View From The Cab

By David Tollefson, Columnist

A couple mornings ago I was getting ready to have some breakfast. There was a red glow on the floor in my kitchen, which faces the rising sun.

The red glow turned out to be the red sunlight, peeking over the woods to the east of my farm.

As we have seen occasionally the last few years, smoke from wildfires to our north and west, drifts over us at heights of 5,000 to 15,000 feet, according Paul Huttner, meteorologist with MPR News.

On Monday, May 15, Jennifer Gray, CNN Meteorologist, gave some background to this all-too-common event for us in Minnesota: (bear in mind that these temps in the western North American continent also apply to Alberta and British Columbia, where many of those wild fires are occurring).

The West has taken a dive straight into summer, with temperatures well above those normally seen even at the end of July. Record-breaking temperatures and a heat wave will continue to grip the entire region through much of this week.

Yesterday, several locations across the Pacific Northwest broke daily high temperature records:

*Seattle-Tacoma Airport: 89 degrees

*Olympia, Washington: 90

*Hoquiam, Washington: 91

*Portland, Oregon: 92

“Today will be the 4th day in a row with highs in the 80s for Seattle,” the National Weather Service office in Seattle said. “This will tie the record for most consecutive days with highs 80 degrees plus in the month of May.”

For reference, Seattle’s normal high at the end of July is around 79 degrees, so temperatures are well above even the normal highs seen in the dog days of summer.

Many people in the Pacific Northwest do not have air conditioning, and with overnight lows running warm as well, the body is not able to easily recover from the daytime heat. It has prompted heat alerts for more than 10 million people across the Pacific Northwest and portions of Central California.

The weather setup very much resembles a weather pattern seen in the middle of summer for the region. A big dome of high pressure is sitting over the Northwest, allowing dry downslope winds to come off the mountains, spiking temperatures well above average.

This heat is not just affecting the U.S. It has been even more extreme across western portions of Canada.

Several cities across British Columbia set new monthly records Sunday, Including Lytton, which topped out around 97 degrees; hotter than the average temperature Phoenix, Arizona experiences around this time of year.

One bit of good news is, “While the developing heat may result in daily temperature records being broken, it must be emphasized that the expected hot conditions will not approach those reached during the ‘Heat Dome’ of late June 2021,” Environment Canada said.

In a May 17 report for CNBC, Emma Newburger has some Key Points about effects of the Canadian Wildfires:

• Wildfires burning across Western Canada have forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes and have prompted some oil and gas companies to curb production as blazes approach pipelines.

• The fires have burned about 1,800 square miles across Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan as of Monday – 10 times the average area burned for this time of year, according to the NASA Earth Observatory.

• The fires have had a notable impact on the region’s oil industry, as some drillers were forced to halt a small percentage of production in a precautionary measure due to shifting fire conditions.

The smoke also has caused poor air quality and hazy skies in parts of southern Canada, as well as in North Dakota, Minnesota and several other states. The spread of the smoke, which contains particles called aerosols, has prompted concerns over the impact of poor air quality on respiratory and cardiovascular health.

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Right now at mid-morning, I look to my east across highway 29 – the woods about a half-mile away have a blueish tint to them. The radio tower about a mile east of my place is barely visible at all.

Even at night, I can look to my west from my house and usually see yard lights from farms at least 20 miles away. But even in darkness, the haze spoils the views from a distance.

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Please contact David Tollefson with thoughts or comments on this or future columns at: adtollef@hcinet.net