Am I the only one apparently unknowingly gaslighting myself about the weather?

I live in the Pacific Northwest in the general Seattle-area. Right now, it's 90ºF (32ºC). The news articles say this is a heat wave. The comment sections on those articles are full of people saying, "That's just summer! It's supposed to be hot in summer!"

My brain tells me now that 90ºF weather isn't considered hot, though my body sure doesn't like it. It certainly isn't the 112ºF (44ºC) it was 3 years ago. But I think that 112º day (that came after two other days above 100ºF) have really messed with my perception of what weather here is supposed to be like.

I posted somewhere the other day something like, "We only have a few days a year in the 90s and 100s in the summer." I was thinking about that today and thought, "We don't really get temperatures around 100 every year, do we?"

Then I remembered when I was around 15, and we'd gone to Mexico to build houses. I remember the temperature in Mexico was 102º. I remember my teenage self thinking that was an insane, ungodly temperature that I had never experienced before. Being over 100ºF was insane. It was not normal. It didn't happen in my area....and now I think it's normal? Who's right here?

I went and looked, and Seattle has only hit 100º F 6 times in recorded history, and 3 of them were in 2021. (https://www.fox13seattle.com/weather/seattles-hidden-100-day-and-other-heat-wave-stats)

Fox13 News wrote:Seattle has officially only hit 100º F three times before: 100 on July 16, 1941 at Downtown Federal Building, 100 again on July 20, 1994 at Sea-Tac Airport, and 103 at Sea-Tac on July 29, 2009.  

When I had gone to Mexico in 1999, it had only ever hit 100 once in my lifetime (and it was probably under 100 at my house, since we lived in the foothills. Come to think of it, it was probably that night when I couldn't sleep because it was too hot. I kept moving my legs to new, cooler sections of my sheets). The 100s aren't normal.

I went looking to see about days above 90ºF (32ºC). I found this article from the Seattle Times The rise in Seattle’s 90-degree days, charted all the way back to 1945

In total, there were 246 90-plus-degree days in Seattle from 1945 through June 2022. One hundred of those days have occurred in the past 20 years.

Since 1945, there were only nine years when we’ve had seven or more 90-plus-degree days in Seattle, and five of those nine years have been since 2015.
....

If you’re among the tens of thousands who moved to the Seattle area in the past decade, you won’t recall a single summer without a 90-plus-degree day. The last time that happened was 2011.

Maybe years like that are no more, but they weren’t all that rare in the past. Since 1945, there have been 16 years with zero very hot days — zero times when people needed tips on staying cool, like freezing your pillowcase. In the three-year stretch from 1999-2001, the temperature never hit 90 degrees in Seattle.

So, my teenage self wasn't wrong. 100ºF days are supposed to be insanely rare in my area, and there were often summers without any days over 90ºF.

I think it's really easy for our brains to create new versions of normal. It's easy to forget what summers used to be like.

I am supremely grateful that, 6 years ago, I made this post about the first time our sky filled with wildfire smoke. It had never happened before. That smoke was as insane to me then, as a 100ºF+ day was to my teenage self. Since that post 6 years ago, we have had a month or more each each year where the sky filled with smoke and air quality was trash. It's the new normal, but I don't want to gaslight myself into thinking it's always been this way.

Am I the only one this is happening to? Is anyone else noticing changes in weather but their mind is just saying, "Oh, that's normal. It's always been like this."

I use the July 1936 data to compare current weather conditions. I'm not sure if that's my gaslighting myself but that was a pretty hot summer. Does that show some kind of cyclical thing? Probably not, but it is a picture of temps in recent history.

I hadn't know/thought to look at July of 1936 (when I think of the worst winters in our area, I think of the winter of 1950. My grandma got married during that winter). I did a little search (because I knew nothing about July 1936) and found the National Weather Service's info on it:

the first few weeks of July 1936 provided the hottest temperatures of that period, including many all-time record highs (see tab below).

The string of hot, dry days was also deadly. Nationally, around 5000 deaths were associated with the heat wave.

In La Crosse, WI, there were 14 consecutive days (July 5th-18th) where the high temperature was 90 degrees or greater, and 9 days that were at or above 100°F. Six record July temperatures set during this time still stand, including the hottest day on record with 108°F on the 14th. The average high temperature for La Crosse during this stretch of extreme heat was 101°F, and the mean temperature for the month finished at 79.5°F - 2nd highest on record.

Several factors led to the deadly heat of July 1936:

A series of droughts affected the U.S. during the early 1930s. The lack of rain parched the earth and killed vegetation, especially across the Plains states.

Poor land management (farming techniques) across the Plains furthered the impact of the drought, with lush wheat fields becoming barren waste lands.

Without the vegetation and soil moisture, the Plains acted as a furnace. The climate of that region took on desert qualities, accentuating its capacity to produce heat.

A strong ridge of high pressure set up over the west coast and funneled the heat northward across the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes.

As a result of the "Dust Bowl", new farming methods and techniques were developed, along with a focus on soil conservation. This has helped to avert or minimize the impact of a prolonged drought.

I hadn't really thought about the poor land management of that era effecting the weather so much, but it makes sense. It goes along with how many South American countries are dealing with more extreme weather as a result of deforestation.

It's another good reason for permaculture! We need trees and ground cover to help mitigate our weather.

(I wanted to know what our weather was like during July of 1936. It apparently wasn't bad, if the data from Times Record News) is correct. Considering how hot it is nearly everywhere else in the US, it might be!

(I'm wondering how accurate the map I linked above is. When I put in June 2021, it said we didn't get over 85. I think it's data is bunk.)

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Amidst a lot of articles (from various years) saying basically, "You think this weather is hot, July of 1936 was hotter!" I also found this from 2021 U.S. slightly surpasses 1936 record for hottest summer ever, NOAA says

The contiguous U.S. just recorded its hottest summer ever, topping the previous record set in 1936 by less than a hundredth of a degree, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found in a recent climate report. Between June and August 2021, the average temperature in the lower 48 states was 74 degrees Fahrenheit.

NOAA reported that 18.4% of the contiguous U.S. experienced extreme or record-breaking heat during the summer months. This summer was in the top five hottest on record for 16 states, and California, Oregon, Utah, Idaho and Nevada experienced their hottest summers ever recorded. At one point in August, over 200 million Americans were under heat advisories.

So, we barely beat the record in 2021. It makes me wonder if we beat it in 2022 or 23, and it just never got reported on. Reporting tends to happen during events, not after the fact.

I went looking, and haven't found anything definitively saying the US was hotter in 2022 or 23 than in 1936, but did find this from NOAA

August 2023 was Earth’s hottest August in NOAA’s 174-year climate record.

The sizzling month also wrapped up the Northern Hemisphere’s warmest meteorological summer and the Southern Hemisphere’s warmest meteorological winter on record, according to an analysis by scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

I found that information about the 1936 heat wave being caused by Humans not treating the land well very interesting. I wish Humans were truly better at learning from past mistakes.

As usual, I don't think there's a simple answer. We've been taught to pay attention to "averages" a lot in the modern world, but research I did 40 years ago, and courses I took at University, really opened my eyes to how misleading many "averages" can be. Time span is a biggie. The "average" that shows up on my usual weather forecast page is an average for the specific day from 1941 to 2013. But in this area, serious heat waves aren't all that common and they can happen any time from unexpectedly early like June, to September when I'm sick of watering everything and yet if I don't watch things, I can loose valuable plants due to too much heat after 4 months of drought. So does it really matter if 2010-07-09's record high temperature happened to be 29.6? And how does that relate to a different page I can go to which tells me that in 2024 we set a new record of 29.9 except that record isn't for July 9th?

I do think that some of what you're reading in the news relates to a much greater awareness of the point at which high temperatures become deadly. However, even that is not clear-cut. The elderly and very young seem to succumb much more easily, as do people with some co-morbidity. The humidity is a big factor affecting the danger also. The length of time with no relief - which is why our Government is encouraging communities to create "cooling stations," is also critical.

Beyond all this, one's precise environment is key. I've not had time to look more into what our "UV index" actually means. It's a scale. My forecast states: "UV index 9 or very high." OK, can it go higher? How much? How much does the UV being high affect how my body perceives the temperature? How wide is the difference between UV index 8 and UV index 10 (assuming there even is a 100? Feel free to explore that one for me Nicole! Pretty please?

What I do know is I may feel ridiculously hot in the sunshine in front of the house, then walk down Penny Lane in the shade of 60 to 80 ft trees - mostly Cedar and Doug Fir, but also some Big Leaf Maples, and the relief I feel is incredible. So maybe my suggestion is to quit gaslighting yourself and think about where you can plant some seriously useful shade trees?