We stopped to talk with a neighbor yesterday and our brief conversation ranged from checking in to see how each other are doing to home repair projects to gardening to weather. A lot of conversations get around to the weather sooner or later. Our neighbor has lived in this area for all of his life. We know his mother and grandparents who also live in this area. His insights about growing plants are helpful to us as we are still learning about the climate and plants of this area. We are newcomers and appreciate what the long time residents have to share. Our neighbor told us that the weather this year has been very unusual.

I don’t know how often I’ve heard people say that the weather this year is unusual. It is a lot. I remember going to the cafe in North Dakota and hearing the locals tell me “the weather isn’t usually like this around here.” When we moved to Idaho, long time residents told us “It never gets that cold around here,” and “It never gets that hot around here,” in the same year.

One thing that you can say about the weather, no matter where you are, is that it can surprise people. It makes me wonder what my grandchildren think of me when I tell them of below zero temperatures, driving blizzards, and other weather phenomena that I remember. After all, I’m reporting to them the weather of a different time and a different place. If they are as used to people saying that the current weather is unusual it might make sense to them that the weather is always unusual and the conditions I report belong to a different time all together.

It is, however, a bit reassuring to me that locals are experiencing this year as a bit unusual. It seemed to me that it took summer a long time to get going this year. Some of our garden plants were slow to develop. Our tomatoes grew tall and produced fruit, but some of the plants never bushed out and most of them looked sickly all summer long. The bulbs came up early in the spring and so we were quick to start putting out annuals, but they were slow to get going. On the other hand, we’ve had lots of blossoms well into the fall. Although the leaves have fallen from the trees, our geraniums are still blooming vividly. We are well into November and aren’t used to having so many blossoms in our yard. We haven’t had our first real frost yet even though we’ve picked all of the green tomatoes and are ready to take out the plants. The sunflowers have dried out and it is time to remove the plants, but other plants are still green. It seems like the plants are a bit confused about the weather as well.

It has been an interesting year of watching the bees as well. I’ve got my hives all set for winter. I’ve got feeders in them, but the bees aren’t consuming much syrup yet. Whenever the sun comes out they go out and about gathering pollen and nectar. They hunker down and stay in the hive when it rains, but they seem more active this November than last year. I don’t have enough experience with the bees to know whether or not this is unusual for them.

I think part of what makes the plants and bees seem to be a bit confused by the weather is that I am a bit confused by it. November is the rainy season around here. I’ve lived so much of my life in places where November precipitation isn’t that heavy and when it comes it is as likely to fall as snow as rain. On the other hand, rainfall amounts have been much lighter than forecast lately. The forecast called for rain all day yesterday, but we didn’t get rain until after midnight. It was sunny in the afternoon. When I consulted the weather radar available on my phone it looked like we were a tiny pocket of cloudless skies in a large region of clouds and rainfall. I don’t know enough about weather to explain why the clouds were distributed in that particular pattern, but I can hear the rain falling on our kitchen skylights as I write this morning, so not all of the rain is missing us.

Actually the ground is quite wet around here. I don’t need to water the plants in our beds. They are getting enough rainfall. And, as I am beginning to learn, the grass that went dormant in late summer has begun to grow again. Adjusting to having to mow the lawn in November is a new thing to me and it continues to surprise me.

I suspect that I could find someone who is native to this area who would report that there is nothing unusual about mild temperatures and who remembers other years when the growing season was slow to start, but extended well into late fall.

Climate scientists report that the weather really is changing. Rising temperatures cause storms to be more intense. Warmer oceans lead to more evaporation. More moisture in the atmosphere results in increased rainfall in parts of the globe and record droughts in other parts. Although the overall trend is for increasing temperatures, local effects can be both warmer and colder than average. Climate related crises range from flooding in Myanmar to drought in East Africa.

The United Nations climate summit COP29 that opened yesterday in Baku, Azerbaijan, has not received as much news coverage here in the US as some previous climate summits. The recent presidential election seems to be dominating our news. There is, however, a lot at stake in those conversations. England’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said that climate change is a more pervasive and fundamental threat than terrorism.

Unusual weather, confused plants and bees, severe storms, and wildfire will likely dominate our conversations for the rest of my life. COP29 will not be the last United Nations Climate Change Conference. Hopefully, however, world leaders will rise to the threats that lie before us and discover new ways to work together to decrease the impact of humans on the climate.