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WA, OR, and BC are all usually cool and cloudy. Houses are built with large, south facing windows, to maximize sunlight into houses. Less than half of houses have air conditioning. In short: WA, OR, and BC houses are all built to the past climatology of the area, and the heat they got was very far from that climatology. One approach taken was to board up windows. In contrast to an incoming tropical cyclone, in which the boarding up is to prevent glass from breaking, here, it was to block out the sun and try to keep in the cool air. Dale Durran, University of Washington: "One thing I did to prepare for the heat was buy some 4’x8’ sheets of 1/4” foam core and use them to block the direct sunlight in several windows. Below is a photo of one row of such blocked windows. I’m going to save these for really cold days too — they have to have an R value above most window coverings and work particularly well on the sloped glass."
In addition, other bits of infrastructure were not up to the challenge. From Ronald Miller, National Weather Service Spokane, WA:
"The utility company in Spokane has instituted 'rolling blackouts' for the past two days, affecting about 24,000 customers for 3-4 hours during the hottest part of the day. The news article explained that the outages were not due to lack of supply (Washington dams generate a LOT of electricity, some of which is routinely shipped south), but rather the local city grid. The substations were overheating due to demand and had to be taken offline."
SUMMARY THOUGHTS
There is much more to be added to this page, but these things are of note:
#1 - There were numerous all time high temperature records set.
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