I live in Wenatchee, Aaron, and can attest to your feelings and experience. It is bad enough we lose so much light during the long winter months here, we need our healthy light and air in the summer months. This is all new compared to what we saw twenty or thirty years ago. We joke about having five seasons in Washington: Winter, Spring Summer, Fire, and Fall. But it is no joke. Every year the fires get closer to towns and more and more homes are burned. Wildfire notification apps on our cell phones shouldn't be the norm, but they are. Insurance agencies who no longer offer fire insurance on homes in some areas shouldn't either. :(
Oh Aaron. I felt this viscerally. I lived in Seattle and Bellingham for 19 years before moving east in 2020. Though this isn't why I left, the smoke season and droughts were becoming debilitating to my mental health. I remember the drought of 2015, when I watched Lake Washington become a backbone and I couldn't get myself off the couch as soon as I got home from work, aching for rain like I never have. I don't know what to say, except this. I see you. And I'm sorry.
I live in Wenatchee, Aaron, and can attest to your feelings and experience. It is bad enough we lose so much light during the long winter months here, we need our healthy light and air in the summer months. This is all new compared to what we saw twenty or thirty years ago. We joke about having five seasons in Washington: Winter, Spring Summer, Fire, and Fall. But it is no joke. Every year the fires get closer to towns and more and more homes are burned. Wildfire notification apps on our cell phones shouldn't be the norm, but they are. Insurance agencies who no longer offer fire insurance on homes in some areas shouldn't either. :(
Oh Aaron. I felt this viscerally. I lived in Seattle and Bellingham for 19 years before moving east in 2020. Though this isn't why I left, the smoke season and droughts were becoming debilitating to my mental health. I remember the drought of 2015, when I watched Lake Washington become a backbone and I couldn't get myself off the couch as soon as I got home from work, aching for rain like I never have. I don't know what to say, except this. I see you. And I'm sorry.
I knew California had a fire season (and this, too, only really arose during my lifetime) but did not know that Washington now also does too. :(