I very much fear that we are.

We sure had summer here! Burning HOT hot hot sun, blazing relentless scorching sun. It's still warm out, nice, sun breaks, finally some breezes, some passing clouds. Nights still warm. I thank God for every moment my yard isn't baking to death under a burning sun with no mitigation. And now I can get sleep, not moving sprinklers and watering all night long. Hope this reprieve lasts! Where I am it doesn't rain much until winter when it rains altogether too much, flooding.

Cascadians lives on Mars, not just outside Portland.... ;)

I had several burning hot days spread way out in a summer full of clouds and rain.

It does feel like this is it for our summer :(
I'm trying to make myself feel better by thinking about all the fun fall plant sales...

It feels like fall here, spring started the middle of June. I think our summer season lasted about a week, well maybe two. I'm praying for an Indian Summer but not holding my breath. Me thinks winter is lurking around the corner :o(.

A

good to hear that i am not along wondering if we had summer at all. Hoping that it not what global warming brings to us, but just one such a year.

Nice October day here! I read somewhere that this is the influence of La Nina - I think her little brother el Nino treats us better. I was reading my journal from last year which was very similar, rain until middle of July, more rain in August, but nice Sept. but I think this year is even worse! Yes here's hoping for Indian Summer!

Me thinks that summer has fallen :-( One day the Rose of Sharons are glorious, the next day they are slimy messes that won't even dry out enough to dead head.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:295773}}

Today and tomorrow forecasted to be sunny and above 80 degrees. HOT here already, brilliant sun, sure feels like summer on Mars. Going to have to water a lot tonight ***sigh***

Windy, cold, not August day of course. Would be nice to get "equal share" of weather at least along the coast. :)

Great picture of the Rose of Sharon! Thanks for sharing. It's been windy October weather here for the past few days. It might be fun to start a thread to find out what grew well this year and what flopped.

I see that cascadians is right about being hot according to the NWS, in the high seventies. Oregon City is suppose to get rain on Friday night and Saturday.

That is not the case up in Issaquah. It took until July for my Musa basjoo banana to start looking like it normally does in April. It is only twelve feet tall now and should be another ten feet taller like it was in a normal year.
This is the worst summer and August I can remember. In the fifties, sixties, and eighties, which had cold winters, the summers were warm by July 1st. Even the springs were warm when it rained the temperatures where in the high fifties and low sixties. August and September you could always count on dry weather. August was also a very hot month, it might rain, only for a day or two. I saw it rain hard enough one year to cause the local rivers to flood, but the temperature was warm, and it rained only four or five days, then the rest of August was hot and dry, not like this August. Cold and wet, like late October. Snow level is suppose to be down to 5,000 feet tonight, unreal!

It's 83 degrees in my yard, sunny. Must say it feels more mellow than July and my trees like this sun, not so burny. Every time I look at the black and white real-time satellite photos of the Pacific NW, which is many times per day, Washington has this lovely cloud cover and sometimes rain. I kick myself every day for not moving to NW Washington State. I'm in a weird California-ish hot spot except in winter when my yard is literally a standing lake. Mars, truly.

The extremes make it hard. One of my favorite trees, impossible to find in Oregon, a young Picea mariana, Black Spruce, croaked. Now I know why nobody carries this tree around here. It cannot take the heat we had recently, those 100+ days that bake like an oven. I kept it well watered and it was under quite a bit of shade but it still fried.

Going to plant a Picea abies 'Cupressina', columnar Norway Spruce, there instead. They seem to do well here.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1083013}}

You have to look back to the 1950s for the really bad summers... we had a couple that were much colder than this. The 60s and 70s had a few very warm summers, though overall I think they were a bit cooler and sunnier than what we've been seeing lately.

One of the most obvious changes that is occuring with our climate is a steady increase in summer precipitation over the last 20-25 or so years (except in Cascadians yard). Maybe in a few more years it will start to feel like western Scotland.

I also think you're right about summer being later than it used to be - but I can't really prove that. And when it gets cut short like this year and last year, there's not enough summer left.

So with this much rain (3 inches here) in August, it is certainly perfect fall planting weather: warm AND wet soils for the roots to establish before winter.

Now for enough time to dig holes and free up all my plants from their pots in my pot ghetto!

Apparently not. 70s/80s and no rain in sight. Maybe things will dry out enough again so all those weeds that sprouted up in August will dry up and die. Yesterday and Sunday we made it to 80 in Sequim.

It's been in the 90s in my backyard for a long time now. Very hot in the daytime but cool at night. Blazing sun. No clouds, no rain for a very long time. The earth in the neighborhood is parched, cracked and bone dry. Many now-dead evergreens and deciduous trees have browned and lost their leaves. Avenues of trees along shopping centers near Clackamas Town Center have died.

We are on a Fire Weather Watch for extreme fire danger. Low humidity and extreme prolonged heat with winds due to increase, and an unusual heat wave forecast for this upcoming weekend (again).

The forests are dry dry dry tinderboxes.

In my yard the trees are experiencing a lovely flush of new growth. I've kept the ground wet. 2 years 8 1/2 months after planting the 1st batch of about 200 trees, can see definitely happy growth in these trees. Even some of the trees planted last spring are having a flush. Most trees have put on at least 1 foot of new growth in the last month. The tiny bare-root cherry tree we planted in spring has grown over 5 feet on its leader and 4 feet on the other branches, which has amazed me.

The baby eucalypti planted almost a year ago are really taking off in leaps and bounds. They love ample water now and all this hot sunshine. The 2 year old eucs are growing fast also. These trees are very beautiful and favored by the birds who seem to enjoy swaying in the breeze on their young delicate topmost branches.

Praying the roots are starting to grow and dig deep and reach out and greatly cover more territory which is what they are supposed to do in fall. I'm keeping the ground wet so those roots can have an easy time digging through the earth.

I'm so tempted to start pruning while I can see which branches are dead before the leaves fall off the live branches. In January will be pruning and shaping a lot in here, very excited, will be 3 years since planting late Dec05 then.

One thing that is puzzling is the birds are flocking just frantic to eat us out of house and home. We have 28 bird stations around the house and bird seed is now quite expensive and if I keep the feeders full they'll easy go through $120 a week. I cannot afford that so have to let them scrounge a bit. There must be plenty of food out there but these birds seem to be frantic to stuff themselves, never seen them like this. Lots of goldfinches. And this year they've plowed through suet without any stopping. What does their behavior mean?

Haven't seen the juncos yet which is my bellweather signal that fall is here.

It is supposed to go up to 29C this Sunday! How unusual for this time of year. I'm still watering and flowers are blooming madly.

My cukes were starting to get grey on the edges of the leaves during the cold weather at the end of August, but they seem to have rebounded. We don't get the monster-sized oriental cucumbers that we got last year during a round of hot weather, but they do OK, and the smaller ones are doing well. Red emperor runner beans continue to produce like mad and are still growing new blossoms (don't know if they will set). Oddly enough, the beans were smaller after the cold spell but tended to be stringy, whereas the ones I just picked were monstrously huge but tender enough to eat in the pod. If the temperature could just stay at its current level for a couple of weeks, I'll be happy.

It is SO HOT and summery that the ground bakes dry during the day and I'm back to sprinklering 2" per night. Oh for some real rain! 94 degrees on my deck today.