The Record Heat

 Here's a story on OPB about the record breaking heat hitting our region.

Northwest breaks all heat records.

Yesterday I arose early to try to trap the kittens and mom in Lebanon behind a gas station.  I would have let it go until maybe the heat subsides, but it won't subside as far as forecasts extend.   It will be in the 90's all next week, except Monday and maybe Tuesday when it will be over 100 still.

The temps are supposed to reach some ungodly high today.  As if yesterday wasn't hot enough.  108 in Portland yesterday.  103 or 104 here, depending on your location.  I'm hoping the power grid can handle it.  For me and my cats sake.

I caught two of them, both boys.  A Keizer woman met me there to get them immediately to her place, and out of the heat.  

I slept most of the day then, on and off, and then at 9:30 p.m., headed over again.  It was still above 90 degrees but what else to do.  Mom and final kitten came out of the brush about 15 minutes after I set two traps.   Mom however kept going and vanished into the dark, leaving the kitten to investigate the traps and finally enter one.  The Keizer woman was there by 10:30 p.m. and picked that one up too and I went home, since mom was nowhere to be seen.  She's in heat again, and will be hard to find and trap.  She's tame, but encountering her at the right moment when she's there and wanting petted, so as to maybe get her into a carrier, will be all about good timing.  The video is of them.  I took that the first time I spotted them, when I was gassing up at the station.  

I am uneasy with this abnormal heat wave.  I start to think we went over a tipping point on climate change and there's no chance now, to make it right.   Detroit Reservoir marina is closing in a few days, for the season.  It just got going again, after wildfires ravaged the town of Detroit last summer.   The closure now is because water levels are already too low to support the boats moored at the docks.

The idiots who try to politicize everything want to blame the corp of engineers for this.  Of course they do.  These are the chronic blame gamers.   The corp can't control rain amounts or heat.  Or a host of other things.  Same thing going on in the Klamath basin where irrigation water has been shut off from the upper Klamath due to drought and lack of water.   Oh brother, the idiots who try to turn everything political instead of helping solve this very real problem.  

I know we're changing and the northwest, historically more a northern rainforest may become an arid region over the next few years.  I don't have to like it.   The trees and animals here cannot withstand this sort of heat either.   They'll vanish if it continues, over time.

The extreme early heat means the snowpack that is like a bank filled with water for the summer and fall, melts fast and early.   This may leave us high and even dryer later on this summer.

I hope this is all wrong and later on, we get tremendous rains and replenish.

Nonetheless, I'm uneasy.

The owners of the condo buildings in Florida that collapsed, probably killing close to 200 people, although most of those missing have not yet been found and may never be, in the tons of concrete and twisted steel, they need to be charged with willful manslaughter.  It's come out engineers detailed terrible dangerous flaws three years ago, with millions in repairs needed and the owners didn't do them.  They were too busy raking in the dough.   Enough!  These sheltered rich people who think they can do whatever they want and get away with it.  Jail!!!  Take them away, charge them, convict them and put them in a common prison not some resort prison.  They're scum.