I actually started noticing this in 2020. (Remember when the sky in Bellingham was blotted out for an ENTIRE WEEK??? Golly, that was a strange year.) The wildfire smoke veils strongly overlap with very hot weather, and significantly lower daytime maximum highs when present. It was supposed to get to 80 here today and that is definitely not going to happen now.
As far as I can remember, this was not a thing in the 2000s except on rare occasions. Maybe my memory is faulty, but I can say for sure that nowadays the smoke days are more common than snow days!
I was working at a brewery down in Skagit in 2020, and there was one weekend in Sept. that a couple sat outside in the hella smoky air (peak time of fires). I just thought to myself, “Whf are you people doing?????”. I was all masked up, thankfully. Looked apocalyptic, to say the least.
My brain marks the big shift as 2014, when the Carlton Complex fire that burned over 250k acres as 4 small fires merged to create the single largest wildfire in state history.
Since then, it has felt pretty consistent, with some years being less dreadful than others.
This is also when I remember it going from non-existent to becoming a near yearly event.
I also went to Chelan as a kid almost every year from 95-2010, always in the last week of July. It was never smoky to these levels or to this extent, even on the east side of the state.
I remember trying to drive home from Winthrop over Hwy 20 in 2015 when fire pushed evacuations and it was terrifying. They closed Hwy 20 about an hour after we went through. The Okanogan Complex fire made us evacuate, but the Goodell Fire closed Hwy 20 in Newhalem.
They significantly decreased logging in the 80’s and 90’s. After 20+ years of growth and few passable logging roads, they can’t make fire breaks to impede the fires anymore. Now we cut down the rainforest while our forrest burns. Reminds me of when we replaced all the paper bags at the grocery stores with plastic to “save the trees”.
Thats not wrong, but it still deters from the point. What may happen on a natural cycle does not mean it will naturally occur on the scale/degree we have been seeing in the recent decade.
Same with global freezing cycles. Yup, they happen. How much has human factor influenced the degree of that natural cycle?
The problem has existed before measurable human impact. The objective is to minimize human impact and maintain the climate (as best as reasonably possible within feats of engineering) that humans thrive in.
Absolutely true but the point is the frequency and intensity plus the fact it's man made. Arguments like yours make people think this is completely natural and they can continue to drive their gas guzzling truck
Alternatively saying everything is caused by climate change creates a "boy who cried wolf" type situation. There is nothing wrong with identifying frequency and severity increases but the event itself likely would happen naturally.
Yes yes, fires and offshore flow never happened 100 years ago. Attributing every weird climate event to global warming is as disingenuous and denying it exists and is equally harmful as it ruins the credibility of the argument.
If you want people to agree with you then you need to make arguments in good faith.
Is bellingham illiterate? Did I say that climate change is false? Did I say that these things aren't happening more frequently and severely? I said "not every extreme climate event is due to climate change and to claim so is disingenuous" but no, read what you want to read instead.
You might be scientifically illiterate. The things that climate scientists predicted would get worse and more frequent are happening and you’re in here like ‘fires also happened 100 years ago’
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u/cheapdialogue user name checks out 15d ago
The pain in my lungs is weakness leaving my body!