[Day three of writing goal for the week. When you have nothing else to talk about, you can talk about the weather.]

It’s been raining for days here in Northern California. The sun is out now — the sky is that beautiful cornflower Northern California blue, except with white fluffy clouds. The temperature remains pretty steady, too: high 60s to low 70s. It is supposed to be no more than “partly sunny” through the rest of the week, but maybe we’ll get another storm system coming through soon.

I sure hope so. I pray it’s not like last year, when dry day followed dry day through the end of the ostensible rainy season.

No rain equals drought equals brutal fire season. Ours started early this year, and one of the effects of the early rain (and its concomitant drop in temperature) is some relief for the firefighters. Not without its dangers, though — areas left bare of trees by fires face a higher risk of mudslides with debris flow.

Although in our area it seemed to me that the summer was generally cooler overall, that was not the case elsewhere along the Pacific coast. Record highs hit Portland and Seattle (116 and 108, respectively), and British Columbia had a record of 121. When I was growing up, such temperatures were found mostly in Death Valley.

Climate change causes this. Each summer is hotter than the one before. When will our country — our world — be too hot for the human race to endure?

We’re the lucky ones, mostly. We live in a country with an advanced technology sector that can help us mitigate the worst effects (except for fires). Even in our rich, technological society, people are going to die. Poor people who can’t afford to air-condition their homes, homeless who suffer from dehydration and heatstroke. And God knows what is going to happen in the developing world.

Storms, too — warmer ocean temps mean stronger cyclones. And Southern Louisiana and South Florida face being “swept out to sea,” as a friend put it. Water becomes an issue as well. Living in a desert that relies for survival on snowpacks in faraway mountains gets difficult when those snowpacks diminish and disappear.

We will leave our children and grandchildren an unholy mess. I only hope we can find answers soon.