Longtime attendees of the Oregon Country Fair recall that even in its early days, lying in the open meadows without shade was hot.
So hot that it’s part of the reason people started shedding their clothes, according to preeminent Oregon Country Fair historian Suzi Prozanski. That was during a 1970s heat wave, Prozanski documents — around the same time the event was evolving from a Renaissance faire into the three-day peachy celebration near Veneta that we know today.
Even then, temperatures were already hitting the high 90s. But what was once natural summer variation in temperature has become the norm, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data from Eugene Airport.
Lookout Eugene-Springfield pulled over five decades temperature data for the fair’s typical weekend dates — the second weekend of July — and analyzed the data with the Oregon state climatologist…