Cooler by the Lake
The heat is on in national parks and around the world, and the numbers are straight out of a horror movie.
Pre-dawn. Sky the color of new ice as I round the northern edge of Manitou Island, the Little Dipper skimming easily across the calm water heading for a cave I’ve wanted to explore. It is late July yet despite what the calendar claims, despite my wetsuit, a fleece hat, and a cup of coffee in my hand, I am shivering. “Cooler by the Lake” I chuckle to myself through another sip of coffee.
Elsewhere across the country, the heat is on — 118 degrees in Phoenix with a new record of two straight weeks of 115 degrees or higher daytime temperatures; 126 degrees in Death Valley National Park where so far temperatures have fallen short of the 134 degrees record set in 1913 at Badwater Basin but August, traditionally the hottest month, is just getting started.
It is hot. Officially. Last June was dubbed the Earth’s hottest June on record according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and July is likely to go down not only as the hottest July in history but the hottest month human civilization has ever recorded. Read that again: the hottest month human civilization has ever recorded.
We are in uncharted territory. Records are shattering as quickly as they can be noted - nearly 5,000 high temperature and other weather-related records already broken in the U.S. just since June 1st with more to come.
It is taking a toll. More than just melting the soles of shoes along the Las Vegas strip, extreme temperatures are changing the face of our national parks. In Death Valley, the sustained furnace-like temperatures have increased the mortality rate of bristlecone pines on Telescope Peak, some of the oldest living things on this planet, by 70 percent. Think about that, trees that have survived more than 1,650 summers in Death Valley have recently succumbed to this year’s heat. In Everglades National Park, ocean temperatures have for the first time ever reached triple digits, the 100 degree water temperatures now threatening corral and marine life. It is a “killer heat” as high temperatures and drought conditions in many parks are impacting mating, food availability, and survival rates of a wide range of wildlife and plants.
And there is a tragic human price as well. A 14-year old boy and his father who was seeking help to save him, died in the heat of Big Bend National Park in Texas recently, a park where in June a 65-year old hiker also died of heat-related causes. A 57-year old woman died on the trails of Grand Canyon National Park (the deadliest national park in terms of heat with at least 16 heat-related fatalities since 2007) and there have been several deaths thought to be related to the relentless heat in California’s Death Valley National Park including a 71-year old man who collapsed near the trailhead restrooms thinking he had made it safely back to his car. In that park, rangers have begun warning hikers that it may, at times, be even too hot to safely send out rescue teams when and if help is needed.
The number of heat-related deaths in national parks since June 1 has already topped the normal death toll for an entire year and most of August, often the hottest and deadliest month of the summer, is still mostly ahead of us.
But, here in the Apostles it is, as the saying goes, “Cooler by the Lake.”
It is not just a punchline. Water absorbs heat much more slowly than most substances and Lake Superior has a lot of water — - three quadrillion gallons of it, enough to flood the entire lower 48 states knee deep if it were spread out across the country. That means that even while the air temperature may be soaring, all of that water with an average lake temperature of 40 degrees makes Lake Superior a kind of natural refrigeration system for the Apostle Islands and those along its shoreline. Air masses cool as they move across the lake during the summer. Think of it as leaving the freezer door open and blowing a fan across it. The process is called “air mass modification” and it often means that while the temperatures even a few miles distant from the lake are sweltering, it is significantly “cooler by the lake,” as much as 60 degrees cooler than temperatures in southern Wisconsin even on the same day — 103 degrees in Janesville but 43 degrees in Superior.
(103 degrees in Janesville but 43 degrees in Superior. It truly is “cooler by the lake.”)
It is no illusion. There is truth to the joke about shorts and fleece being the official summer uniform in Bayfield. But even that may soon be changing.
Lake Superior has recently been documented as one of the fastest warming bodies of fresh water in the world, warming at a rate three times the global average. Its vast surface area and relative shallowness make the lake basin like a broad but shallow water dish left out in the sun putting it at high risk for the effects of the rising temperatures we read about in other places. All of which speaks both to the power Lake Superior exerts on the landscape around it, and to one of the lingering fallacies of our national parks.
Once it was thought that we could “protect” national parks by legislative decree, that the simple act of drawing a boundary around a place could somehow magically protect it from outside influences. The recent heat wave in our national parks blows hot air all over the human arrogance that believes we can, by sheer will, exert control over nature. Forget for a moment the problems inside of our national parks — aging infrastructure, over-crowding, and all the rest. The real threats to the future of our parks come from beyond the boundaries. Air and water pollution, invasive species, light and noise pollution, do not recognize congressionally-legislated boundaries. And as the recent record-breaking heat wave is making clear, neither will the effects of global climate change.
Looking into the crystal ball of the future through the haze of heat this summer, it becomes clear that our national parks are not, and never can be, places set apart from the rest of our world. Predictions are that, as hot as it has been this summer, each of the next five years are expected to successively be the hottest years ever recorded. No park is an island, even those that are made up mostly of islands. Nowhere, including in the Apostle Islands, can we escape the consequences of how we treat the rest of the planet.
It is a cliché, but then things with this much truth at their heart usually are: all things are connected. As refreshing as the breeze off the lake may be today, the melting $1000 tennis shoes on the super-heated pavement of the Las Vegas strip, the string of shattered temperature records and heat-related fatalities at national parks, the death of ancient bristlecone pines and corral formations, can no longer be ignored even on days when it is, as they say, “cooler by the lake.”
— Jeff Rennicke
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