THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 19, 1996 TAG: 9609190001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A17 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: PATRICK LACKEY
LENGTH: 82 lines
Out in the Midwest, the finest season by far is fall. Winter attempts to freeze you to death. Spring gets squeezed too short as winter stays too long. Summer brings 100-degree days, with humidity as high as it gets here. Trust me, no one but a masochist ever moved to the Midwest for the climate. The weather there is probably a major reason so many Midwesterners flee to the Navy.
But as noted, a Midwestern fall is fine. Its sole fault is that each brisk breeze reminds us arctic blasts are close behind.
Even as a perfect fall day invigorates you to complete all manner of tasks, you can't help thinking, ``No, no, not winter! Anything but winter! My face will freeze in a pinched expression, and my hair will stay greasy from wearing a stocking cap every time I go outdoors. The few cars that start will rust in half from the salt on the roads to melt the ice.''
A Midwestern winter is hell frozen over.
In the South, it's entirely different. Summer is the dreaded season, the time of discomfort.
Spring can last a long time down here. But each warm breeze is a warning of mugginess to follow. You think, ``No, no, not summer! I don't want to melt! I don't want to wilt. I don't want to be a walking sweat stain!''
A Southern summer is hell unfrozen over.
Except this summer was weird in a marvelous way. It never turned unbearably hot. You could walk in the sunlight without every pore gushing like a fountain.
This summer, in fact, set the record for fewest sweat stains per downtown block.
A normal Hampton Roads summer screws up my perfect day, which ends with my wife and me walking our dogs a few miles. On a typically miserable Southern summer day, it's still too hot to walk dogs after work and it stays too hot well after the sun goes down. Mother Nature screams at us, ``Stay indoors, you fools! Your dogs will pant from the heat if you leave your air-conditioned home before 11 p.m., and it may be hot even then.''
Except we didn't have those miserable days this year. Every day was good enough. It rained too much, of course, and the grass grew far too fast, seeming to need mowing every other minute. But it wasn't too hot. Not for weeks on end. Not even for days on end. Hardly even for a day.
We dodged a bullet.
We beat the odds.
We got more than we deserved.
We came out ahead of the game.
We made out.
We can count our lucky stars.
We escaped the hot seat.
This summer has been the equivalent of a Midwestern winter whose daily highs reach 50 degrees. But of course the Midwest will never have a winter that nice.
How we had a summer so bearable was a mystery to me until I called Neil Stuart, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service station in Wakefield.
It turns out the Bermuda High, a fair-weather system that parks itself over the Northern Atlantic Ocean, didn't reach as far into the Eastern United States as it usually does in the summer. The result: less heat.
We dodged not just a bullet but a whole weather system.
Amazingly, the temperature reached 90 only once in August at Norfolk International Airport. That's something to tell your grandchildren about during some future heat wave. During June, July and August combined, the temperature reached 90 only 11 times. Normally in those months, the temperature hits 90 or higher 28 times. And on days the temperature broke 90 this summer, it didn't break 90 by much.
The average temperature for those three months was 75.9 F., which is 4 degrees below normal. Apparently 4 degrees makes a big difference.
My one regret about this past summer is that people haven't appreciated it enough. We humans are far more inclined to complain about the weather than to praise it.
If miserable weather makes us miserable, shouldn't good weather make us feel good?
By all rights, we should celebrate the summer of 1996 with wonderful stories. Time's passage will polish those stories, until, 30 or so years hence, they begin:
``There was this magical summer, see, way back in 1996. On account of the Bermuda Triangle, the temperature never got above 70 degrees and the grass hardly needed mowing and babies didn't cry.'' MEMO: Mr. Lackey is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB