esrosedotblog

Palm Springs is getting warmer by the year. It pretty much demonstrates what The Sixth Extinction, see below, is talking about.

The average temperature has risen. The area had had average temperatures 3.4 degrees hotter and average nighttime lows 6 degrees warmer in the last 20 years.

Joshua Trees Losing Ground to Global Warming

It seems weird that a desert plant would not like more desert like conditions, but the joshua tree, an almost totally local plant species, is not happy.

We have been here for 16 of those 20 years and I can't say I have noticed this.

Hot is hot and relatively hotter temperatures would have to be hotly hotter to be on my radar.

Right now, I welcome the heat. We knew what we were getting into when we moved here. We had come out to stay here for several weeks at a time in the torrid summer.

One nice thing about the heat is that, oddly, a lot of people here don't like it. This is particularly true, of course, with the snowbirds who flee at the first hit on the 90 degree scale.

But it is also true of many "locals" who are here more or less for the full year.

Many people get a small place up on the mountain at Idyllwild to sit out the heat. That is a considerable hardship in my view. There are limited amenities there and so they all have to trek down the windy roads to get here. 35 miles per hour max.

There is also Big Bear, across the 10 and up the mountain. We are going there for a visit at the end of the month to check it out. There is a lake, Big Bear. The only nearby water.

Then I will be going back east in July and return to San Diego in August. So I shouldn't be too dismissive of those who make a more explicit escape.

The heat, when it is on, cooks. It gets inside me. It is visceral, literally. A nice feeling in many ways but one that I can only take for an hour or two. Then into the air.

It beats hurricane season in Florida or humidity in the same place. Our humid days are laughably mild compared to locations in other parts of the country. Mostly because it is so hot, the comfort index is pretty hard to smash in the desert. But you have to take it hot to realize it.

Labels: desert, global warming, Palm Springs