Let It Snow!

Day 113: Here in the Pacific Northwest, it's not uncommon for NOAA to predict snow right up 'til the last minute and then revise the forecast to rain, but this time, it looks like it may actually materialize. And I'll be glad to see it, even if it does restrict any plans I might have had for going to the store. I won't drive if there's snow on the ground unless there's a medical need (cats or me). That said, we're short on the white stuff here. Other than a very light dusting in November and a few sloppy flakes which didn't stick in early December, we've had no snow at all. Even at Longmire, there isn't much. When I was at work last week, it was only patchy on the ground. At higher altitudes, there's less than there should be, and this worries me. Certain plant species count on a period of total darkness to rest bulbs or prepare seeds for germination. When the snow pack is low, the light transmitted through it can be enough to prevent those species from sprouting the following summer. Of course, other factors figure into the equation for a "good" wildflower year as well and, when poor conditions combine, the wildflower season suffers. So let it snow! For the sake of the high meadows, I can do without that bottle of milk.

Bryo Cryo

Day 53: It's cold. Okay, it's only Pacific-Northwest cold, not East-Coast cold, but it's all a matter of what constitutes "normal" for the residents of any given area. I'm sure somebody in Florida would classify 40 degrees as "cold," 30 degrees as "damn cold" and 25 degrees as "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey," but here in the PNW, 22 degrees is cold enough to justify complaining. Let it drop into the teens, and we go into full-blown weather cursing. Now I happen to know that there are a lot of people out there who believe that colder winters disprove global warming, but they are confusing two non-interchangeable terms. "Weather" is what we get daily. It rains, it snows, we have a dry spell or a heatwave. That's "weather." Climate change is, in a short definition, a long-term shift in norms, e.g., a shift toward lower annual rainfall or hotter summers charted over decades or even centuries. There may be some backsliding in the graph, downturns when an unusually wet summer seems to make up for 20 years of dried-out lakes and glacial retreat, but when viewed from farther back temporally, a shift becomes obvious. Climate and weather are not the same thing, and while thousands may lose their lives in a meteorological event like a flood, a global shift in climate will make its effects known on all living creatures.