The Summer the Smoke Saved the Harvest
With rainfall a third of normal and crops burning in the fields, Seattle's paper made the case that the season's suffocating pall of forest-fire smoke had been the region's salvation.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It has not been altogether delightful to have the country enveloped in smoke, as it has been the past two months, but for all that, worse would have happened us had it not been for the smoke. This whole North Pacific region, embracing at least a half million square miles, would have suffered from drouth as never before had it not been for the smoke. The dry weather has covered a period of nearly five months, during which not more than one-third the usual quantity of rain has fallen. We have not the records at hand, but we believe the total fall has not exceeded one inch in the last three months, in place of from four to six inches ordinarily.
This lack of moisture at this season of the year would have made a terrible drouth had the earth not been shielded by a curtain of smoke. This has lowered the atmosphere many degrees, kept the earth cool and moist, protected vegetation, and brought the crops to a condition of perfection they could not have attained under ordinary circumstances. In fact, they gave indications of certain blight two months ago that were terrifying to farmers; hay, hops, grain and vegetables burning in the glaring sun, being stunted in growth, and giving an appearance in some cases of total destruction. The smoke came on and took the place of considerable rain. Vegetation slowly revived and took on a richer, stronger color. Wheat, which looked like an average of 15 or 20 bushels to the acre, has turned out 30 and 40; hay has yielded from 4 to 5 tons per acre, and hops will yield an average of 1,500 pounds, or what in the East or in Europe would be a remarkable production. The country has taken on a freshness and verdure like that of June, and is quite as pleasant to look upon. Without the smoke these things would not have been; crops would have failed, the heat and dust would have been terrific, and we should have well nigh perished for want of water. So we see the smoke has not been an unmixed evil, and loud denunciations of it are not entirely called for.
“The country has taken on a freshness and verdure like that of June, and is quite as pleasant to look upon.”
Eight years before the Great Seattle Fire, the young city was already living under weeks of wildfire haze and arguing about what it meant. The argument is startlingly familiar: a dry summer, a curtain of smoke, and a paper reaching for a silver lining. Pacific Northwest smoke seasons are now a fixture of every August, though few today would call the haze a blessing.
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