Pacific North West - Excessive heat warning issued

[Snobdds]

That is how we were last summer. There were three major fires, >400,000K acres, that burned last summer in northern colorado and Southern Wyoming. It takes nothing for a fire to start in that dry of weather.

This summer, a complete 180 from last year. The sub moisture still needs a few years of wet weather, but the surface moisture has been good this year.

I guess the point I'm making is, those hot dry weather years are not the norm. It will turn around. The reminder I got from last year was, get busy on the fire prevention around your land. I haven't ran my chipper in at least 5 years, this year it's chipped a lot of slash.

 

[oosik]

GRS - that's EXACTLY how my fields look now. The only saving grace - it will all come back with the fall rains.

A moose having twins is extremely rare. Good picture GRS.

Twenty years in AK. Went hunting every fall. Out & about every weekend. Only saw moose twins once.

 

[Molalla1]

Yep, same here pastures are burnt and a lot of the doug firs that were exposed to the sun when we had the 116* temps are burnt . . .

 

[goeduck]

Cedars are taking a big hit here.

 

[Molalla1]

Cedars are taking a big hit here.

Interesting . . . Cedars around here don't seem to have been affected.

 

[oosik]

I'm noticing early needle drop on the Ponderosa pines here. In the last three months a total of 0.30" of rain. Simply not enough to sustain the pines.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

That is how we were last summer. There were three major fires, >400,000K acres, that burned last summer in northern colorado and Southern Wyoming. It takes nothing for a fire to start in that dry of weather.

This summer, a complete 180 from last year. The sub moisture still needs a few years of wet weather, but the surface moisture has been good this year.

I guess the point I'm making is, those hot dry weather years are not the norm. It will turn around. The reminder I got from last year was, get busy on the fire prevention around your land. I haven't ran my chipper in at least 5 years, this year it's chipped a lot of slash.

Predicting the end to a drought is like predicting a stock market crash. Everybody knows it will happen, but nobody knows when.

The Dust Bowl only lasted a few years, but it was enough to turn my grandparents into climate refugees in the '30s. The flood of refugees at our southern border are in a main part the result of the drought in Central America. A drought cycle wiped out the Anasazi in the SW, and the same thing could happen to Phoenix if the drought drags on. Few records survive, but there is archaeological evidence that the complete collapse of civilization in the 12th century bce was the result of a 200 year "aridification event." The Mongol invasions were triggered by the failure of rains and pasture in Mongolia.

As we say here in the West, "Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting." Drought can trigger the migration of whole populations, as farms and cities become uninhabitable. I don't see anybody leaping to develop new water projects, but the Oglala Aquifer is getting pumped out and an extended drought could wipe out a whole segment of American agriculture.

California tourist town running out of water amid drought

The wells that Mendocino, California, depends on are drying up amid a devastating drought in the state.

news.yahoo.com

 

[goeduck]

I might have to look into buying a desalinization system.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

‘There was nothing we could save’: Heat wave cooked Walla Walla sweet onions to mush

A summer heatwave made mush of Walla Walla's signature crop: oversized sweet onions. Baked in their skins, as the earth cooked amid temperatures as high as 120 degrees, they withered.

www.yakimaherald.com

 

[goeduck]

That is a shame. I used to buy Walla Walla Sweet onions out of the fields direct from the italian onion farmers back in the day. The last time I was there the onion guys were getting squeezed out by the vineyard money.