Hot, Dogs and Seattle

We’re still in Issaquah and still not liking it so much this year.  It’s hot.  The reason we come up here is to escape the heat in Tucson, and while it’s not as hot as it is there, it’s more humid.  My biggest whinge is that the front RV air conditioner is not keeping up in the afternoons, and the driver's side of the bus (where my chair is) is really hot.  But it always comes back to the question; if not here, then where.  At least we are not getting wild fire smoke like last year.

Speaking of hot, WAPO has a depressing article on why it’s so hot.  Weather, meet climate change.
 

The proximate cause of the Northern Hemisphere bake-off is the unusual behavior of the jet stream, a wavy track of west-to-east-prevailing wind at high altitude. The jet stream controls broad weather patterns, such as high-pressure and low-pressure systems. The extent of climate change’s influence on the jet stream is an intense subject of research.
This summer, the jet stream has undulated in extreme waves that have tended to block weather systems from migrating. The result has been stagnant high-pressure and low-pressure systems with dire results, such as heat waves in some places and flooding elsewhere.
Gone are the days when scientists drew a bright line dividing weather and climate. Now researchers can examine a weather event and estimate how much climate change had to do with causing or exacerbating it.

Britain is baking, there are massive forest fires above the Arctic Circle and the US is really hot.  This is likely to be the new normal unless we get hit by an asteroid. 

So, the weather is annoying me.  I am also annoyed at a small sub-set of dog owners.  Let me be clear, I am not casting aspersions at all dog owners, just the ones like the woman we encountered on the trail today.  When I hike, I’m walking really fast, looking down so I don’t trip over rocks or roots.  There’s sort of an “in the zone” thing, trying to move as fast as possible.  This morning, I was startled by what sounded like the Hound of the Baskerville, producing a deep baying bark.  Looking up, I saw a 90 pound dog running at me, jowls flapping.  It scared the living snot out of me.  I shrieked (involuntarily).  I got my poles out in front of me, Jim adopted a stance that would allow him to fend off the dog.  There are signs everywhere that dogs must be leashed.  The owner started calling the dog who did not return to her, but did slow down.  She started in with a not really an apology about “this is what he does when he’s startled.”  Really?  I replied with “perhaps this is why trail users are required to leash their dogs.”  She got hostile!  Said it wouldn’t have happened if she had been closer to the dog, or maybe if I was making more noise.  Well she wasn’t close to the dog, and how is this my fault for being too quiet?  This cheeses me off more than I can tell you. 
We took a short spur off the trail to visit a “scenic overlook” called out on the trail guide.  Colorado this is not!



There have been some interesting tweets on Twitter about Seattle lately.  I will show you two.  The first photo was taken on the grassy knoll near Pike Place Market.  In the background are very expensive condos with views of Elliot Bay.  Really, city living at its finest.  in the grass we have some of the 12,500 homeless people in Seattle.  What really struck me about the photo is the yellow bike is one of the recently acquired fleet of bike share bikes and the sleeping man’s head is in an Amazon box. 



This was put up by a local doctor.  He’s not kidding.  A local restaurant in Issaquah had to take down an old dying tree, and they had people coming in yelling at them for about a year because they murdered the tree.



So that’s what’s happening here.  Wednesday we’re supposed to revert to the weather pattern that brings low clouds off the coast, and I for one am looking forward to seeing them back!