Smoke

Any more, it looks like this is just going to be part of summer. This smoke is from the fires in eastern WA, having managed to cross the Cascade range into the west side. Air quality is declining and will maintain that trend over the next several days as temperatures stretch into the 90s. It never used to be like this. Sure, we had the occasional fire and the occasional run of hot weather, but until about 15 years ago, having visible smoke on the west side was rare and only happened when there was a local fire, and hot temps only showed up in mid or late August, and only lasted a few days. You don't need me to tell you what's going on here, and it's only going to get worse.

Sidebar: when I was a kid, I read Reader's Digest avidly. Even then, the things which interested me most were the science articles, condensed and edited to make them palatable to the average American (who, incidentally, was substantially better educated than the current crop). Several pieces particularly stuck with me: the discovery of the coelacanth, and the tipping point at which climate change would be irreversible. The writers of the latter theorized that when ocean temperatures had raised two degrees, there was no way out of the hole we'd dug for ourselves. We're already seeing an increase of at least 1.5 degrees (many sources claim it is higher). Like rats, we've fouled our own nest, and like rats forced into too small a habitat (by rat standards), we're turning on one other in a fight for survival.

Lenticulars and Snow

Day 79: The Mountain is once again clad in white, the rugged, stony spines of ridges and outcrops now hidden from view. For the last several years, each summer has exposed more of the bare bones as glaciers not only recede but become thinner. It does my heart good to see snow covering naked rock now, although I know that even a record snowfall would not build the glaciers back to their former status. Glacier-building is a long process, not something which can occur to any great extent in a single season. Lenticular clouds such as these approaching the Mountain from the south often presage a change in the weather, although in this case, it was not immediately to come. The photo was taken yesterday. This morning, the sky is clear, save for a few barely discernible wisps of high-altitude cloud.

Big Day Bust

Day 211: That, my friends, was the absolutely worst Big Day I have experienced in my long years as a birder. Let me enumerate the species, and trust me, this won't take long to read: Evening Grosbeak, Steller's Jay, Band-tailed goddamn Pigeon, American Robin, Tree Swallow (exactly one), Purple Finch, Mourning Dove, Dark-eyed Junco, Black-headed Grosbeak and finally, right before dinnertime, a solitary Crow, bringing my Big Day total to 10. No Rufous hummer (one showed up this morning, doesn't count), no sparrows of any sort, no blackbirds or starlings. Terrible, horrible, no good very bad Big Day. But why? The weather has been good this week, so they weren't put off by that. There was food out, although admittedly not in the quantity I have laid on board in previous years. The only factors I can consider as possibly leading to the paucity of birds are avian influenza and/or climate change and the associated devastation of vast forested areas by fire. Ten species, when I should have had two dozen or more. Ten. That's all. And damned few of each.

Long Dawn

Day 331: Even with the 45,000 acre Retreat Fire just over the Cascade Crest, skies here had been relatively smoke-free until this last week. For the last several days, "dawn" has persisted for hours, the sun glowing red in the haze even after it was well up in the sky. All day long, the light coming in through the window has an orange cast, tinting my needlework and making it hard to distinguish thread colours. The Mountain is obscured by the smoke layer and even the nearby hills are veiled in dingy yellow gauze. The air is still, but even a stiff breeze would only move the smoke around because most of western Washington is experiencing the same conditions, fires burning in a chain along the Cascades from Canada to Oregon. Earlier in the season, I had thought we might escape this new and unhealthy summer standard. I will welcome the rains when they finally come, even though they come with their own set of problems related to our changing climate.

Bad Air

Day 310: I'm roughly 150 miles from the fires in Kelowna (British Columbia), but the smoke from them drifted in here overnight, and the Air Quality Index now stands at 170 (unhealthy) for my location. The Mountain has disappeared from view and although the hills behind this tree line were faintly visible an hour ago, they are now also occluded by thick smoke. I'd hoped we were going to get through this summer without a smoke event: an unreasonable expectation given the way climate change is progressing. That leads me to the subject of today's post.

You might think that the prevalence of bad behaviour in modern times is due to the political scenario, but it's my opinion that it's driven by the awareness, conscious or unconscious, that our planet is slowly dying, and that we have no one to blame but ourselves. Climate-change deniers can spout the party line all they like, but they are not fooling me. Their greed and lust for power comes from a deeply rooted self-preservation instinct and, whether they want to admit it or not, the evidence in wildfires, strong storms, rising ocean temperatures and such plays on their minds subliminally. As a drowning man would push another under to grasp at a straw, so do the climate-change deniers shove others aside so that they can grab the biggest, the best, the most in the hopes of saving their own hides. But in a dog-eat-dog world, the last dog standing is doomed to starvation regardless. Humanity, my friends, is on its way out.

Diamonds

Day 285: Diamonds. Or perhaps more precious than. In the last twenty-four hours, my pluviometer registered a little more than a quarter inch of rain, the first which has fallen since June 21st. That may not seem significant to those of you who live in drier climates, but to a Pacific Northwesterner, the absence of rain for such a protracted period is something worthy of remark. By now, the moss on car bumpers has dried up, the green nothern faces of our homes have turned brown, and we've all invested in several gallons of skin moisturizer. We're worried about forest fires, grass fires, idiot-fool campers' campfires because we are surrounded by timber/tinder. But taking a broader view sends cold winter chills up our spines as the rest of the country is withering in unprecedented heat. Diamonds, precious diamonds are scattered in my yard.

White Christmas Eve

Day 72: Happy Christmas Eve/Christmas to my readers in various time zones around the world and from top to bottom! My power is back on now after a brief outage this morning when I suspect a branch laden with wet snow shorted out a transformer somewhere. Better now than in a few days when our nighttime temperatures may fall into the single digits (speaking in Fahrenheit degrees, mind you). Yes, the Pacific Northwest is due for a cold snap, the likes of which we haven't seen in decades, dangerously cold when a mere six months ago, we experienced a dangerous heat wave. Trying to explain how this is a symptom of global warming/climate change to someone who doesn't comprehend the difference between "weather" and "climate" is not an easy task, but anyone should be able to understand that when the planet warms up, more moisture is driven into the atmosphere just like steam rises from a pan of water as it is brought to a boil. Then, as seasonal weather cycles into its cooler periods, the moisture falls back to earth as rain or snow. Hot summers are not necessarily followed by wet, cold winters (that's "weather"), but in the long term (decades or centuries), a correllation can be shown (that's "climate"). That aside, it is a white Christmas Eve here today with even more snow in the forecast for Christmas Day and beyond. As long as my lights stay on, I'll be able to enjoy it from the comfort of my living room.

Broken Dawn

Day 304: Dawn is broken. It does not rise golden to push back the night. It does not cast its lengthy rays across meadow and slope to wake the flowers and the creatures who live amongst them, and rather than dispelling gloom, it brings it as a heavy cloud of despair to settle on those beneath its glaring, fire-reddened eye. Dawn is not breaking; it is broken, shattered by humanity's carelessness and greed. Like a china plate fallen from a fireplace mantle to the flagstones of the hearth, it might be that it can be glued back together, but it will never be the same.

Where Chip Belongs

Day 329: The summer of 2019 seems to have been exceptionally kind to furry wildlife. As previously reported, I've personally observed nine black bears and also an astonishing abundance of marmots, and where I'm used to finding a fairly large number of squirrels and chipmunks, I've never before seen as many young Townsend's chips. Particularly along lower Skyline Trail between its junction with the Lakes and Paradise Glacier trails, baby chips are all over the place, some small enough to make me think they're only a month or so out of the nest, scampering here and there, running up trees to scold me as I pass. It makes me wonder: is this a "boom year," to be followed by a "bust?" Or is it a trend, critters from the lower forest moving up in range as global temperatures rise? Mammals, birds, insects and others follow their food sources; plant ranges are shifting, both geographically and seasonally. Many of the target species I'm monitoring for MeadoWatch are blooming earlier, setting seed earlier, and while this might seem like good news for some critters, it's bad for those who can't adjust or are slower to respond to change. In some cases, a shift in period may initiate a "meltdown," for example, if Pedicularis blooms before its species-specific pollinators arrive, it won't set seed. Even if the pollinators arrive early the following year, there will be fewer plants to support them, and the decline will continue. Our 2019 boom of mammals may tax the food web. Then what? I'm simplifying, yes, but there has to be balance in order to maintain a healthy biota. This isn't a foot-race with only one winner. Humans aren't going to "come out on top." It's a community. We all depend on each other, and we all have to do our share.

The White Lion Of March

Day 145: March has come in like the proverbial lion, although a rare albino form of the beast. Six inches of white deposited itself in my yard yesterday, topping off the eight-inch rock-hard glacier purporting to be lawn and garden. March snows in the Pacific Northwest should be light and brief, a dusting melting off by mid-afternoon, never more than an inch, never persisting for days on end. Weird weather, you say. Yes, if you look at the short term, but harder winters and heavier snowfalls are symptomatic of a deeper issue: climate change.

Now I hear you sputtering, "But...but...but they say we're having global warming! I'm freezing my buns off here, and I can't see out for snowdrifts against my window!" Yes, that's right. The two things go hand in hand.

In simple terms (and the issue is really much more complex), our summers are getting hotter and drier. Hot, dry conditions drive moisture into the atmosphere, with evaporation occurring not just from bodies of water, but from anything with water content (leaves, evergreen needles, even human skin). It remains there until the annual weather patterns shift, at which time it comes back to Earth in force as precipitation, i.e., flood-producing rains, heavy snowfalls. The net result, mapped over a period of decades (as opposed to days, weeks or months), indicates the climatological trend.

Weather or climate? The average American's knowledge of science seems to be limited to the one question they asked as children: where do babies come from? Unfortunately, it seems like many of them still believe they're brought by the stork. Trying to explain climate change/global warming to someone who can't tell you the difference between an amphibian and a reptile is as futile as talking genetics to a Creationist. The brain cells simply aren't there to address.

Unreasonably Unseasonable

Day 70: Let's get one thing straight: Pussywillows do not bloom in December in the Pacific Northwest. In fact, when they started blooming in late January instead of February, I began ranting about changes in the climate. A decade later, they were appearing mid-month. I have never, repeat NEVER seen them bloom before Christmas, and mine, living at elevation as they do, are later than those in Flatland. It's one thing for stores to start their Christmas push before Hallowe'en and put valentines on the shelves before New Year's, but when Nature follows the lead of crass commercialism, one can only say that she's being unreasonably unseasonable.

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.

So Very Wrong

Day 62: This is wrong on so many levels, I can't begin to count them. Yes, that is my dirt in my garden, and those are bloody flippin' daffodils poking their little heads up, and it's not even Christmas. I live in the Pacific Northwest, not southern California. This is a sight I should not see until February at the earliest. Winter hasn't even begun, and here is Spring, starting already. Ma Nature must have flipped an extra page on her calendar. If I thought I was busy chasing rare Orchidaceae and mycoheterotrophs in April and May of 2015, 2016 may be even more exciting.

Gentiana Calycosa, Mountain Bog Gentian

Day 278: One of the highlights of yesterday's botanizing trip was finding Gentiana calycosa already in bloom. Normally this late bloomer heralds the end of the season, not emerging until September. Like so many other wildflowers this year...

"Wait a minute, Crow...isn't Gentian supposed to be blue?"

Ah, you caught that, did you? Indeed, your typical Mountain Bog Gentian is one of the bluest things you'll ever see, but occasionally, a white individual crops up. This is not a faded plant, as you will readily note if you observe the buds beside the open flowers. Nor is it a different species. It is an uncommon colour variation of the Gentian you know and love. Dusty rose-pink specimens occur even more rarely. Hikers in Gentian country are more likely to find the "bleached denim" variation, a washed-out blue.

Like so many other wildflowers this year, the Gentians are ahead of schedule by about six weeks. Already, wildflower season has passed its peak in Mount Rainier National Park. What will the meadows look like in late August? And what does this early season portend for the pollinators, many of which are species-specific? Will they die off? Or is it possible that our written history fails to show the broader picture, omitting observations of species in similar times of stress? Will they shift to another plant, or will only the hardiest survive? Each question we ask raises dozens more. This is a fascinating time to be a naturalist, for sure, but also an unsettling one.

Hydriomena Speciosata

Day 204: Please, dear readers, do not hold me to the identification of this moth because I am only about 95% convinced that it is H. speciosata (no known common name). It is certainly a Hydriomena, and only two species are known to occur in western Washington. H. nubilofasciata feeds on oak; H. speciosata prefers Douglas fir and Western hemlock, the precise habitat in which this specimen was found (thus my tentative identification). It is one of the Geometrids, a family which includes loopers and inchworms.

Anyone who has spent any time in our northwestern forests in the autumn has at some point come across an inchworm suspended in mid-air by a single thread of silk almost too fine to see. Wafting on the slightest breeze, spinning slowly in a shaft of sunlight, the little caterpillars always make me stop to admire them. Neither are the moths uncommon, although they do not ordinarily fly so early in the year.

Given the early emergence I've witnessed in plants and frogs recently, I am more than ever convinced that our mild winter and low snowfall are responsible. What is disturbing is that not all species will respond to altered conditions in the same way or on the same schedule. This little fellow may be ahead of his food source by a month or more, and therefore may not survive.

A Sense Of Scale

Day 43: People who have lived in the shadow of the Mountain for most of their lives tend to take its dominance of the horizon for granted. At 14,410', Mount Rainier towers above the surrounding mountains and relegates 5000-6000' peaks to the category of "foothills." This relief map of Mount Rainier National Park (a fixture in the Longmire Wilderness Information Center) puts the geography in perspective. Mount Wow (foreground, left) rises almost 6000' above sea level, yet the Mountain itself dwarfs the ancient massif. The highest point accessible by car is Sunrise (6400') and it is at the very edge of treeline. Above that elevation, only the hardy alpine plants survive.

In discussions of climate change, researchers predict that the alpine zone will shrink in size as warmer temperatures allow less specialized species to creep upward. Changes in habitat will allow plants, animals and insects to expand their ranges, each thing linked in some way to another and another. Other species may die out as a result of losing the periods of cold necessary for their reproductive cycles.