http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Washington-Suffers-Deadly-Wildfires/story.xhtml?story_id=012000O8BTA0
Seattle, where conventional wisdom has it that the sun does not appear until July 5, endured its hottest June on record and its driest May and June combined. As the famously overcast region was sweating its way toward Independence Day, the National Weather Service placed the greater Puget Sound area under a heat advisory until Sunday night.
Many officials don't believe that this is a temporary phenomenon. Increasingly, they are convinced that this is the kind of early fire season that the Pacific Northwest can expect as the century unfolds.
"This is a stress test for 2070," said Cliff Mass, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. "We're being tested now with the warmth and lack of snowpack that will be typical at the end of the century. How do we get through it?"
Climate experts say the current conditions in the Pacific Northwest are part of a short-term climate phenomenon, but they warn that temperatures are rising everywhere. In Seattle, for example, that means warmer, wetter winters and warmer, drier summers.
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