Taken for Granted

Trey Smith

It can be so easy to become complacent. You get used to things being a certain way and you just come to expect that they will always be that way.

As I have chronicled in this space for five years, rain and South Bend are synonymous. While much of the US has been in the grips of a persistent drought, we on the left coast don't have to worry about such things. Why should we? It rains here all the time!

Except, of course, when it doesn't.

Since the beginning of August, we have only received a little less than seven tenths of an inch of rain. That comes out to approximately 4 inches below normal. There is no rainfall forecast for the next two weeks and the US Drought Monitor has added Southwest Washington to an area in which drought is expected to persist through, at least, the end of this year.

I've spoken to several long time locals and most of them are stupefied. This kind of weather pattern simply doesn't happen around here. No one can remember the last time it remained dry for months on end. A few of them have even remarked that, maybe, there is something to this global warming "theory" after all.

Ya think?