Some Things About Bend That Don't Suck Too Hard

People are always coming up to me on the street, in Costco, in bars and other places and saying, "Blackdog, what's the matter with you? You're always writing about how much Bend sucks. Can't you find anything good to say about Bend?"

After a while I realized their question was valid. There must be some good things about living in Bend, and in the interest of fairness and open-mindedness I should give them some recognition.

So I sat down and pondered for seven or eight hours and came up with five good things to say about Bend:

1. Do you have a large collection of sweaters and love to wear them? In Bend, you can wear one almost every day. Likewise for sweatshirts, parkas and mackinaws.

2. Do you love to spend the evening in front of a crackling blaze in the fireplace? In Bend, you can do it year-round.

3. Do you aspire to pass as an intellectual? In Bend, if your IQ is higher than that of the average cantaloupe you'll be considered a genius.

4. Do you like being unemployed? Bend's the place for you.

5. You won't have to spend money on sunscreen and air conditioners.

That about does it for me, but maybe my readers can come up with more good things to say about Bend. If so, you're welcome to do it.

The Suckerrific Suckatudal Suckillation

Satellite image shows vast area of suckitudinaciousness (blue) lurking off Pacific Coast of the United States

I, Blackdog, hereby proclaim it as indisputable fact: Not only does Bend's climate suck, but it is getting increasingly sucky each year.

Bend boosters love to brag about our beautiful "Indian summers." Last year our "Indian summer" ended with a heavy snowfall on Oct. 4 -- almost a month ahead of schedule.

This year "Indian summer" never arrived at all. The cold, gray, dreary, drizzly weather started in early September.

As I write this it is 50 degrees and raining hard in Bend. For early September, this weather is WAAAAaaaaay beyond sucky. It is suckercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Why is Bend's sucky winter weather dragging on longer and starting sooner? The answer could be the PDO.

About 13 years agot the climatological gurus discovered a phenomenon called "the Pacific Decadal Oscillation." This is a cyclical weather pattern that affects the northeastern Pacific Ocean and the Pacific Coast of the United States.

During the PDO's cool phase, ocean and air temperatures are below average and precipitation is above average. During the warm phase, the converse is true. Each phase lasts from 10 to 30 years.

The cool phase is good news for irrigators (because there's plenty of winter rain and snow) and fishermen (because fish populations in the northeastern Pacific increase) but, weatherwise, it sucks big-time.

The climatological gurus have declared that the PDO entered a cool phase in 2008, which jibes pretty well with when Blackdog and others began observing an increasing degree of suckiness in Bend's weather.

If we have in fact entered a cool phase of the PDO, we can expect Bend's climate to be not merely sucky, but SUPER-SUCKY for anywhere from eight to 28 years.

Of course, the climatologists could be wrong and we could just be experiencing a couple of unusually cool and wet years. But even under the best of circumstances Bend's climate sucks, and I'm not going to stick around to see how much suckier it can get.

Addendum: It's 10:26 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 19. 52 degrees and raining hard in Bend, Oregon's sunshine paradise. The "Fall Festival" was held yesterday and today. Must be a pretty dismal scene downtown.

One infuriating thing about Bend is that you can never, never, NEVER count on good weather. You might luck out and get it once in a while, but you can't plan on it, even in the middle of what passes for "summer" here.

For that reason I've made it a policy never, never, NEVER to buy tickets in advance for an outdoor event in Bend.

Good Clean Sucky "Fun"

Years ago, a natural gas company hereabouts used to run a TV commercial showing kids playing soccer in the pouring rain.

"This is the Pacific Northwest, where life doesn't stop for the weather," the voiceover said.

"Yeah," I would say to myself, "because the people are too dumb to come in out of the rain."

In all fairness, I don't think the people in Bend are THAT stupid -- but they sure as hell have a weird idea of what "fun" is.

To a real hard-core Bendite, virtually everything is "fun."

Cutting firewood in knee-deep snow and sub-zero temperatures? "It was fun!"

Driving to work through snow and ice? "It's fun!"

I really, truly believe that if you put a Bendite in a Nazi concentration camp for six months and then asked him what it was like, he'd say: "It was FUN! I lost 30 pounds! And I met some really interesting people! That Dr. Mengele is quite a character!"

Thus, when a cold front moved through Central Oregon on Aug. 30 and SNOW actually fell in locations to the south of us and in higher elevations to the west of us, one of the local TV news stations posted the headline on its Web site: "August Snow Brings Fun Taste of Winter."

Dude. When it snows on Aug. 30, that is not "fun." That is HORRIBLE. That SUCKS to the max.

Anyway ...

Although there were two suckerrific weekends in the latter part of August, with occasional rain and highs reaching barely into the 60s, the summer weather pattern basically continued through the month. Only two days legitimately earned a sucky rating, though several others were marginal.

August Totals

Days of Sun: 29
Days of Suck: 2

YTD Totals

Days of Sun: 140
Days of Suck: 103

Is Bend Getting Suckier? Weather Data Aren't Clear

There's a widespread perception among old-timers that Bend's climate has been getting suckier in the past few years -- that the winters hang on later, the summer comes later, and the so-called "spring" is chillier and grayer than it used to be.

Is there any empirical support for this perception? Jack Elliott has come up with a link to a national weather service site that offers a lot of data, but no conclusive answer.

From the site Elliott found I followed another link to a site that has, among other things, data for average monthly high temperatures in Bend going all the way back to 1901. (That's even older than any of the old-timers here who currently are bitching about the climate.) The daily average highs for the spring months during the period from 1901 to 2010 are:

April: 58.3 degrees F
May: 65.8
June: 72.9

Not too sucky, I'd say. Here are the corresponding numbers for 2009:

April: 56.2
May: 67.1
June: 72.5

So the April average high was 2.1 degrees below the long-term average, the May average high was about 2 degrees ABOVE the long-term average, and the June average was a mere 0.4 degrees below the long-term average -- pretty much a wash.

But now we come to the numbers for April, May and June of the current year:

April: 53.0
May: 59.7
June: 69.4

Brrrr! Those months were about 5 to 7 degrees colder than the long-term average -- I'd call that significantly suckier. But one year does not make a trend, and we can hope that this miserable excuse for a spring (and summer) was an aberration.

Long-term data on average monthly precipitation in Bend show this:

April: 0.70 inches
May: 0.90
June: 0.75

Last year we had a notoriously soggy and sucky June -- more than 4 inches of rainfall -- following a slightly drier than average April (0.56) and May (0.73). This year April's rainfall was considerably above average (1.23 inches), May's was considerably below average (0.39) and June's was a bit above average (1.0).

Unfortunately the data don't tell us anything about sunniness, which, as those of us who have lived any length of time in Bend know, is not the same thing as absence of precipitation.

Summer and Smoke and Suck*

(NOTE: Totals have been revised, thanks to an alert reader who pointed out that there were 212 total days in the first seven months of the year. Duh.)

Summer has finally arrived in full force in Bend, with sunny skies and high temperatures. Every day of July except one (July 2) was sunny.

The downside of the arrival of warm summer weather, though, is that it produces thunderstorms. Thunderstorms produce lightning, which starts forest fires, which fill the air in and around Bend with smoke for much of July and August.

Right now the Rooster Rock fire near Sisters has been almost contained (that means the firefighters have cleared a line around it to keep it from expanding further) but not before it burned more than 6,000 acres of woodland and filled the Central Oregon air with a pungent reddish-brown haze.

A couple of days ago the visibility was so bad that if you didn't know better you'd swear you were in Los Angeles. It was truly suckitudinous.

Thanks to July's impressive performance, the total number of sunny days so far this year has finally surpassed the total number of sucky days. But don't worry -- in two months, give or take, the Sucky Season will return.

July Totals

Days of Sun: 30
Days of Suck: 1

YTD Totals

Days of Sun: 111
Days of Suck: 101

*Apologies to Tennessee Williams

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.