Not Since April

According to the weather gurus, the Long Beach area (that includes Oysterville) has had 0.00 rainfall in August.  And according to the Chinook Observer. we’ve had no “appreciable” rainfall since April.

Here at my house, I had no running water inside or outside for an entire week this month and I’m now experiencing yet another week with no hot water upstairs.  The latter situation is no big deal, except for the fact that I will have had three guests for four nights and another five guests for three nights during that period.

It’s not that I won’t share my downstairs shower.  And it’s not that any of my friends and family who are staying here are unfamiliar with cold water (or no water) camping etc.  It’s just that I’m spoiled and probably they are, too.  It doesn’t take very long to miss the creature comforts we have become accustomed to.  But it surely does take us (as in the global us) a long time to face up to the facts.

Hot Water Tank Overflow Averts Indoor Disaster

Certainly the Peninsula’s situation (and mine, personally) is some kind of wake-up call and I wish we humans were much better at heeding the signs in a timely manner.  I’m sure we are at least a hundred years too late in the Northwest Water Scarcity Department (and I’m several years too late in the replacing old plumbing essentials.)

In fact, I recently read that “in 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.”  And “in 1938, Guy Callendar connected carbon dioxide increases in Earth’s atmosphere to global warming.”

Somehow, though, we convince ourselves that it will happen somewhere else.  Or that it will be a problem that our children’s generation will need to deal with.  (Like how callous is THAT?)  And the best we seem to be able to come up with is tighter restrictions on our Burn Bans.

It’s enough to make you self-ignite!!