwide, and youll see the huge tempurature increase in asia! hmm wonder why that is? let me think? well im a republican and i didnt do my research so i will be a robot told what to do by a talk show host, rush dimbulb ie.. and run around claiming global warming isnt real, you are his slave, you ungodworthy robot.
meant to say: use this link data dot giss dot nasa dot gov/gistemp/maps
Jean, did you know there there were 800 record low temperatures set across the US in mid July?
Goodness the world is on fire!!!
People in Seattle were complaining about the rain and the cold in June. You finally got some summer, enjoy it. The rest of us farther east will not get that break. I doubt if it is worse to be warm for 2 weeks than to have to heat your house all summer.
Eve, where do you get your information? I live in Seattle and June was such a dry month, my parent's farm had to start watering and irrigating the fields two weeks earlier than usual.
June tied a record for 29 straight days without rain.
There was not a single person here "complaining about the rain."
The cooling situation in the East is the opposite effect of the warming situation in the west. Guess what, it is changes in climate patterns due to global warming. It is happening all around the world, and all you narrow-minded people can see, is your own back yards. Then you make up lies about everything else.
You like to spout off unsubstantiated rhetoric and expect people to take it as fact. I don't feel sad for you, but I do feel sad for your kids and grandkids.
First record snow and now record heat!
The snow was so high last winter that I couldn’t walk my Scotties! We were stranded for days because we couldn’t' get out of the driveway. I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for 22 years and I have never seen snow like that and I have never seen heat like this! If you don't thing that we're experiencing climate change you're in denial!
Great article Jean!
Quick, pass tax hikes and solve this problem!!
Dear jean, I know I've been an environmental sinner and I don't want to go to global warming hell. You tell me that if I make sacrifices to the weather gods it will placate them and I can go to your heaven on earth where the climate never varies and we all live harmouniously with nature.
Is this true?
Global warming is one of those stories that already has everything it needs to exist- huge potential for money, power, on the backs of guilt and righteousness etc. The idea that human's increasing Co2 will somehow harm the planet is so intuitively appealing it doesn't matter that there isn't any science behind it.
Plenty politics though- the White House, IPCC, Al Gore, environmental groups etc etc-
that's where the 'consensus' is.
Real scientists think it's nonsense.
I'm glad to see folks in the NW aren't falling for the global warming drivel. Denver had a new low-high temperature of 63 on 30 July. Global Cooling! Run! Here come the glaciers!
Just curious when was the last time anyone ice skated on Green Lake? If you google "green lake ice skating" you can find images of mobs of people ice skating on Green Lake. Those pictures were taken almost 100 years ago. But the change is noticeable even in my lifetime. Just 20 years ago there was still noticeable ice every winter (although no where near thick enough to walk on). Today, not so much ice at all... sometimes none.
Uh, actually, Buff, the glaciers are receding at record rates. Glacier Park may actually have no glaciers in our lifetimes. If you look around, you can even find time lapse photography now of glaciers receding over the years by many miles. I lived in Montana in the summers as a kid. The change is noticeable there as well. Snowfields are disappearing and glaciers are receding there. I don't need a report to know that.
Seattle's record high temperature proves nothing one way or another about global warming or its causes. Its just data.
Jean Jean Jean, Give up collecting all these useless facts and join Acorn where you can commiserate with fellow Marxists about how Free Enterprise is ruining the world and, in your spare time, you can sneak up to Washington to steal another governors election for your socialist friends.
Why is it irrelevant when Chicago has record cold temps for July, but suddenly Seattle having a heat wave constitutes global warming?
Jerry T: I get that information about the cold spring and summer in Oregon from comments like this: As someone who lives in Southern Oregon, I can state, that YES it was that Hot down here… give or take a few degrees. It was foggy and 70 degrees on the coast, and 109 or hotter in the valley. Until this burst of heat, we have had an extremely cool spring and summer. We just pulled our pea plants due to this last surge of heat. The Garden is confused this year.
and: In NE Oregon we are finally having summer,100F yesterday in LaGrande.Tomatoes
finally setting fruit.Makes me wonder that this weather-more like August -isn’t
a pattern change that wil result in an early fall-just as the tomatoes near ripening!
Global warming is a fact as is climate change. One does not contribute to the other and neither are man made.
Since you want to be offensive, I am sorry for and never want to meet your kids and grandkids. I try not to deal with humans less intelligent than my chipmunks.
Oh, No, I think the polar bears in Lake Washington are all gonna die from global warming. Better pass a tax right away to deal with it. Can't wait until they start putting cameras in our houses to make sure we are eating right and taxing how many miles we drive. And all you green lefties will be marching in lock step as Fat Albert Gore rakes in the dough with his cap and trade scam.
What a bunch of idiots.
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