For any September 6th it is pretty hot in Portland, Oregon. Also, my daughter was telling me that the Farmer's Almanac predicts the coldest winter here in about 30 years or so along with the rest of the country. She said to me, "I wonder if we are going to have an ice age or something?" I said, "When weather fluctuates all over the place and if enough volcanoes go off at opportune times this likely could happen." You sort of need more than one variable to converge to set off an ice age.
If you have ever been on a mountain that creates it's own weather systems you might understand what I'm talking about. In other words, just like "Lake Effect Snow" creates it's own weather off the Great Lakes, if a whole lot of snow came down it tends to create more of the same and then more of the same and then that doesn't melt off. That wouldn't mean global warming was over either it just would mean we were in a temporary ice age in North American, Canada, Europe, China and Siberia. This could happen even this year with the Iceland volcanoes going off. But, I would say the probability of this is only 1% to 5% even with all the right variables in place.
We see a little of this when the Polar Vortex slips like it has kept doing now since about 2012 since most of the northern ice cap melts off each year. There isn't enough ice to sustain the polar vortex on the north pole anymore.
In fact, what I have been reading is the fastest melt off now is at the south pole raising the oceans the fastest of any place on earth right now.
I have two stories about mountains changing the weather. The first one I'm not sure if I've told on this site before, the 2nd one I have.
The first story I was walking up to Horse Camp Sierra Club emergency rescue lodge with friends in likely August. However, we noticed way off in the distance a few clouds that didn't look ominous (YET).
Then the clouds came in and the winds started to blow and we realized these were thunderheads and all of sudden really painful hail came out of the skies. It would have made all our heads and shoulders and faces bleed but we rain under trees to get out of the way of the hail. It went on and on like this for about 20 minutes or more and by then we realized we had another problem, we didn't have clothes to withstand the fast dropping temperatures from about 80 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit down into the 30s Fahrenheit as we were all in T-shirts and shorts and hiking boots. So, we finally decided to brave the hail and get wet and make a run of about a mile to our vehicles. Since we were all adults in this story it wasn't as hard as it would have been with children. In this story we were laughing and screaming being hit with hail and water like it was raining in Hawaii or something so getting to the car without getting hypothermia (getting way to cold in your core) we succeeded because we were young and strong enough to do this (20s and 30s).
The next story was much more difficult because the first story was between 7000 and 8000 feet in elevation.
However, the next story was at around 9000 to 10,000 feet up on Mt. Shasta in my friends 4 wheel drive when you could still drive that high in some parts of the mountain that hadn't been closed off yet that most people didn't go to then in the 1980s.
My three older children were 5, 6 and the oldest I think was 9 and we had all ridden up this high in a very high clearance four wheel drive Chevy Truck belonging to a friend of mine. We were walking up higher at Clear Creek when we spied ominous looking clouds. At the time it was 80 to 90 degrees and about over 100 degrees lower down in McCloud and the little City of Mt. Shasta. So, once again we were only in t-shirts sun glasses so we didn't go snow blind (as half of the terrain was snow that high then) and hiking boots and shorts (all of us) three adults and 3 children(my wife and I our kids and our friend). Well, the storm came in gang busters and began to snow heavily right out of the blue. We were pretty scared for our little kids and the two oldest started to get sort of hysterical because they hadn't felt this much cold, wind or snow without more clothes on before. So, they started to freak out and thought they were going to die or something. So, the biggest challenge for us adults was just to get them out of the weather and back to the 4 wheel drive without something really bad happening to one of us.
We were walking on 4 to 12 inch rocks at this point and about 6 inches to a foot of snow came down very fast. The two little ones we scooped up and carried but the oldest boy was too big to carry and so I found I had to anger him to get him to push to survive this. It was the only way I could think of to keep him alive. Later he understood but at the time he was having serious psychological issues.
We made it to the car without losing any fingers or toes and without beginning yet to hallucinate from hypothermia yet. (at least all the adults) and no one lost any fingers or toes in this incident. Then it was pretty scary driving down in these conditions on snowy rocky or dirt roads down about another 1000 feet in altitude before the snowing stopped. We were all very grateful to still be alive after that.
Later: As of 3:22 pm it made it to 91 degrees Fahrenheit.
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