Twenty degrees. Thatās how much higher temperatures in Seattle were during a heatwave this week compared to what we usually experience this time of year, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).Ā The increased frequency, duration, and intensity of heatwaves are indicators of climate changeĀ āĀ the result of human
In response, Wildfire Ready Neighbors fire prevention program launches in Western Washington Just 10 days into this spring, a firefighting team flew in a helicopter over the dome of the Washington state capitol building in Olympia. They were on the way to quickly put out a small wildfire before it
We donāt often think of our neighbors down the Pacific Coast as frequent recipients of Seattle-levels of rain. But this winter has been a difficult stretch, with wave after wave of storms damaging homes and piling up (much needed) snowpack. In this video, Heart of the City talks about
This op-ed originally was published by the South Seattle Emerald. On February 28th, 2001, I was in middle school, in the computer lab. I remember it vividly. Partway through class, our room started violently shaking. It felt like our school had been placed on top of a slab of cafeteria
āSeismicā buttons in Seattleās elevators hide ubiquitously in plain sight. When I was new to the city last year, these buttons were a reminder that I had moved in beside a quiet danger. I was intrigued by other reminders. Signage announcing seismic improvements to elementary schools. Housing built beneath
I want to do an even handed and dutiful reporting job about the 2021 Cascadia Innovation Corridor conference. But Iām in an downtown Vancouver hotel with my second negative Covid test of the week and a television talking about catastrophic flooding thatās cut the city off from (checks
Across the country, climate change-fueled extreme weather events are causing increasingly frequent power outages and are presenting a growing threat to our nationās energy infrastructure. Last winter, Texasās electrical grid failed spectacularly following an unexpected, deep freeze while this summerās heat and drought fanned the flames of
The engineering and technical experience in flood defences of Rotterdam and The Netherlands could help countries across the globe implement flood prevention strategies to fend off rising sea levels and more frequent, severe flood events brought on from climate change. Bloomberg Quicktake explains ho
Bloomberg QuickTake looks at how Paradise, California may pursue conversion of forestland and vacant exurban properties destroyed by wildfires into park space to stop future wildfires. Could this be a model for other areas that interface with wildlands and is it sustainable?
A week of forest fires and skies choked with toxic smoke was a sobering reminder of the fragility of our environment. An incredible amount of Cascadia is burnt or ablaze. More than three million acres have burned in California, one million acres in Oregon, and 800,000 acres and counting
If youāre a newspaper columnist or governor of New York, a pandemic is a great time to trot out medieval myths, repackage them like new, and feast on everyoneās anxiety to bring antiquated ideas into vogue once more. And thatās how you end up with ādensity is
I first learned about the release of the Seattle ā Future City: Resilience Roadmap from an article published by Smart Cities Dive. Previous to that I had heard the term āurban resilienceā thrown around quite a bit, but I did not know that Seattle had been chosen back in 2016 to
Cape Townās Day Zero, the day that most water taps in the city will be turned off, has been pushed back to 2019, but the name remains ominous enough. Day Zero. Simultaneously the day of nothing and the day of a new era. Cape Townās water crisis connects
On Monday, the Seattle City Council received a policy briefing on recommendations to improve the safety of unreinforced masonry structures. The council also approved a site-specific rezone in the Madrona neighborhood, which could allow for more mixed-use development on the neighborhoodās main north-south retail spine. Unreinforced Masonry Building Recommendations