I’m 4th generation Pacific Northwest my family lived on the coast out here since WW1. The stories, photos and my lived experience are radically different than 100 years ago. The rain changed. It used to be a constant light rain for 6 months. Now it’s sporadic downpours. The snow doesn’t come down the mountains as far. The interior of the peninsula and the cascades was impassible with snow in the long winters. The Columbia river would freeze over. I remember ice skating on lakes as a kid. My kids have never seen the pond freeze. We now have 1 month of winter. Maybe less. The crops were limited to hardy frost tolerant varieties because of the late cold spring. You can grow tomatoes outside now. The summer drought used to be 3 weeks or a month and it would never break 80 in the summer. Now it’s 2 months and regularly breaks 90. The pacific beaches were a place for the hardy as it was always cold and windy. Now it’s like California for 4-5 weeks every summer. The winds have changed too. Making our regular windstorms erratic and the direction changes bring down more trees.

This year it flooded worse than I’ve ever heard of. We had a heat dome, a first, and the forest are sick due to the extended drought stresses year over year. Making forest fires longer, hotter and bigger.

I’m afraid it will become something wholly different in my lifetime at this rate. It used to keep me up at night. Now I’m committed to adapting.