June Is Doing Its Job

Forecast for today? High of 47 and solid rain. Cold and wet, just like June is supposed to be here.

The first half of June was drier than usual, but this week is making up for it. While the sunny days are so pleasant, too much sunshine in June makes people around here nervous about the coming fire season. Smoky days in August can be miserable.

Steve and I attended a talk by Bob Keane, a longtime Forest Service scientist, earlier this year on what kinds of changes the forests are likely to see due to climate change. He showed a picture from the 1930s of a boat on Flathead Lake shrouded in a haze of smoke. Smoky summers used to be normal, but fire suppression efforts in recent decades have changed that. As the climate warms, Keane said we can just expect smoky conditions every summer. Ugh, that is an effect of local climate change that I hadn’t thought of.

Evening Sky

8:00 am temp: 46
Yesterday: 61/46
Normal: 72/45

A bonus to the storms that move through in June are the lighting effects the clouds can create in the evening. On this recent evening there was also a double rainbow.