There were a lot of big news stories over the summer, but surely one of the most memorable will turn out to be the story of the summer itself, or rather the lack thereof.
Probably the average temperature was only a few degrees below normal, but we are sensitive creatures and a small deviation from what we’re used to is headline news.
You remember summer: it’s that period of respite from the more dominant reality around here, winter and its siblings, autumn and spring. On Cape Cod we know summer to be a fleeting season. All we ask is for the warm weather to last long enough that, miraculously, once immersed in it we have forgotten the winter past and cannot imagine the one waiting in the wings.
“In the good old summertime”, goes the song. “Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.” “Summertime and the living is easy . . .” Yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Maybe not for us the “long hot summer” of a Faulkner novel, but enough of the easy-livin’ to get lost in, if only for a while. As night provides crucial separation between days, summer’s job is to act as a buffer between winters.
Just didn’t happen this year.
One way of defining summer would be the interval when there is no need for artificial heat. This year I didn’t feel safe turning off the pEliminate our moat? Or widen it? [20oct09] ilot of the gas space heater in my work building until mid-July and was forced to turn it on again September 1st. Defined that way, it was a month and a half of summer.
With the exception of a couple of wee deviations from the pattern in late April and mid May, the influence of winter seemed to continue right through June,which wags began calling Juneuary. And it didn’t stop then. The last overnight temp in the 40s didn’t occur until July 10. Maybe we could designate that the official end to last winter. The first overnight 40s of the winter ahead occurred on Sept l. That’s an Interval between 40s –between the spheres of influence of the bracketing winters–of only 50 days. September is supposed to be a summery month, but he 60ish weather of the first half made the winter ahead all too imaginable. Call it Septober.
Overheard in the Wellfleet P.O. last July 18th: two women commiserating about the blazing hot day from which they had been rescued by Uncle Sam’s AC. The chilly, wet weather had been crummy, but this, they agreed, was even worse. It was in fact only in the 80s, the first day over 80 in July, one of the very few so far.
Cape Cod has numerous seasons, but the shortest season is what might be called the Interval Between Complaints (IBC)–between, that is, the last complaint about what a rotten, cold, rainy spring it’s been and the first complaint about what a hot, humid summer we’re suddenly having. (Other places this is known as spring.) The IBC is almost always a very short season around here, a matter of hours or a day or two at most, but it hardly ever occurs so late.
The P.O. complaining proved premature. Even when we hit the time in late July when we are most likely to get a real heat wave with temps even on the Cape in the 90s, we kept on the cool side. What still felt like reluctant spring continued through the Dog Days of August right up til Aug 18, when suddenly something reminiscent of summer settled in, giving us a few days over 80, even one over 90. And steamy. It lasted a little over a week (a period of intense and universal complaining) then tailed off with the two hurricanes that sideswiped us, and by Sept l we were unseasonably cool again. It was too little, too late, that week and a half of summer, providing too slight a membrane between reluctant spring and eager autumn.
Our longest season is the season of change. Lasts all year long. Change, not comfort, is what our weather is all about.
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