Misleading Weather

The weather is finally getting nicer! It is a welcome change from the cold, gray rainy winter months. With the sun shining and the birds chirping, it’s the perfect time to get outside and enjoy the fresh air. Many activities may include going for a walk, having a picnic, hiking and many more activities, there is one thing we must remember as we enter the sunshine season, and exit the freezing months. And that is that water in lakes, oceans, and rivers take weeks of consecutively nice weather to be warm enough to swim in. In Washington especially most of our rivers and lakes are filled with fridged snow melt. Many people in excitement of the warm weather go out and jump write into the water forgetting that it hasn’t had time to warm, and they can experience extreme hypothermia which can lead to un reversable damage or even death. At Least one person drowns from swimming weather every year. 60% of deaths occur at alder lake. which isn’t far from town but much closer to Mount Rainer so the water takes much longer to warm up. 

 So stay safe and wait for the water to warm up a bit before jumping right in.