That night, on Crooked Lake, 19 years ago, rain that had begun 24 hours earlier continued with the addition of a howling wind, the likes of which I had never heard before. It would start as a low whine and increase to a loud scream.
We had been tent bound most of the day, and a measuring cup had 3 inches of water in it, so it had been a good day not to move. The wind, however, scared me. It was a known danger, with tree limbs and whole trees possibly coming down. I had seen such places in the canoe country, once in Gabbro, far to our southeast, where there were downed trees all over the campsite. These trees weren’t dead to begin with. They had been very much alive but unable to bend sufficiently in the wind to keep them from breaking apart, shattering, 20-30 feet above the ground.
I lay awake, waiting for the sound of a branch cracking, which would be my signal to leave the tent. In case I didn’t, I had a hand saw next to me, not that it would help much if a 14 inch trunk landed on me. I finally fell asleep, and the next day we would have a northwest wind behind us on the long paddle back to Basswood Lake.
That event was a powerful storm, but it was not unusual. Lately, I have concerns about unknown weather, the new weather. I think many felt global climate change just meant slightly warmer days. It doesn’t work that way. When a system starts to become less controlled, the first thing that changes is the variability. Now, the average has also changed, the variability increase obvious. We are discovering that systems stall and either produce long droughts, floods, or major blizzards, called by climatologist Daniel Swain as “precipitation whiplash.” I do a decent job of weather predicting in the outdoors and in town, I check the European and American models daily. I ought to be far more comfortable, but the other day, I realized I am not, and that is disturbing.
Two years ago, the models predicted remarkably high temperatures for the Northwest, so high that they were discounted. But while the temperatures didn’t reach the low 120s, (49-50 C.) except in Canada, they came close enough for three days, far closer to the models than anyone had forecasted. Heat of this nature was so far off the graph of the daily temperatures for the last 100 years that a discreet 3 dots may be seen well above the curve of the other 36,525 temperatures.
Heat is silent, but I am old, and my physiological ability to deal with high temperatures is less. I still work in hot weather, but I drink often, and after a morning’s hard work, I am tired. By the end of the day, I am very tired, and it takes me half the next day to recover. I used to hike Spencer Butte on Wednesday after having worked Tuesday. I don’t anymore. One day this summer, despite drinking over 3 liters of fluid while working, it took me a full day to recover.
Storms concern me now. I have always had a slight sense of worry mixed with excitement when awakening in the woods to the low rumble of an incoming thunderstorm. I’ve dealt with them. I stay on my pad, inside, and hope a tree nearby doesn’t fall on me. But now there seems to be a difference in these storms. They are more energetic than formerly. They carry more water, and I am not sure our models will capture their strength the way they did with the high temperatures. Or maybe the models will be correct, but humans reading them will say no, that can’t be right, when it is. Now, I will be asking the questions: is this a storm type I have dealt with or is this a new type I have never experienced? Or is the categorization something I haven’t yet considered?
New York’s recent flooding had very little warning. The storm was more compact and wetter than expected, and the concern was raised by meteorologists that the large effect, smaller scale events will be much more difficult to forecast, especially for major metropolitan areas, where a few miles one way or the other makes a huge difference.
In the changing climate, we will have to learn new rules and keep learning them, since equilibration is centuries away, barring ways to decarbonize the atmosphere. Storms may form faster than we have seen before, catching seasoned weather watchers off guard. What bothers me is we will encounter changes we can’t even imagine. If temperatures can reach 118 in the PNW, can we go a half year with no rain? Can we have a dozen wet atmospheric rivers in 3 months like hit California? Streams have evolved in the face of past rain events may not be able to deal with new rain events—there may be flooding or dangerous currents that have never been seen before, and these may be significant issues not only in the backcountry but even on the highways, major or minor, that lead to these areas.
Not only may streams not be properly configured, neither may be trees. What happens when so much precipitation falls that the soil gives way, as it already has? Will this make trees unstable, promote root rotting, early death? We don’t know. What plant can survive flooding rains and months of drought? While they can evolve. but will they if frequency and severity quickly double? Evolution is slower.
I am leaving the Earth’s stage at the very dawn of these new changes. I will see them and expect to be significantly affected by some. But I won’t be here for the main show, which is going to show changes never imagined, be tragic, and expensive beyond belief.
Boreal B[l]og 
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