On a record hot day, last October, my brother and I hiked the typically snowbound Mount Baker-Ptarmigan Ridge trail. What stood out, more than the scenery, was that almost every group we passed told us how “amazing” the weather was.
My internal voice was screaming “What!? It’s far too hot for this time of year!” Hypocritically, I would return a nod, and a “Sure is,” in an attempt not to cause a fuss.
A few months prior, during our smoky and hot August, I overheard someone complaining about the “bad weather” in the forecast. Not more smoke and heat, but a chance of rain. Now, as we move into spring, a March heat wave that smashed previous temperature records only seemed to invoke a chorus of “how fortunate we are to have such incredible weather.”
Reveling in record heat is an unnerving trend that I’m noticing in our region. According to a recent study by Yale University, we live in a part of the country that is much more concerned about climate change than almost anywhere else in the United States. Are we, the people reportedly so worried about climate change, celebrating our demise?
One of the fundamental lessons of climate science is that weather and climate are not the same. One cannot point to any single record-breaking day and say climate change is the culprit. This is a rare type of fact which both believers and deniers opportunistically use to reinforce their opposing beliefs. The definition of climate is “the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period,” generally specified as a range of 30 to 100 years. Weather, in comparison, is “the state of the atmosphere at a particular place and time” and what forces a decision between sunscreen or a raincoat on any given day.
So, while we can’t blame any record-setting day on climate change, we still must break our habit of normalizing these record temperatures as “amazing weather.” This “amazing weather” reduces our snowpack, increases the risk of forest fires and hazardous smoke, and is killing many of Washington’s beloved trees, among many other severe and unanticipated impacts that continue to emerge.
Some of this disassociation may be a symptom of the great influx of transplants who are familiar with warmer and drier climates. With no frame of reference, how would one know that a near-80-degree day in winter is far from ordinary for Seattle? It’s the responsibility of those who have lived here for long enough to recognize the abnormality and sound an alarm.
I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade. I will be outside among the rest of you taking advantage of what I will from henceforth call “hot weather.” But we need to recognize extreme temperatures as a scary and alarming trend if there is any hope of tackling climate change. How does one begin to fix a problem that isn’t acknowledged? Some “amazing weather” this spring will be a seasonably cool and rainy day.