This 2021 drought was somehow even worse for nature than 2020. It started with a "light" winter of less rain for me than normal. Scientists claimed our mountain snowpack exceeded normal by a significant percentage, but then the northwest had a week of a "heat dome" at the end of June that melted all the snow I can see in my mountains. As a matter if fact, I noticed this week (in mid September) that Mt. Baker has a line of blue at the top instead of the regular snow. I heard that the dark blue on Mt. Rainier is the glaciers showing, so that must be what is happening with Mt. Baker.
Then there was a second heat dome in July. Apparently, heat domes are common along the mountain ridges in summer, but normally only extend from California down to Mexico. The heat domes this year were experienced from Mexico to as far north as British Columbia in Canada. These heat domes had temps in the high nineties and over 100 in Seattle. A lot of the greenery dried out or got heat stressed. A lot of the wildlife, the birds in particular, were desperate for water. I had more juncos than normal foraging in my gutters for condensation off the metal roof. The hummingbirds were going through two feeders every day.
The deer seemed to be doing alright, but they changed their habitual movements mid-summer, so all of a sudden deer were crossing the road in odd places and at odd times. On top of that, logging resumed despite the high fire danger, and I saw two deer dead together on the side of the road, clearly both struck by one of the logging trucks while trying to cross. The turkey vultures and ravens moved in...on those--and other--carrion. I had two close calls myself, and I drive slower than everybody else on my mountain.
I am grateful that we had little smoke impact from summer fires. The fires raged in California (again) and even in Oregon, but the winds this year stayed mostly typical (unlike previous summers). Unhappily, the folks on the east coast got a lot of the smoke. Part of the new normal has been reported as unhealthy air quality days doubling over the past ten years for the whole country. Again, nothing compared to Australia a few years back, where there was such a huge toil to the environment and the animals.
I belatedly sheared four of the seven. They had been packing water away like camels during the drought, and going through hay like crazy since the pastures had all dried out. But while they hated getting the haircuts, they seemed grateful to be rid of the coats. Such pronking in the fields.
My mother had birds in her yard this summer that she doesn't normally see; I spotted some during a recent visit. She has a wild yard, a quasi bird sanctuary, and these two straggly, skittish birds were scavenging in her back yard. I think they were just plain brown-headed cowbirds, but they sure looked to me like they had been living the hard life for a while and their feathers looked unfit for flying She didn't know them, they were not regulars of hers. And after years of absence, a heron has been cruising her neighborhood again. Someone had been killing crows in her neighborhood, and there is more construction down by the slough (swamp) and nearby lake, so the wildlife has been disrupted and harmed by covid-frustrated people, and more development, in both our neighborhoods.
The rain returned in September. First just dew in the morning, then an odd shower here or there, and then this past weekend, we were predicted to have storms and two inches of rain in a 72-hour period. The birds were singing their ecstatic joy. The rain did not compare to the rain out of Ida and then Larry flooding the northeast, but just watch that pendulum swing from one extreme to the other in days and then try to tell me with a straight face that global warming is a hoax.
The stellar jays also returned to my farm in September, after an absence during the drought. Yesterday morning I saw the first coyote in a long while, and tonight is the full moon...I wonder if there will be a performance tonight. Knock wood, I have not had the bear come foraging. I don't want him becoming habituated and expanding his scavenging. I *did* have some local tribal liaison folks visit. They had a radio-collared female cougar putting some hours on my land that they wanted to peek at; I haven't seen her, so she is keeping her distance, as is typical.
I read an article a while back, I think it was out of Time magazine. The writer explained there was going to be a period of strange weather before the "new normal"... and called this period "global weirding". Indeed. If this summer is any indication.
