Calendar change brings hope for cooler weather

Soon, I hope, the cooler, wetter weather will follow the changing of our calendar and bring some relief and end to our hot, dry summers.

Now, I'm no wimp to this region's notoriously hot — but it's a dry heat — Julys and Augusts. I particularly reserve those months for inviting guests to our area because I know they won't be tempted to move here later on.

My son, Timothy, now 22, was born in Red Bluff on July 19, 1988. The temperature that day hit a blistering 118 degrees — the hottest July 19 on record for that community.

Also, I grew up in the Philippines where the daytime temperatures were most likely to be in the high 80s to mid-90s while the humidity hit 100 percent more days than not. After 15 years there, I was pretty much acclimated to that kind of weather.

Finally, I've lived in Red Bluff, Redding and now Anderson since 1986, so I am no stranger to the upper regions of our thermal readings.

All that said, I am still very much a fan of Noel Coward's observation in one of his poems that "only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon-day sun."

During our hottest days, I try mightily to avoid leaving an air-conditioned office for any reason other than to return to a properly cooled residence in anything but an automobile with a working AC unit.

The only exception to those "rules" were when I was fortunate enough to own a house where we installed an in-ground swimming pool and the children and I pretty much lived in that pool from late-May through late-September.

That is why I was so surprised, as many of you were, on Saturday past when the cool temperature and sprinkles of rain made for an unusually pleasant August day.

Wow!

Let's have more of those, okay?

Sure, the wet pavements caused some unexpectedly slick road surfaces to a few drivers who forgot to slow down and add more braking time to their maneuvers.

Seems like that happens every time there is a first rain following a long, hot spell. Some people just take longer to learn that lesson than others.

It didn't rain enough on Saturday to stop an outdoor wedding and reception dinner that Kim Chamberlain and I attended in the Ono area. Sure, we endured some sprinkles as we sat under the tree canopy along a sun-dappled creek west of Rainbow Lake. But they were hardly noticeable and dried quickly, leaving the air fresh and clean.

But it did rain long enough to remind me that the season is about to change. And I, for one, am glad of that.