Oregon Heat Dome Climate Change Trip 2022 and Memories of 2021 Climate Change Tour in the Age of the Mask

 

Multnomah Falls on a hot, heat dome day. 

Last year we were  in Oregon for the infamous heat dome which saw temperatures here in Oregon as high a Phoenix. This year, we have returned to temperatures that are almost as high in the upper nineties and hundreds. Just like last year, when we sought to flee the midsummer heat in North Dakota, cool air settled there and the heat landed here. Welcome to the world beyond normal. 

Last year when we traveled to Oregon and northern California in June and July, I called it Climate Change trip 2021. I wrote the following at the time.

In June and part of July, my wife and I drove through Oregon and Northern California. We arrived in Clackamas Oregon to a warmer than normal year, just before a three-day heat dome peaked at 116 degrees. Three days of record heat and dry that are unprecedented in history. I stood outside midafternoon in the heat and even under the shade of a tree the wind felt like a furnace. The next day, when the weather cooled down into the 90s, we headed south on the I5 to California. The car thermometer peaked at about 107 on the way down. On our way, we crossed the Shasta Reservoir that looked like an empty bathtub after entering California to the sight of a smoke-filled hillside of Mount Shasta that looked like the scene of a disaster movie with circling planes dumping water. While we were in Marysville, daily temps hit around 100 each day. During our time there the Salt and Lava fires burned right down to the I5, closing it for a few days. It is a dry 100 that doesn't feel quite so hot. Our return trip saw similar temperatures and passed areas where the fire had burned right down to the road while viewing flames jump from a hillside high above us. The trip from Redding to the Oregon border was so smokey that we put the masks on we already had with us because of Covid. We are truly in the age of the mask, whether it is fire or pandemic or something else, masks are de rigueur. for many uses in the present century.  The Age of the Mask has arrived.

We spent several more weeks in and Oregon shrouded by smoke filled skies and lesser fires dotted around the area. To escape the heat one weekend, we drove to the coast and spent time on a beach. The beach sand was mixed with tiny flecks of plastic that was shocking to see. A few days later, we drove back through a Montana so smokey it was hard to see the mountains on the sides of the road. Stopping in Missoula, we stayed at an overpriced Motel 6 and awoke to more smoke. Our month of traveling in the summer of 2021 left me with no doubt that a new age has arrived. I had once thought I would be very old or not around to see the things we are seeing today, but here we are. Most of us who have come of age ink  the brief period since World War Two have lived through the most prosperous and peaceful period in human history in the prosperous country at the center of the global Pax Americana. All I know for sure is that the future likely won't be like the peaceful prosperity we have mostly squandered to have a few more pieces of plastic shit from Walmart. 

As I write this, I am sitting inside because the temperature is set to hit 103 later today. Even at daybreak this morning, doing my morning routine of hiking the trail to the top of a nearby hill and then winding back down along a creekside trail, it was hot when not beneath the trees. The top of Mount Hood is even in the 80s. 

By the time we left after 10 days in Oregon, the weather had begun to moderate. It made us feel that somehow, last year and this year, we brought the heat with us.

Gina and Abbey swimming in a crystal clear swimming hole at Eagle Fern Park along Eagle Creek. The mountain water was cool on a day where temps pushed above a hundred.