A summer of discontent?

"I have said this for years. I hate droughts. Hate them. Nothing good ever comes out of them."

It is somewhat ironic. In church this summer, the pastor has been addressing Elijah, and how God used him (hundreds of years before the birth of Christ) in getting the Jewish people at that time to stop false worshipping. To send a message to the people, God caused the rain to stop falling in the area in which they lived. "Not rain nor dew" would fall on the land for years. It is a good Bible story, and you can read about it in I Kings in the Old Testament. To make a long story shorter, the people finally were convinced that worshipping Baal was not the right thing to do, and came back to worshipping the true God. God then restored the rains.

This summer, we are in the most severe drought we have had in years. Minnesota is not escaping it. For a while I thought we might just be on the fringe of it, with the west taking most of the brunt. I was wrong. But as bad as we have it here, it is an order of magnitude worse in the far west. That being said, the drought here is bad enough.

The DNR is getting ready to slap water restrictions on much of the state. Crops without irrigation, might not make it this year. More entry points in the DNR have been closed down. In Canada, there have been almost 4,000 fires this year. That is about 800 fires more than average. There are so many fires north and northwest of Minnesota, the North Shore has become very smoky at times. So much so, there have been air quality alerts. Having an open fire anywhere in northern Minnesota right now, is a real no-no.

Speaking of Canadian fires, we know exactly where the boundary is between Minnesota and Canada. Unfortunately, fires don't recognize that boundary. There are a couple of fires in southern Ontario, which might spill over the border into the Boundary Waters. That would be bad. I would not be a bit surprised to see the entire Boundary Waters area shut down for the season, if the fire season worsens. Many vacation plans will be ruined. 

Shortly after my wife retired, we took a vacation up to the North Shore and stayed at the Cascade Lodge for a few nights. It was horrible. Why? There was a very large fire in the Boundary Waters, and the smoke would come drifting right over where we were staying. It was so thick and so bad, we could not stand being outside. We left to come home early. 

I have said this for years. I hate droughts. Hate them. Nothing good ever comes out of them. In the west, there are fears the Great Salt Lake could dry up. Lake Meade, which services much of the southwest with water, is at historic lows. They are getting some monsoonal rains now in Arizona, but monsoon rain is always too much, too fast. Much of it is lost to run off. 

Is this going to be a summer of discontent? Could be. This was supposed to be the summer of getting back to normal. The drought and the Delta Variant have caused "normal" to be not so normal. We will get through it, and hopefully, this fall the rains will come again. If not, and if we are to be in a multi-year weather pattern like the west is in, well, I don't even want to think about that.