The Cumulonimbusuckulus Season

Snow in Bend on July 26? Nope -- although that's not outside the realm of possibility.

That white substance on the ground is hail. The photo was taken during a rip-roaring, roof-rattling, toad-strangler of a thunderstorm that ripped through my side of town starting around 2:15.

I'd estimate that three-quarters to an inch of rain fell, and the temperature dropped 20 degrees in 15 minutes. (That's not a guess, it's what my thermometer recorded.) As I write this the rain and hail have subsided, but the sky is still as dark as the ass of a black cow at midnight and the thunder is still rumbling.

One thing you've gotta admit about Bend weather: It's often very dramatic. Usually dramatically bad.

We're in a typical Bend summer weather pattern now: hot days (in the 90s) that generate severe thunderstorms in the afternoon. The cumulonimbus clouds start piling up over the mountains to the west and south around 10 or 11 a.m., and by 1 or 2 p.m. they're letting loose.

As he has said before, ol' Blackdog enjoys an occasional good thunderstorm, but having thunderstorms all afternoon, every afternoon kind of interferes with the enjoyment of that glorious "outdoor recreation paradise" we all supposedly moved here for.

A Summer of Suctackularly Bad Driving

The seasonal high-pressure ridge that normally gives Bend warm, sunny summers finally has established itself over the Northwest, and even I can't find anything to bitch about in this month's weather.

So I'll bitch about Bend drivers. DAMN, they suck!

People in Bend like to complain about California drivers, and it's true that California drivers often are aggressive. On the plus side, though, they're also usually skillful.

Bend drivers appear to have gotten their licenses out of a bubble gum machine. And they normally drive with their thumbs up their asses ... unless they've got their heads stuck in there instead.

After moving here I discovered that Bend has the longest traffic lights in the world. I mean, you wait FOREVER for the damn things to change.

I soon figured out why Bend has the longest traffic lights in the world: It's because Bend has the pokiest drivers in the world, and they need about 40 minutes to drive through an intersection.

When the light turns green, the Bend driver does not interpret it as a signal to proceed through the intersection. He/she interprets it as a signal to look left, then right, then left again, then right again, then to take a sip of coffee, and then -- maybe -- to THINK about proceeding through the intersection.

And when Bend drivers finally make the momentous decision to proceed, they accelerate as if they were holding a raw egg between their foot and the gas pedal.

This is why, if you have three Bend drivers ahead of you at a traffic light, you can count on waiting through three signal changes before you can get across.

Bend drivers are hyper-courteous, which often makes them hyper-dangerous. They will STOP in the middle of a roundabout to let other drivers enter. I have even seen them STOP in the middle of the firggin' Bend Parkway to let other cars enter.

Of course when they're actually supposed to stop -- such as when they come to a STOP sign -- they often get confused and behave as if it was a YIELD sign.

Conversely, when they come to a YIELD sign they often act as if it was a STOP sign. The distinction between YIELD and STOP evidently is too subtle for many of them to grasp.

Now that summer is here there are even more displays of sucktacularly bad driving on our local streets and roads, because all the old farts who are too timid to drive in icy or snowy conditions have decided to fire up the '85 Oldsmobile and cruise around.

It's almost enough to make me wish winter would get here again ... but not quite.

ADDENDUM: On the Bend Parkway, a short stretch north of the Powers Road intersection, there is an UNSIGNALIZED PEDESTRIAN CROSSWALK going across all four lanes of the road. It is Oregon law that drivers MUST stop for pedestrians entering a crosswalk -- which means that cars and trucks and semis barreling along the parkway at 45, 50 or 55 miles per hour are supposed to STOP if somebody decides to saunter across the roadway.

This, my friends, is a 20-car pileup just waiting to happen.

An unsignalized pedestrian crosswalk in the middle of a limited-access, four-lane, 45-mile-an-hour parkway.

Only in fucking Oregon.

Apres May, Le Deluge

Winter II finally exited Bend on June 21, the first day of summer -- but not before dumping record amounts of rain, especially on Portland and the Willamette Valley. (We had a bit less rain here, but made up for it with chilly temperatures.)

The skies cleared and things started to warm up on June 21, and in fact every day since then has been sunny -- a string of 10 consecutive days of sunshine. Yippee.

Incidentally, June was the first month of 2010 to record more sunshiny days than sucky days.

But it looks like The Big Chill isn't over yet: The high today (July 1) is supposed to be only 70, and tomorrow the mercury is expected to ascend to -- get ready for it -- a balmy 63.

That's a HIGH of 63 degrees on July 2. In most places in the temperate zone, 63 would be a normal LOW on July 2.

"Paradise" my frozen ass.

June Totals

Days of Sun: 20
Days of Suck: 10

YTD Totals

Days of Sun: 56
Days of Suck: 82

Finally, Some Topless Weather

This is NOT Blackdog's convertible.

Just when it seemed that the cold, gray, drizzly, grisly Winter II weather would never leave, summer checked in right on schedule on Monday, June 21. Temperatures have been in the 70s since then, and today is supposed to break 80 for the first time this year.

Monday also was the first day I went topless -- meaning not that I shed my upper garments and regaled Bend with the sight of my splendid abs and pecs, but that I got my convertible out of the garage, took the hard top off and drove around town.

I love to drive around in a convertible, feeling the breeze rippling through my thick, luxuriant, golden hair. But alas, topless days in Bend -- i.e., days in which it is comfortable to drive with the top down without wearing a coat, sweater or sou'wester -- are mighty few. I'd estimate there are maybe 40 or 50 of them per year.

Maybe next year I'll start a count. Meanwhile, I plan to enjoy the Bend summer -- described some years ago on another blog as "six weeks of sunshine and thunderstorms." (When we're lucky we get eight weeks.)

How to Have a Sucktacular Garden in Bend

Newcomers to Bend often ask me, as a 25-year resident of The Suckiest Little Town in the West, for suggestions on how to landscape their yards. Ol' Blackdog is always happy to oblige, because landscaping in Bend is ridiculously simple. Thanks to the cold, the dryness, and the incredibly short growing season, there are only three landscape elements that survive and thrive here: rocks, bark chips and juniper.

The top image shows a rock. (This one is a "lava rock," which is kind of cool.) An almost infinite variety of sizes, colors, styles and types of rocks is available to the Bend landscaper, which partly explains why rocks are such a popular element in local gardens. The other thing they've got going for them is that the Bend climate won't kill 'em

The second image depicts bark chips. Like rocks, bark chips are not, strictly speaking, a plant, although they are derived from plants -- specifically lodgepole pine, Ponderosa pine or hemlock trees, typically. Like juniper, bark has the advantage that the suckerrifically horrible climate of Bend can't kill it.

And last but certainly not least we have a picture of juniper, which is far and away the most popular landscaping plant in bend. Juniper is an ugly, gnarled, scrawny, scraggly, straggly, prickly, aggressive, hostile, vicious shrub/tree that bears no visible flowers and no significant fruit, except for small berries that sometimes ferment and are eaten by robins, with the result that your yard is littered with drunken birds making a disgusting spectacle of themselves. The only other thing juniper has to recommend it is that it is virtually impossible to kill. Even the non-stop suckiness of the Bend climate can't kill it.

So there you have your basic Bend landscaping tool kit. Just get somebody to deliver several hundred cubic yards of bark chips, spread it around, find a few rocks (you won't have to look far, and you won't have to pay for them) and scatter them here and there in the bark, then stick three or four scrawny juniper bushes in the ground and -- voila! Your Bend landscaping job is done! Enjoy.

When Lilacs Last in Sucky Bend Bloom'd

Walt Whitman's great elegy for Abraham Lincoln begins with the phrase: "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd ..."

Whitman chose the lilac as a symbol because Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865, and in the areas of America with a normal climate -- i.e., those that have spring instead of Winter Phase II* -- the lilacs bloom in April.

While on a walk a couple of days ago I spotted a lilac bush that was just opening its blossoms. It is approaching mid-June here.

The lilacs are a good indicator of how the arrival of warm, sunny weather is always about two months behind in Bend. April here is like February in most other places. May is like March. June is like April. July is like May. And August is often like May again, which is kind of nice.

What's not so nice is that January and February are like January and February.

Postscript: The Washington state climatologist predicts that we should see warm, sunny weather by MID-JULY. Now ain't that just peachy keen.

*See preceding post

Now Playing in Bend: "Winter II -- The Sequel"

A man and his son enjoy a Memorial Day weekend camping trip near Bend

I've decided I am no longer going to use the word "spring" in association with Bend weather or climate.

"Spring" does not happen in Bend. A lot of people who migrate here from California say they "enjoy having four seasons," but Bend doesn't have four seasons. It has three seasons -- well, actually only two and a half: Winter, Winter Phase II (or Winter II for short) and Summer.

Winter can begin anytime between Oct. 1 and Nov. 1, but typically begins on Nov. 1. It continues until the start of April and then segues into Winter II, which runs to mid-June or sometimes later.

The weather during Winter II is pretty much like the weather during Winter, only a tiny bit warmer and with less snow (but often more rain.)

May is right smack in the middle of Winter II, and the weather has been appropriate to the season -- cloudy, gray and drizzly, with the thermometer struggling to push up into the 60s most days.


May Totals

Days of Sun: 13
Days of Suck: 18

YTD Totals:

Days of Sun: 49
Days of Suck: 90