Not cool

It's been a cool summer in Seattle.  Not a damp summer.  But our temperatures have run just a bit below normal.  Finally, this past week, we had several days in a row with highs above 80.

Then yesterday!  Pow!  98 degrees (36.7° C.)!

Yeah, I know.  Death Valley had an all time record of 130 yesterday.  Who lives in Death Valley?  And if they do, they live in air-conditioned splendor.

But in Seattle, 98 is unusual.   Not a record.  We had 103 degrees in 2009.  And 100 in 1992.  Three 99s since 1960.

One hundred three degrees -- eleven years ago -- is not sufficient to acclimate our bodies and minds to 98 yesterday.

If you page back through this blog a year, you'll find that on August 16, 2019, I had just returned from an over-heated visit to Italy.  The temperature every day I was in Rome reached about 98.  So yesterday in Seattle was just a little reminder of that trip.  And a taunt that in 2020 I can't visit Italy -- in over-heated August or any other month -- because of our unpleasant little virus.

My house is pretty well insulated, but not air-conditioned (unlike my hotel in Rome).  (Not many people bother with air-conditioning in a part of the world where nature's clouds and rain generally handle that task for us.)  The indoor, main floor temperature was a livable 70s most of the day, creeping up to 80 by evening.

But stepping outside -- wow!  It reminded me of my summers working in an air-conditioned aluminum plant laboratory, when I occasionally had to walk out to the pot rooms -- huge rooms full of electrical furnaces where the aluminum ore was being smelted.  Vivid memories of pitying the poor workers who were clearly earning their union scale wages.  The muggy heat slapped me in the face.

And if the main floor in my house retained a moderate temperature, not so for the upstairs where my bedroom is unluckily located.  I kept the windows closed until nearly 10 p.m., because the air outside remained even hotter than that in my bedroom.  When I finally opened them it really didn't make any difference.  Not much air movement from outside, and the insulation works both ways:  it keeps the heat out at first, but once in, it keeps the heat from leaving. 

I just lay on top of the covers and sweated throughout the night.

By morning, it had cooled off outdoors to 66 degrees.  I did my daily walk early, prudently.  But the temperature shouldn't exceed 86 today, with a gradual cooling trend all week.

Thank god our one-day summer is finally over.  We can now gradually segue into autumn.