A Walker in the Suburbs

The heat wave has ended … or has it? The “real feel” temperature is 100 degrees today, though we will barely reach 90. It’s those old dew points, working their magic. Today’s is 70; it’s a number you can feel.

I was just out in the soup. What heft! What majesty! This air has presence. It’s an old Hollywood starlet, making an entrance; a heavyweight boxer, knocking out his opponent in the final round.

This air is weighty; it’s a force to be reckoned with. I’m reckoning with it now by writing this post inside, where the humidity is a pleasant 40 percent.

(A patch of shade promises some relief.)

Am I early enough? That’s the question I ask myself now. How early must I rise to walk and beat the heat?

When the low is 80 and the humidity is high, the truest answer is no answer. But the question remains. Yesterday I started before 6. Today a quarter past 7. Monday I was far too late, almost 9.

I tell myself it’s just summer heat. We’ve had it before and will have it again. I try to forget the heat warnings, to pace myself, drink water and stay inside during the heat of the day. I’ve done all of the this, but it’s not enough.

I need to rise even earlier, to take a siesta, to make the day conform to the weather, rather than the other way around. Either that, or I can wait for the heat to break. It will … eventually

(A rice paddy in Bangladesh, a country that knows how to handle heat.)

Our rain saga continued yesterday with morning mist, intermittent showers, and, in late afternoon, sheets of rain that just begged to be photographed.

As I’ve mentioned before, though, rain is tricky to capture, at least with a phone camera. Or with any camera not wielded by an expert.

I did the best I could, and the sun helped, shining crazily through the drops. It was that kind of day.

An old friend has returned. I can feel his weight in the air, his hand on my shoulder. He frizzes my hair and thickens my step. His name is humidity, and he often shows up this time of year.

I thrive in his presence … up to a point. At the very least, I don’t disparage him as much as some folks do. To me, he’s the price we pay for the climate we have, which is, at least for me, a fine one. Plenty of sunshine, even in the winter. Long springs and falls. And summers, well, they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t mind them much.

Today we’ll have temperatures in the mid-80s. The air is full of moisture, which matches the sodden soil. Thunderstorms may pop up in the afternoon. It’s my old friend humidity, doing his thing. Time to get to know him again.

(A rice paddy in Bangladesh.)

It’s not your imagination, said my favorite meteorologists, the Capital Weather Gang. It really has been a windy spring. This was a few weeks ago, but the windiness has continued. It was so windy yesterday that Dulles-bound jets were flying over the house seemingly every few minutes. And these weren’t high-in-the-sky aircraft. I could almost have waved to passengers, had they been peering out their windows.

Unsettling, to say the least. A steady drumbeat of engine noise, deceleration, on top of winds that lopped a branch off a tree in front of the house and downed a tree the next street over.

What to do? Learn about it. Dulles uses Runway 30 when there are strong winds from the northwest, and sometimes, from what I can gather, it uses only Runway 30. That must have been what was happening late yesterday afternoon and early evening. It sounded as if every inbound Dulles flight was skimming the top of our house.

Things are a little more quiet today, but the wind has picked up … and it’s early yet.

(My favorite place to encounter Dulles-bound jets: on the ground.)