05/09/2025
My east coast trips are always a whirlwind, filled with sand and sunburns. Old friends & new memories. This time though, there was smoke. I've never seen such heat back east, when I grew up in the 80's & 90's no one had Air Conditioning. Now it's very common. And the ocean, I'm sure, has never been so warm, it felt like a warm bath as the waves hit me. Back west our weather was strange as well, with almost no heat, but tornado warnings and actual tornados too. Our kids school did tornado drills. Our hardiness zone changed. In fact almost 80% of Canada's land mass has experienced an increase of ½ to 2 full hardiness zones, reflecting overall warming trends . Since my daughter was born 7 summers ago, every summer we've spent too much time inside due to wildfire smoke. Some days the air quality is equal to smoking a pack of ci******es. It's hard not to worry about the long term issues our kids will have growing up like this.
