Mary Jean McDermott

(As read Friday, March 16, 2001 on The Dave Ross Show)

Dear God, Creator of our Atmosphere,

Have mercy on your Northwest people, for we are sore afraid of summer drought.

Weaken your Aleutian Low so that rain storms may return to the Pacific Northwest. We do so need the moisture and the fisherfolk need calm seas.

Allow great upwelling of cold deep ocean waters off our coast and send strong on-shore winds to cover our lands with your marine stratus, thereby wetting us with your continuous showers.

Permit the warm pool of water in your equatorial Pacific to move west toward Indonesia, cooling the great ocean waters off Peru and calling La Niña, so that we may be doused by her dismal rains and shrouded in her heavy mountain snows.

Send your south-westerly winds around the Olympic Mountains so that they may converge near Everett, causing convection and bringing heavy precipitation to your Puget Sound Convergence Zone.

And, finally, Sweet God, convince drivers of S.U.V.s and other spewers of huge quantities of carbon to seriously reduce their emissions so that your beautiful atmosphere may cease her suffering. Please allow her to heal herself so that global temperatures do not rise and our region does not experience warm dry winters with low snowpack and subsequent severe summer droughts forever more.

For we know this winter is but a sign of what is to come if we do not heed your warnings and cease our destructive ways.

In the name of the Atmosphere, the Ocean and our Fragile Ecosystems,

Amen.

Courtesy: Mary Jean McDermott
Atmospheric Sciences Department: University of Washington