Is This You?
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: Raising Sand

No Such Thing As A Normal Year

That’s what my father used to say that his father used to say about the weather. The temperature here has been approaching 100F/38C—hotter than average for this time of year—for the past few days, and it hasn’t rained for over two weeks. My grass is starting to turn brown and I’ll have to water it this weekend. But a week or so ago I was reading about record low temperatures in the northeast.

Rainfall has been less than normal here for several years now. Up in north Alabama and north Mississippi, though, where Janet lives, they’ve had so much rain that the first planting of cotton rotted in the ground, and last weekend trees were blown down by heavy thunderstorms. Anja in Finland is unhappy that unusually cool temperatures and rain are spoiling the midsummer holiday this weekend, when the sun will barely set at all and the weather should be pleasant, at least. Louise in Australia is tired of the short dark days and the rain leading to the winter solstice.

Midwest Severe Weather Outbreak Today reads the headline at weather.com. Another headline notes that the U.S. Open golf tournament, somewhere in New York, is in danger of being rained out. Down here it’s hurricane season, and a tropical depression has formed off the west coast (good for us) of Mexico.

In general, the weather is never right for very long. And I suppose that’s a good thing. If it were, we might start thinking we belong here.

Pre-TypePad

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