Sun Tea

At 5:00pm on July 6th the temperature here in Southern Ontario was:

32.8°C with a 38.7°C Humidex reading.

I get my reports from the nearby University of Waterloo Weather Station. Last month, the Weather Station blog reported the past twelve months was “the warmest in the almost 100 years of recorded weather data in the region.”

Like most people, I don’t keep records like the weather station does. But as one who has lived all my life in these parts, subjectively it certainly feels much warmer than what I consider “seasonal.”

In fact, we had our first unseasonable warm spell in February. And according to the vegetation, summer started more than a month early this year, although the baby ducks in the park seem the same size they were this time last year.

This is the second winter in the last decade where I only had to shovel snow twice. Contrast that with having to climb the snow bank beside my sidewalk and shovel the pile further into the front yard because it was so high I couldn’t throw the snow over it anymore. That was in the last decade too.

I grumble and complain a lot, because my favourite seasons were always spring and fall. Not too hot, not too cold. Even when I was a kid I never much cared for extreme heat unless I could spend it swimming. (Of course one of my three worst sunburns was acquired while swimming.)

Growing up with pasty white skin in a Coppertone worshipping world, I was never a fan of sunbathing.  A pasty white friend suggested I get a base tan from a tanning salon. Although it may have worked for her, all I got was heat rash.

I’m not a scientist, but in my subjective experience, the wild weather fluctuations resulting in increased weather problems ranging from ice storms to tornadoes sure lends credence to climate change theory.

The  weather has been dramatically weird all over the world in recent years.  The other day I was chatting with a friend in Califiornia who was horrified that our temperatures here in Canada were warmer than what they were getting in the Mojave Desert. Doesn’t seem right somehow.

The only thing to do in such extreme heat is to make sun tea.