The official temperature today will undoubtedly be recorded as 92° F (33° C).  What I know is that the car showed an outside temperature of 98° F (37° C) during most of my commute this afternoon.

We can subtract a few degrees for the heat island effect of concrete made worse by too many automobiles crammed closely together.  We can also subtract a degree or two for what little heat the car itself absorbed and maintained.  That still leaves, at best, a temperature of 94° F (34° C).  Do keep in mind I’m being rather generous with the subtraction.

Ah, but there’s more. The dew point is 65° F (18° C), so that means the relative humidity is around 40%.

Yuck!

There’s not enough wind to help cool things off, so sweat just builds up and makes the skin even stickier than it would be otherwise under such conditions.

Did anyone take note that it’s not officially summer yet?  Or that our hottest months are actually July and August?

And NOAA says it should be hotter tomorrow.  Only by a few degrees, sure, but that’s enough.

After a wet spring to the tune of breaking records, our precipitation chances have suddenly taken a nose dive.  I see 20% here and 30% there.  That’ll change, I bet.  And I don’t mean for the better.

Texas has finally decided to get its weather on track with normalcy, or so it appears.  We can expect more of the same, only hotter as the weeks wear on, until finally, in August, we’ll peak (or so the averages indicate, although sometimes July is hotter).

It’s only June 11.

I overheard someone at work the other day as they explained to someone else that “somebody somewhere” was predicting we’d have a “cool summer” this year.

Ha!  And it’ll be a cold day in Hell, too.

No, poppets, a cool summer in Texas is not what you think and not what my misguided coworker meant.  A cool summer here is one where we hover between 95° F and 100° F (35° C and 38°).

A hot summer is much worse.  Try averaging 105° F (41° C).  At its worse, try getting all the way up to 113° F (45° C).

By the way, it ain’t a dry heat either!

Let’s hope this is in fact a cool summer by Texas standards.  I’d hope for something even lower, but I’m a realist who’s lived here for decades, and who knows better.  Especially given climate change and what it’s been doing to our weather.

So let me finish with this: Hey, Summer, you’re not sneaking up on anyone.  We see you winding your searing mitts around our collective necks.  Don’t think for a moment that you’ll surprise us when you finally open the gates and let loose your red-hot demon dogs.  Tossing us a bone now has only shown us that you’ve not forgotten us, and that you still intend to torment us with perdition’s flames.  Just try not to kill so many people this year, eh?  Oh, and we can do without all the fires too.

Then again, to be fair, this is Texas after all.  Hot is what we do.

And that always leads me back to wondering why I live here considering I hate hot weather and prefer it cold.