It is all too easy for our lying eyes to deceive us as large-scale patterns, trends, and otherwise are difficult to recognize in the face of the immediate. And, individual memory can be such a difficult thing.
The Washington, DC, area has had an unusually cool past several months. As a ‘native’, I refer to the insufferable August weather as “90/90” as so much of the time is above 90 degrees F and above 90 percent humidity. E.g., unbearably hot, muggy, sticky … A typical August and early September might have many Washington area residents spending just a few minutes a day as they rush from their air conditioned homes, to their air conditioned cars, to their air-conditioned offices, stores, restaurants, … Such weather has been the (rare) exception rather than the rule.
As we watched our sons play soccer, yesterday, in beautifully comfortable conditions, a fellow soccer dad said: “This really is beautiful weather … we haven’t had many hot days this year … When I grew up in the area, in Falls Church, Virginia, I remember that we had tens of days of 100 degree weather each year and this just isn’t happening.” I refrained from saying that I, too, remembered walking 12 miles to school with snow above my shoulders … I did comment that 2012 had set hot weather records and that there was a really ugly stretch of heat earlier this year, but really couldn’t do much more than that. Iit isn’t as if I had meteorological records at my finger tips on the sidelines.
This morning, I sent him a note: