Rantz: Inslee oversold Washington drought to help failing campaign

Governor Jay Inslee is running his Delusion 2020 campaign off the topic of climate change, so whenever he can lead during a climate crisis, he expects it’ll help his chances of landing in the White House. Unfortunately, that means the state has to put up with his shameless politicking because it appears he oversold the crisis.

Last week, Inslee dramatically declared a drought for the state, arguing “As the climate continues to change, we must be proactive in taking steps to plan for those impacts.”

Is it as bad as Inslee claims? Unlikely. But now he will be able to go on the campaign trail and gloat about how he is fighting climate change at home. It just so happens his move will help his delusional presidential campaign.

Inslee’s game-changing scooter video
Inslee hypes campaign on The Daily Show

Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Washington, blogged “the situation is far less dire or unusual than advertised. There will be plenty of water for nearly all users, and that the forecast is for a wetter than normal summer.”

Mass took a deep dive into the data and found that while conditions in vulnerable areas of the state, east of the Cascade crest, “were clearly drier than normal over our normally sodden coast.” However, he says the “rest of western WA has been modestly below normal.”

And when he looks at precipitation for the state, overall, he found that we’re “wetter than normal this year.” He continues:

And the Palmer Drought Index, which considers the impacts of both temperature and precipitation on soil moisture, shows that the drought index is on the wetter side.

The spatial distribution today of the Palmer Drought Index shows normal or better than normal condition east of the Cascade crest, with drier than normal conditions limited to portions of western WA.

The latest USDA soil moisture report shows above normal soil moisture for the state.

Mass calls the “scary talk” about low snowpack as “HIGHLY deceptive” and that it’s “not that bad over Washington state” because, in part, the snowpack “situation is not unusual in an El Nino year.” Read Mass’ full, detailed analysis here.

Mass concludes that “there is nothing exceptional going on.” But let’s not let this data get in the way of a delusional presidential campaign, shall we?

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