The Bellingham Herald

• YWCA to host health-care speaker series
  The YWCA will open its Healing Healthcare speaker series Thursday, Sept. 17, with a lunchtime talk about local health care access.
  Sue Sharpe, executive director of St. Luke's Foundation, will talk about health care access in Whatcom County from noon-1:30 p.m. in the YWCA ballroom.
  The series, co-sponsored by League of Women Voters of Bellingham/Whatcom County, is free to attend; brown-bag lunches are welcome. Box lunches are available for $12 or $30 for all three lunchtime speakers. Call 734-4820 to reserve a lunch or get more information.
  Upcoming topics in the series:
  • "Confrontation or Conversation?" noon Oct. 8. Carmen Werder, director of Western Washington University's Teaching-Learning Academy, on maintaining civility during the health care debate.
  • "Where Do We Go from Here?" noon Nov. 19. Sara Weir, chairwoman of Western's political science department, on how the political process affects health care.

The Oregonian

• Expect less snow - and less rain
  In a warming world, scientists have told us to expect more rain and less snow in the Northwest -- but not less overall precipitation.
  The pattern found in the new study runs contrary to predictions based on computer simulations of global warming. Those suggest the Northwest should continue to receive about the same amount of precipitation but that runoff will peak earlier and leave rivers emptier in hot summer months.
  That's because rising temperatures are likely to cause more precipitation to fall as rain instead of snow and the mountain snowpack to melt earlier in the spring. In a new forecast for western Washington, for instance, Susan Dickerson and Robert Mitchell at Western Washington University in Bellingham predict increases in winter flows, decreases in summer flows, and a shift toward earlier spring snowmelt as the regional climate warms.