Pacific Northwest residents seek relief from heat wave
PORTLAND, Ore. — Before the first batch of Nutella and sea salt doughnuts was sold Wednesday morning on Fremont Street, Brianna Gneckow posed a question to her coworkers at Pip’s Original Doughnuts: “Does everybody have water?” But by lunch, hours before Portland endured a record high of 103 degrees, the staff had switched off the fryer and locked the doors.
Portland, of all places, was just too hot. As the Pacific Northwest sweated and wilted in the grip of one of the fiercest heat waves ever recorded in the region, Portland shattered its Aug. 2 record of 96 degrees but fell short of the all-time mark. A 78-year-old record in Salem, the Oregon capital, fell on a day when the city hit 106 degrees. Thermometers in Seattle, a three-hour drive from Portland, also broke a record, topping out at 91 on Thursday.
Here in Oregon’s largest city, it was sometimes hard to tell what was more startling: the record-threatening heat or the fact that, on a planet getting used to higher temperatures, Portland was unprepared for it. In a region known for its enviously mild, low-humidity summers, people have increasingly and quietly embraced air conditioning. Federal data suggest that about 70 percent of the Portland area’s occupied homes and apartments have at least some air conditioning, up from 44 percent in 2002.
“It would have exacerbated our situation tremendously if people had not been adding air-conditioning units to their homes,” Carmen Merlo, the director of the city’s emergency management bureau, said in an interview at Portland’s Emergency Coordination Center.
Of course, the mightiest air conditioners could only do so much to overcome the effects of the high pressure ridge that settled over the Northwest.
Commuter rail service was suspended for part of the week, and transit officials ordered light-rail trains slowed. The county government opened board-game-stocked, pet-friendly cooling centers Tuesday and said they will operate until at least Monday. Downtown Portland’s street vendors urged customers waiting for fried rice to stand in the shade. And as the highest temperatures approached, Portland’s streets seemed a little emptier, and breezes felt like bursts from a hair dryer.
Although Portland is still renowned for its temperate summers, researchers have measured clear shifts in the area’s climate. Before this week’s heat, Portland had posted eight days of daytime temperatures of 100 degrees or more since the beginning of 2010. For the whole of the 1950s and the ‘60s, it recorded nine.
Overnight low temperatures have also risen sharply in recent decades.