Last week’s triple-digit heat finally broke about Monday. It says something when you get excited that the day’s high is only 95.
The seasonal hot temps will be pushed out by more 100-plus weather tomorrow. You may have seen this pic, taken of a sign in Illinois, circulating on the Internet. No more need be said:
Triple digits. A heat index around 115. High ozone levels. Humidity somewhere north of 90 percent. It’s brutal out there.
You step outside on the deck at quarter to 10 (like I did last night) and it’s 90.4 degrees. Or, you read the cat’s thought balloon, and he’s begging for mercy.
When did you move to the bayou, you ask?
The News & Advance has some tips on how to protect yourself, your car and your pets until this mess breaks.
Be careful.
After an endless winter of snow measured in feet and cold, here’s a reflection after a glorious weekend.
Novelist William Styron, a Newport News native, tucked away a love letter to the glories of springtime in the Old Dominion in his Pultizer-prize winning book, “The Confessions of Nat Turner.”
Here’s the passage. In the book, a traveling salesman stops by the farm of Nat’s master, and expounds on the beauty of spring in Virginia:
“No, sir, Mr. Turner,” he was saying, “they is no spring like it in this great land of ours. They is nothing what approaches the full springtide when it hits Virginia. And, sir, they is good reason for this. I have traveled all up and down the seaboard, from the furtherest upper ranges of New England to the hottest part of Georgia, and I know whereof I speak. What makes the Virginia spring surpassing fine? Sir, it is simply this. It is simply that, whereas in more southern climes, the temperature is always so humid that spring comes as no surprise, and whereas in more northerly climes the winter becomes so prolonged that they is no spring at all hardly, but runs smack into summer—why, in Virginia, sir, it is unique! It is ideal! Nature has conspired so that spring comes in a sudden warm rush! Alone in the Virginia latitude, sir, is spring like the embrace of a mother’s arms!”
Thanks to the lingering February snow dump, here’s a tradition that is apparently old hat in cities up north such as Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia, but somewhat new to our region: Marking your dug-out parking spot after a snowstorm.
In places that get a lot of snow, residents will patiently dig out their cars along a city street, then claim the spot with a lawn chair. Yes, a lawn chair. Animals are known to use somewhat different methods to mark their territory, but a lawn chair is somewhat more civilized.
One can imagine the arguments and even fights that ensue. Maybe it’s a test of neighborly good intentions. As the mayor of Philadelphia told a local radio station after the latest wallop, lawn chair and parking space etiquette are “generally agreed to things between and among neighbors.”
We’ll keep you posted as to when cases of lawn chair rage end up in the courts. Could be a whole new practice specialty if the snow hangs around much longer.
Donna Childress, our friend and one-time associate editor, now runs her own writing and Web business in DC, Childress Communications. She reports in a post on the blog “We Love DC” that her neighborhood is “short on patio furniture and long on creativity.”
Instead of a lawn chair, one person placed a cute smiling stuffed monkey as his/her personal parking space sentinel, practically daring someone to mess with Curious George.
Then at the other end of the spectrum, another of Donna’s neighbors placed an urn in a hard-won space. Yes, an urn. The message: “Take this spot, and your ashes go here.”
Here’s hoping for a quick thaw…
