Kayakers paddle in view of downtown Seattle, cloaked in a haze of smoke that swept down into the Puget Sound region from fires in British Columbia. (Elaine Thompson/AP)
The Pacific Northwest is hazy, hot, and bothered. So reports The Washington Post. It has really thrown off the routine of us Seattle natives.
Here in Seattle, we are very low-key. Many of us can tolerate grey skies most of the year. Some of us, like myself, are far more tolerant. I accept grey skies as part of the package. When we reach a sweet spot sometime in autumn, all that grey can be the most satisfying backdrop for contemplation and creativity. But not the haze we are currently suffering through.
The Haze, as some of us have gotten to calling it, is something sinister, a harbinger of climate change things to come. Or, one can hope, just one big temporary pain in the ass. Either way, it has cut into us. This time around, we are dealing with Canadian wildfire smoke. What will we be dealing with next time, and the time after that? Many of us moved to Seattle just to avoid having to face those kind of questions. We thought we’d forever said goodbye to such things as hurricanes and heat waves.
The Seattle Haze t-shirt
So, yeah, we don’t do well with oppressive weather. We can barely handle any snow in winter. For us, The Haze is a really big deal. For those of you with a sense of humor, there’s a t-shirt just waiting for you. Find it right here and here. Cartoonist Jennifer Daydreamer and I created it just for you.
