Let me just step in here and preach to the choir about how insanely hot it was over the weekend. Almost record-settingly so, according to Press Democrat reporter Alana Minkler, who reports that “by midafternoon Friday, temperatures in Cloverdale and Healdsburg hovered around 100 degrees” and “at the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport, the mercury reached 97 degrees by 2 p.m. — just 3 degrees shy of the June 1910 record of 100, according to the National Weather Service.” The PD also got some great pics of people cooling off in the Healdsburg plaza Friday — including 6-year-old Isabella Sotelo, who splashed around in the plaza fountain, and Bay Area biotech exec Carolyne Zimmermann, who ate sorbet with a companion on a nearby bench. 🍧
And it was so hot again Saturday — even breaching the 105-degree mark up in Cloverdale, per the NWS! — that at least one local restaurant, Healdsburger on the south end of town, reportedly closed early due to unsafe temps in the kitchen, said the mom of one employee on Facebook. Still, down in Santa Rosa, teems of local LGBTQ+ peeps and friends were out in full force for the annual Sonoma County Pride Parade & Festival that day, the PD reports, and many other brave and sweaty souls showed up to the simultaneous anti-Avelo Airlines rally at the airport to protest the airline’s recent pivot to running immigrant deportation flights. 🥵
Of course, with all this recent heat and wind comes a rapidly increasing risk of wildfire. For what it’s worth, the Santa Rosa Fire Department, often the first to “call” the start of our local wildfire season, says it officially starts tomorrow, June 2. That didn’t stop a small but scary one from breaking out early last Monday, just north of Geyserville. The vegetation fire threatened multiple homes in a rural area off Vineyard Road — but firefighters from Cal Fire and the Northern Sonoma County Fire Protection District said they were able to snuff it out quickly, “thanks in part to great defensible space constructed by the homeowners.” The state agency added: “Defensible space and home hardening aren’t optional — they’re essential. They give firefighters the space they need to work, and your home the best chance to stand up against wildfire.” Check out Cal Fire’s aerial post-burn photo below. Pretty stark, right? 🚒
Meanwhile, a new PBS News story on climate change has been making the rounds among locals, with the daunting headline: “Prepare yourself for several years of killer heat, top weather forecasters warn.” This of course has everyone nervous about the potential for more destructive wildfires in our future, right as federal budget cuts are reportedly hitting the national agency that monitors fire weather — the NOAA, which oversees the NWS — and tens of millions in federal funding for wildfire mitigation efforts are slipping through the fingers of Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino County fire officials. 💸
Not trying to fear monger — just putting it out there! Those of us who wanted to do something productive about it attended the fifth annual Wildfire & Earthquake Safety Expo yesterday afternoon through 3pm at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds down in Santa Rosa. (You might remember that this event, especially popular with the rural ag community of northern Sonoma County, used to be hosted in Cloverdale, and even moved to Healdsburg for one year — but it graduates to the county’s central fairgrounds in 2025, for reasons unknown to me.) Anyway, along with the usual thrills like fire-helicopter flyovers and earthquake simulations and water-cannon demos and the like, a whole host of local agencies and experts were doling out info at the expo on how community members can “safeguard their families, businesses, homes, pets, and livestock in the event of a disaster,” according to Sonoma County officials. They even handed out 2,000 free “emergency evacuation backpacks, or go bags” at this year’s event. So we can’t say no one tried to help us prep. 🎒
