You’re not sneaking up on anyone

Posted on Jun 11, 2007 by jason

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.

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2 Responses to “You’re not sneaking up on anyone”

Wayne

Jun 11, 2007

Well, I can’t speak to the issue of why Jason would want to live in such an environment when he prefers a cooler clime, but the same is the case for Wayne, and yet he does too.

I’m a weather whore, there’s no doubt about it and I have the excel files and data downloads from 87 years to prove it. We’ve been enjoying average highs of 95 degF for awhile now, with zips up to 99F though I’m not sure we’ve actually broken 100F yet.

And that’s with my *two* thermometers in the shade on the north side of the house

Fortunately, and it isn’t going to last long, the humidity is low when it gets that warm, somewhere around 20-25%, but I can feel the difference when it gets to 30% and shudder to think what it will be like a little later when we reach higher %RH.

The only thing for it, I’m afraid, if you’re determined to remain active outside, is to eschew air conditioning, and we’re in our third year of that. At least so far in my aging process it isn’t an imposition, and it really does work.

However, we do live in the seldom travelled countryside outside of Athens, and having lived in the concrete-insulated Athens urbs, I agree completely about the higher temps. But at least here that’s only at night.

Our abode will almost always be 2-4 degF higher than the reported Athens temperature (airport) during the day. But nights – oh how wonderful they are. When the sun goes down the temperatures drop and most of the time they are quite comfortably cool. During my prior life in Athens, not so much. Things never cooled down.

Of course as it cools down the relative humidity skyrockets, but still.

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jason

Jun 12, 2007

Weather whore! What a great way to put it. And I’m with you there: the weather intrigues and fascinates me, so I study and watch it closely. Because math and science were my strengths in school, atmospheric physics came easily to me. In fact, Jenny and I thoroughly enjoy discussing the intricacies of fronts and pressures and patterns and metrics and all the boring stuff that most people ignore. Were he alive today, Derek would tell you that without hesitation. It’s wonderful to find a kindred spirit—or fellow meteorological geek.

I envy you the low humidity when it gets that warm. We aren’t that lucky. Right now at 8 PM it’s 91° F (33° C) with 41% humidity (dew point of 65° F [18° C]). As it climbs to the century mark and above, our dew points remain just as high and sometimes go higher, although the RH drops given the temperature. That doesn’t make it any better since the amount of moisture in the air remains the same—and feels just as oppressive!

I’d like to say the cooler night temperatures here are bearable. They’re not. When it doesn’t drop below 80° F (27° C) while the dew point remains the same, our RH goes up—WAY UP. Nasty and uncomfortable.

To be honest, I envy you your life. Where you are is especially appealing. Although going without air conditioning sounds dreadfully horrid! I start sweating when it gets into the 70s. I doubt I could handle it.

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