Climate is changing

The Spokesman-Review’s archive photos of skaters at Manito and Cannon Hill in the 1950s are nostalgia because of a global phenomenon called climate change. What are the observed signs here? A mild November with the exception of one week portends another brown Christmas Day like last year’s, when I rode my bike to a family dinner. I would gladly cross-country ski Downriver Golf Course but, as of this Dec. 4, it is not even happening on Mount Spokane.

The 19.4-inch snowfall of Dec. 17-18, 2008, marked our last hard winter. However, it did not match the 100-day norm for snow on the ground from November to March of previous decades. I remember jumping off the garage unharmed in the winter of 1969 and the ice storm of November 1996.

Fifty-degree December highs. Reduced runoffs. Methow Valley wildfires on the rise since the 1970s. Priest Lake freezing over every five years. California’s heavy rains occurring after three years of drought. Globally, 2013 the hottest on record.

A lesser known carol to Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” “Let it Snow,” says, “It doesn’t show signs of stopping.” Yes, it does.

Michael Kraft

Spokane