The Great Heat Wave of 2021

The Great Pacific Northwest Heat Wave of 2021 is over and we have survived. But things were ugly for a couple of days, even speaking as a guy who grew up in the Southwest and has seen lots of hot days. Don’t get me wrong—we’re not expecting tears or ice cream from folks in Phoenix or Las Vegas or Kansas City, where they see this sort of thing pretty frequently during the summer. Part of what makes unusually hot days tough here, though, is that they are so unusual and people aren’t prepared for them. One source shows that between 2010 and 2019, average June high and low temperatures in Seattle were 71 F and 53 F, respectively. A second source shows much the same over a longer period of time: from 1985 to 2015, the average high temperature for June was 71 F and the average low temperature was 54 F.

Contrast those figures with our recent Scorchmageddon event. High temperatures reported in Seattle and around the region for June 26, 27 and 28 vary somewhat depending on whose numbers you look at, but were extreme by any measure. The National Weather Service reported a high of 104 F at SeaTac airport just before 5pm on June 28, and said that we were still at 103 F at about 11pm that night. Local weather guru and University of Washington Atmospheric Sciences Professor Cliff Mass reports on his blog that the temperature in Seattle reached 108 F, eclipsing the previous all-time record of 103 F, and that other locations around the region saw similar record-shattering temperatures: Olympia, WA reached 109 F (previous record was 105 F); Quillayute, on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, reached 110 F (previous record was 99 F); and Portland, OR got up to 116 F (previous record 107 F). According to Mass, Seattle’s all-time record high temperature now exceeds all-time record highs for Miami and Atlanta; the new record high for Portland, OR, is hotter than all-time record highs for Houston, Austin and San Diego.

The village of Lytton, BC, just under 100 miles northeast of Vancouver, set an all-time Canadian record high temperature of nearly 116 F on June 28, and broke that record the next day by reaching 121 F. Then things got ugly. On July 01, the village was consumed by a wildfire, one of many to have ignited in the wake of extreme high temperatures. Most of the community’s buildings were lost as residents fled for their lives.

A New York Times analysis published on June 29 makes clear how unusual this PNW heat wave has been. The report includes excellent graphic representations contrasting the region’s temperatures for the last few days of June with 42 years of meteorological data. As shown in the article’s charts, this has been an unprecedented period of extreme heat in what is normally one of the coolest regions of the Continental U.S.

In addition to dramatically increasing risk of wildfires, extreme temperatures like those we’ve seen here in the past week can destroy farm crops and wither backyard gardens, kill salmon in the region’s rivers and streams, and cause birds to die in their nests. Of course, these extreme temperatures also present serious health risks for human beings. In Seattle and elsewhere in the Puget Sound region, most homes and many offices and other business settings have no air conditioning. The 30-somethings next door to me have installed new triple-glazed windows all the way around their home and just put in a new heat pump / refrigerated air conditioning system a couple of weeks ago. So they were fine. Their AC heat exchanger is about 6 feet from our property boundary and blasts hot air against the side of my house, but whatchagonnado about stuff like that? OK bummer.

There’s no AC here at the Hermit Ranch, but we’re lucky in all the ways that matter and did OK. You know the drill: put the butter dish and dark chocolate bars in the refrigerator, along with the Brita water pitcher which had reached bathwater temperature in its normal spot on the kitchen counter. Pasta salad replaced soup on the lunch menu, and I stopped toasting bagels, using the oven and cooking on the stovetop. I turned off my home wireless network and internet radio tuner, both of which generate surprising amounts of heat, except when I needed to use them; saved towels to launder after the weather cooled down; washed shorts, socks and t-shirts on cold and line-dried them; and hand-washed dishes in cold water to avoid running the dishwasher or provoking the water heater. I know, I know, my mom told me the same thing. But everything turned out fine.

I was also vigilant about reflected heat from the houses on either side of us—don’t laugh, I can feel the warmth from those buildings radiating through my windows at certain times of day—and adjusted blinds and curtains to keep both direct and reflected sunlight from putting the torch to us. My dog and I drank lots of water, ran fans as needed while we were in the house, and camped out in our basement, which stays 15 or 20 degrees cooler than the main floor of the house, for several afternoons and evenings.

Despite appearing a bit wilted, my geriatric dog had to be bribed into going downstairs to cool off in the basement. I’m not sure if she’s afraid we might have spiders or thinks it smells funky down there or what, but after I ponied up a handful of treats the first time she got the idea and seemed happy to head into the bomb shelter after that. With a bowl of cool water and her bed-away-from-bed down there she appeared to enjoy slumber parties in the novel setting, once she got used to the idea.

Dealing with extreme heat can be exhausting. Both the vigilance and logistical juggling required to limit our exposure to the heat, and the physical discomfort of being overly warm when adaptive measures reach their limits wear us down. Between the long daylight hours this time of year and the unfamiliar routine of spending nights on the laundry table in our basement, it was difficult to get enough sleep. My non-air conditioned neighbors looked frazzled too: shirtless, long hair pinned up trying to stay cool, doors and windows wide-open in hopes that a breeze might drop by. We got to know each other better than any of us had intended.

Gosh, I didn’t know you had a tattoo! Now is that supposed to be a dolphin? Oh, the Milky Way? Sure, uh-huh, I see it now! You think maybe there’s another planet like ours out there? I wonder how they’re doing…

The shade-tolerant spring vegetables in my backyard garden—snap peas, arugula, beets and parsley—weren’t scheduled to be around all summer anyway, but those three hot days finished them off in a hurry despite faithful watering each evening. I can’t wait to see my water and electric bills next month.

But like I said, I’m lucky. My dog and I are fine thanks to good health, plenty of water and a cool basement. Seattle has the country’s third-largest homeless population, though, and during extreme weather, as in life more generally, a distinct socioeconomic gradient points downhill toward those likely to suffer most. What were the past few days like for our neighbors—and there are many of them—living in tents, under bridges and in broken-down RVs on West Marginal Way? If my dog looked wilted at times, how did theirs fare?

Many of the unhoused exist largely under the radar and are by definition difficult to track. We may never know how many of them experienced health problems due to the extreme weather here over the past week—but we do know that some did. A local NPR affiliate reports that King County had at least 460 people needing emergency medical treatment for heat-related health problems, and saw at least 13 deaths, as a result of the 3-day hot spell here. Many other unexpected deaths occurred elsewhere around the region. On July 02, British Columbia’s Chief Coroner reported that the province had recorded 719 “sudden and unexpected deaths” over the previous week—more than three times the 230 deaths they would expect in a similar time period. Oregon has also seen folks needing emergency medical attention as a result of the extreme weather. 7,600 people made use of emergency cooling centers set up in Multnomah County public libraries from Friday through Monday. At least 79 deaths are known to have occurred in the state during the heat wave, a number that may rise in coming days as more victims are identified and causes of death confirmed.

One scary part about all this is that the heat wave happened in June, while our hottest summer weather in the PNW doesn’t usually arrive until July and August. I don’t want to say that The Sky is Falling, but such extreme heat this early in the season is sobering. Many of us assume that global warming driven by human activity caused or at least played a significant role in our recent hot weather, though some experts—including local weather guru and University of Washington Atmospheric Science Professor Cliff Mass—caution that at least for now such conclusions reach beyond the empirical evidence required to prove cause-and-effect relationships for any given weather scenario. As we continue to experience extreme and record-setting weather events, however, such caveats become less palatable to many.

Enough already with the namby-pamby margin of error stuff, OK? All I know is that it’s too hot to sleep and the Red Apple is out of Ben & Jerry’s again.

Questions of causation notwithstanding, it’s becoming clear that extreme weather like the heat wave the PNW experienced over the past week not only causes physical discomfort but also challenges our humanity. We all need to take care of ourselves, but do we just stay inside and crank the AC when the mercury floods over the century mark? What could we do to cut our planet some slack or to help someone less fortunate? Would it make a difference (or even just feel better) to plant a tree each year, check on an elderly neighbor, or bring cold water to a guy living in an RV with his dog?

What level of individual and collective responsibility do we bear for extreme weather events? With all due deference to Dr. Mass, what role might our consumption of fossil fuels play in causing and contributing to pavement-buckling heat in June, the disappearance of polar bears in the Arctic, and sea level rise that threatens island nations? Should we wait for definitive evidence on the role of human activity before, oh, say, reducing how often we drive to the corner store for a lottery ticket and some ice cream? Do I really need to fly to Bali this year because I wasn’t able to go in 2020?

How long can the rest of us survive on a planet rapidly becoming inhospitable to polar bears, giant redwoods and people without basements? Is that a world I want to live in? Let’s be honest with ourselves: How far is it, really, from our fortunate and relatively comfortable circumstances du jour to the intolerable situations many others face today?

And of course, when will this happen again? How long will it be before the record high temperatures set in the PNW over the past week are eclipsed? How high will those new record temperatures be, and what will it be like to live through that week?

OK: no more grim stuff for a while. My next blog post will be a special edition on butterflies and moonbeams, and not a word about Murder Hornets. I promise.

Stay safe, I’ll write again soon.