Before we moved to Maryland, Ben and I had lived in Northeast Ohio our entire lives. (Well, there was that brief time when Ben lived in Libya, but that is a story for another day.) Anyway. Because we had always lived in Ohio, we pretty much knew what to expect from the weather, season by season. Sure, there were aberrations over the years. There were some summers that were so hot for so long that we forgot what it felt like to be cool in those pre air-conditioned (for us) days. There was The Great Blizzard of 1978 when our new little Toyota was buried under three feet of snow and nobody went anywhere. There was the freezing rain that fell in April of 2007 as we were leaving for Chicago to attend Tom and Kristy's wedding that wiped out all the wisteria blossoms, along with pretty much all the other blossoms, as well.
By and large, though, we could pretty much predict how the weather would behave in any given season. We knew it would snow too much in the winter and rain too much in the spring. We knew that on summer days when dark clouds rolled across the sky and thunder rumbled in the distance, a soaking summer rain would soon follow. We knew that Indian Summer would come each fall with colors so beautiful and air so crisp that we could forget for a few days that winter was almost upon us.
Those days are gone. Living in a different part of the country is, well, different - as we knew it would be. Since we live right outside of Baltimore, we expected the weather to be hotter and more humid in the summer, and it is. But day after day with temperatures in the upper 90s and even over 100° on several days is really worse than we thought it would be. Nor did we expect day after day (and week after week) to go by without even a hope of rain.
Everyone tells us, however, that this is not normal. "It's not usually this hot for this long." "We're breaking records every day." "We're in the middle of a drought." "The whole country is like this." And, you know, I believe that. I believe it all. But that doesn't help me understand what to expect tomorrow or next week or next year. Each day is a surprise to me. I just hope there are some pleasant surprises in the mix as well.
3 comments:
the length of the heat feels unusual to me, though i've only been out here five years. the lack of rain is way less surprising--this seems normal to me for out here! mostly it's sunny, with few clouds and fewer storms, and the only question is whether it's going to be humid or dry.
Well, you have been here five years longer than us, so you are our local weather authority. Is that a great feeling or what?
The word I'm getting at work is that this heat is unusual, but the nights staying so warm is very unusual.
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