The Evergreen State - Green No More?

One thing that I take for granted living in the Pacific Northwest, is not having to be too concerned about watering my lawn in the summer months. With our abundant rainfall and moderate temperatures, Mother Nature has done a very good job keeping Washington green enough to earn its well-deserved nickname.

So today, when I noticed just how dry and brown my grass was, I realized that this was a first for the month of June: fairly sizeable areas of dry, brown grass all over the neighborhood. 

Washington's drought is nowhere close to the severity of California's drought. We have actually had normal levels of rainfall, but due to increasingly higher temperatures, we have not had our typical amount of snowfall. In fact, our snowpack levels are presently a mere 16% of normal and this past winter of 2014 was the warmest on record for the state of Washington (second warmest for the state of Oregon). This, of course, will have a domino effect on a number of things including low stream flows, which in turn hinders salmon migration to their spawning ground. We can probably also expect a more volatile wildfire season.

I've learned that both Washington and Oregon drought conditions are called "wet droughts" - droughts characterized by normal levels of rainfall, but above-average temperatures that cause winter snow to fall as rain. 

These temperature changes are not merely flukes. Pacific Northwest temperatures are predicted to increase by 3-10ºF before the end of this century, and the global average temperature for this past May 2015 was the highest recorded in 136 years of record keeping. 

If we want our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and beyond to inherit a healthy, habitable planet, we cannot close our eyes to the facts and we must heed the advice from scientists. At this point, we don't have a moment to waste.