Seattle Never Wanted To Be This Hot

Seattle broke all heat records at the weekend with temperatures well over 100 … [+] Degree. (AP Photo / Ted S. Warren)

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Seattle is the hottest city in the country. In both senses of the word. And both are causing discomfort to Seattle residents.

Seattle and the Pacific Northwest were the most intense and longest right now Heat wave in their story. Long-term heat records fell. Seattle recorded its hottest day ever with 104 degrees on Sunday and broke it on Monday with 108 degrees. Previously, the record in July 2009 was 103 degrees. For the first time, the city booked consecutive 100-degree days on Saturday and Sunday, then topped the record with a third consecutive day on Monday. The heat dome that created the emergency hit other cities in the northwest even harder – Portland peaked at 116 degrees on Monday. Fortunately, the intense heat started to fade on Tuesday and won’t be returning anytime soon.

On the other side of the ledger, despite the pandemic, there was the Black Lives Matter riots, during which a socialist enclave announced its formation in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, smoky skies for more than a week, record home prices and reports of a high cost of living Seattle will grow faster than any other major metropolitan area from July 2019 to July 2020.

A city of Subarus and bungalows becomes a city of Teslas and mini-villas. Add the newly-discovered 100-degree heat, many longtime Seattle residents are wary of their home becoming a boomtown in the southwest, not the sleepy little castle that the Olympics eschewing threatens to tax their cash cow Amazon and the nation introduced the $ 15 minimum wage movement.

Seattle seemed to emerge in national consciousness in the 1990s when a Newsweek cover wrote, “Everyone else is moving to Seattle. Should you? “Complete with then-Slate editor Michael Kinsley in rain gear. Seattle was the place you went when you were about to leave the rat race. NBC’s popular ER program got George Clooney off the show, not by he killed him in an accident but sent him to Seattle. Frasier Crane abandoned Boston for the more leisurely pace of the Northwest.

I did the same and left a high pressure job at CNN to start my own business and enjoy a more balanced life in the top left corner of the country.

Microsoft grew up. Amazon was just born. You can hike in the mountains in the morning and sail in the sound in the afternoon. The city was full of highly educated citizens who, however, were willing to trade part of their ambitions for a low-key bourgeois life. Sure it rained a lot and never really warm, but we had coffee, great bookshops, good independent cinemas and flannel shirts. We could handle it.

That was then. Today, like the rest of the planet, Seattle’s weather is warming, and its reputation and population are growing rapidly while many other cities on the west coast are shrinking. Perhaps it’s a metaphor that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are both divorced and seem to be spending more time in Southern California. Our local nerds have become global celebrities.

Houses on either side of me were both recently sold in bidding wars for 20% more than their asking price. The buyers are young programmers with children. Many of my new neighbors are expats from Silicon Valley. During the heat wave, we screened some of our older neighbors, ex-Boeing employees who grew up in Seattle, raised children, attended public schools, and skyrocketed the value of their homes. They never wanted to become multimillionaires, but fate gave them a generous financial hand first and now a climate catastrophe.

Seattle never wanted to get hot. But the city no longer seems to have a choice.