Snowless Wy'East

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The dryness of the year is only enhanced when one looks at the state of Wy'East as it is, now. 

A few weeks back, a friend (and several others) posted up pictures of California's Shasta, utterly bereft of snow. I'm not a local to that and I imagine that late in summer, Shasta's usually down to next-to-nothing, but it was not only unsettling to see it that bare but that bare that early in the summer. That heat wave we endured took some thirty per cent off Tahoma's (Rainier) snowpack along. 

Wy'East being a more modest peak than either of those two, I had to expect no small amount of white gone. The wildfires being what they have been, I've not seen the mountain itself for a few weeks; the mantle from those east-of-the-Cascades infernos spreading westward enough to turn the eastern horizon into a visual miasma (I'll comment on that in a subsequent entry). 

Work being what it is, I come home during the afternoon now instead of the morning. And when I passed by my favorite photo spot, NE 122nd and Shaver in front of Rossi Farms, this is what I saw today:

Now, I've looked back through my historic photos and have determined that Wy'East looking this way in September is not really all that unusual (I'll post some comparisons in another subsequent post). But when seen through the lenses of this historically torrid Oregon summer and the mounting anxieties about the changing climate, it seems a little drier, a little more dessicated.

The only white left on Wy'East are its modest glaciers. Here's a close-up with the two most visible from my POV called out:

And so it, so far, goes.

[liff] Sunrise On The Day The Ash Fell In Portland

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This morning dawned stuffy, still, and excessively red.

That's this morning's sunrise over the old Owens-Illinois glass plant, just northwest of the big Killingsworth-I205 interchange, just southeast of Portland International Airport. I adjusted the aperture and exposure on the Canon S-100 enough to make sure I got the sun's disk in there; there was enough smoke in the air to make it so one, could, indeed, stare at the sun for a few moments without harm.

The exposure settings made the environment gloomier than it really was, but the interpretation of the scene, ironically, fits the mood perfectly. It didn't look this way, but it sure felt this way.

This is the most stifling weather I've ever known. It's just after 8 PM, PDT, and the local weather station says it's still 82F, and, tonight, I'm receiving reports from friends all over the greater Portland area, that ash from the so-called Eagle Creek Fire - the one currently, at this writing, burning in the Gorge and putting the town of Cascade Locks under peril of evacuation - is falling at various points from here, Out 122nd Way, to Tigard and Hillsboro.

We, all of us, feel a little like dancing the apocalypso.

And so it goes.

[liff in Cascadia] The Wind, This Time

3400.

It won't be Columbus Day Storm (1962) bad. It won't be Hannukah Eve (1993) bad. It probably won't be Tree-Falls-In-Our-Yard Night (2014) bad. But, hail Eris, who can tell until it gets here?

Via http://earth.nullschool.net, a full-planet live rendering of atmospheric conditions:

The small bright teal circle is the approximate location of Portland, Oregon.

ETA? About 2 hours from the time of this post.

Mount Hood not visible from 122nd Avenue at this time. 

[pdx] Day of the Wildfire Smoke, Part 3

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Near home, in the David Douglas community on the deep eastside, and it's getting on toward sunset. And here's SE Stark Street near 102nd:

The real landscape wasn't at dark as that, but I wanted to show the redness of a a sun that was as much a red rubber ball as the morning's was.

This all calls to mind the old maxim:

Red sky at morning, Sailor take warning,
Red sky at night, Sailor probably lives in Portland
and is about 80 miles away from several major wildfires.

Or something like that.

[pdx] Day of the Wildfire Smoke, Part 2

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From Southwest Portland and the Terwilliger Blvd Parkway we proceeded east over the Hawthorne Bridge into the Hawthorne District (a/k/a Chicville, Lower Cascadia).

This was the view from about 28th and Hawthorne looking west …

… and this was closer in, about 18th Avenue or so.

It bears remembering, I think, that the points-of-view in the above two photos were in areas that were, because of the miasma, not visible from the viewpoints on Terwilliger in the last posting.

The above is looking down Hawthorne east from about SE 35th Avenue. That dark area above the horizon in the distance is Mount Tabor. For comparison, this, taken in 2014 at the Hawthorne Street Fair, which isn't in exactly the same spot … but it's close enough.

What a day, huh? This is your world … and this is your world on global warming.

Any more questions?

[pdx_liff] #OregonSnowmageddon2013

2974.Yeah, it happened again. Bunch of snow and hideously cold weather hit the Pacific Northwest, and Portland in particular.

Here's some scenes from a certain transit home from work on a certain recent Friday morning for a certain 3rd shifter involved in a branch of the transportation industry.

SE 102nd and Stark Street, in the bustling Oregon metropolis of Russellville, which is actually a sub-metropolis of Portland.

This'll be notable for recording the gas prices on a certain Friday morning in December 2013 as anything else.

This next shot proves that there are some stretches of Hawthorne Blvd that are less fashionable than others, but just as cold and wintry. More evergreen trees, too!

Next, SE Stark and 122nd, looking east. Look at that line of headlights dwindling into the east there. Not only was the traffic on the greater Portland freeway system historic, but the side streets were no great shakes neither. But interesting looking.

SE Stark, looking east from about 112th Avenue. They say, today, in the weather, now that we're in Bitter-cold-and-the-water-in-your-bathroom-pipes-is-frozen-and-I-hope-to-God-they-haven't-burst-alypse 2013, Oregon is actually a few degrees colder than Alaska.

So now we know where Alaska goes for vacations.

Here.

While it is personally easier to survive steely cold snaps than it is the heatwaves (one can always put on another layer) it's no less horrid. The prolonged extraordinary cold can be just as oppressive as the hot, and just about as enjoyable. We look forward to the warming this coming week with a mixture of eagerness and apprehension - those frozen pipes don't exactly encourage.

Seeing "12 degrees" on the home weather station is only amusing for just so long, and it's a lot of a shorter time than you'd otherwise think, oddly enough.

And so it goes.