An Elegy for Vancouver Summer

Rising Temperatures and Raging Wildfires Have Me Dreading My Favorite Season—And Mourning the Splendid Days of My Childhood

Last summer was my first in my new apartment. I’d moved into the building in the fall, several weeks into a cool Vancouver November. The trees were bare, and our famous winter rain had set in for its months-long stay, but I stood on my balcony, looking out over the cityscape and mountains behind it, and thought: This will be heaven in summer.

Buildings in the Pacific Northwest are built for cold, despite our relatively mild winters. They’re made of wood and insulated, or of concrete, which retains heat naturally. Mine, …

In California, It’s 72 With a Chance of “Weather Whiplash”

For All the Cliches About Endless Sunny Days, the Golden State’s Seasonal Forecasts Are Hard to Get Right

California weather is harder to predict than it looks. Even Harris K. Telemacher came to learn that.

Telemacher was a Los Angeles TV weathercaster with an ocean of knowledge—he had a …

The Fireball in Baltimore That Ignited a Climate Justice Movement

Residents of Curtis Bay Set Out to Save Their Neighborhood. Instead, They Built a Coalition With Global Aspirations

On December 30, 2021, residents of Curtis Bay, a neighborhood in southern Baltimore, felt a loud boom. The foundation of the row homes and two-story buildings shook as though there …

Will Hawai’i Succeed in Killing Me?

A Weather Forecaster on the Big Island Predicts More Disasters If the State Doesn’t Heed Scientific Warnings

Hawai‘i is a spectacular place—not just visually exciting, but also located above incredible geological forces and beneath amazing atmospheric conditions. As a meteorologist who reports on earth science news, I …

Extreme Heat Is Boring

But Can Feeling Trapped Indoors Motivate Us to Climate Action?

The first time I met someone from Tucson, Arizona, I asked him a burning—pardon the pun—question. How did people there tolerate the summer heat? I pictured my childhood summers in …

There Is No ‘I’ in the Climate Crisis

Connection and Interdependence Can’t Capture Carbon But Can Get to the Root of the Problem

The environmentalist Paul Hawken says, “The most complex, radical climate technology is the human heart and mind, not a solar panel.” What would it mean to imagine the heart and …