78 Minutes of Summer

I know that most of the country is in the grip of an enormous heatwave, but in Seattle we are having quite the opposite. The weather is having a worse season than the Mariners. It has been remarkably cool and wet this year compared to past summers, even for the Pacific Northwest. We are still wearing our fall sweaters and jackets. There seems to be more rain. This is the dry season after all. That brief warm season that we look so forward to in order to make it through the cold wet winter.  So one of our local T.V. weather guys decided to look at our summer warmth minute by minute and see if it was just our imagination, or does this summer suck.
Turns out, this summer does really suck. Using a warmth of summer threshold of 80 degrees, which seems entirely reasonable, we have had exactly 78 minutes of summer!  On July 2 we had 12 minutes of summer and it was glorious. Then again on July 6, a magnificent 66 minutes. Thats right folks, one hour and 6 minutes of glorious summer. Thats it. If you had gone to a movie that day, you would have missed it entirely. There has not even been an officially sunny day since that summer day of July 6th. We have had cold, drizzly, foggy and marine layered weather since. I suppose that we should be thankful that we are not sweltering under the "heat dome" that is all the news in the rest of the country.


You know, someone once said that living in Seattle is like being married to a beautiful woman who is sick most of the time.

>>Being smitten by (even enthralled with) the beauty of one's spouse, whatever the periodic state of his or her health, is completely understandable.  There are undoubtedly places in the Lower 48 that offer, at least seasonally, just as good a balance of beauty and health as Seattle (to extend the metaphor) - perhaps even better.  But they just don't tend to be places with ample opportunities for good jobs, schools, houses, or coffee. 

The vast majority of people in the U.S. should understand that when someone visiting from Seattle says something nice about the beauty you have available locally, that Seattleite is merely trying his or her best to be polite.<<

So if it hits 80 degrees again, run for the beach. Just make sure you take a sweater if you will be out after six!