Hot chickens in a hot coop at dusk
"What's that noise?" our daughter asks us, eyes wide, about a week ago. "It's raining!" we say.
This summer will go down in memory as one marked by what it wasn't: it wasn't hot, it wasn't raining, it wasn't humid. The middle one, the rain, was certainly missed. August, though, has seen to it to make up for the deficits of May, June and July, wetness-wise. We are now swamped.
With this rain has come humidity. Like most "coastal" areas, we tend to be buffered from extremes in anything, except snow, here; it is usually cooler and less humid in the warm months and warmer and more moist in the cold ones. I am very curious about what global warming is doing to our area, though. Is all this rapid rain a part of that picture? And all that lack of rain earlier this summer?
For many reasons, our window air conditioners are still sitting on their shelves in the garage. One big reason is we installed a whole-house fan when we moved in: what a miraculous device. It exhausts the hot air completely out of the house when we turn it on. It doesn't, of course, "condition" the air by dropping its relative humidity. But it does certainly work, especially in this temperate summer. And its meager consumption of electricity, compared to the a/c units, helps ease our minds that we're at least not contributing, overmuch, to these wild swings in weather.
But this humidity! Makes me reconsider all that canning I'd planned to do this week!
7 comments:
The weather is weird here, too (Northern California). We will apparently be spending this entire week under chilly, gray fog. The temperature dropped 25ยบ in one day.
(Your chicken pic is da bomb.)
I've been watching the weather in MI since my Mom is up there too. It seems that there has been a bunch of rain lately. Aren't whole house fans great?!
On another note, check out this local-to-you winery. http://www.domaineberrien.com/
Wally and his wife are good friends of my brother. They just had their 3rd annual Arts, Wine & Music festival. My Mom raved about it. Said the wine was excellent too.
It's hard to know what "normal" weather is anymore.
Last week it was 96˚, and two nights ago, it got down to 45˚. Crazy!
glad someone's getting some rain in MI. We finally had our first rain in over a month yesterday. We got just a little over an inch. Went out to dig potatoes and you never would have guessed it rained at all. DRY! Not much humidity? Oh, you lucky girl!! It's everyday oppressive here. Ugh!
CC: Yes, I know things are weird all over. I am just wondering if it is weird enough to make everyone notice that something is actually wrong.
Jules: Hey: DB is the one winery I haven't tried locally! I'll make sure to drop by. Going to wineries is a great thing to do when you have visitors from out of town, as you can imagine!
Wow, Liz, that's a big swing. It hasn't gotten that hot yet here, but if the relative humidity matches the temperature, everyone is miserable. But I am not sure I could deal with 45* yet....
Actually, Ang, I am a bit worried about our spuds and onions because we're now waterlogged. I hope they pull through as it is too early to pull up my late-season spuds and the greens need to die back on the onions. But yeah, we're fortunate it's not sticky here all the time. Fortunate, and wimpy!
That is exactly what my Brother and SIL did, took my Mom and her Mom and some cousins from out of town for the festival. They all had a BLAST. Makes me wish I was there, instead of here...in the 95° heat, with 107° heat index. At least the humidity is only 53%, but it is HOT!
I love whole house fans. I wish we had one. We stayed in a cottage on Ocracoke once that had no A/C, but one of those. It would suck the curtains away from the windows and pull a serious breeze. Chickens panting are so sad.
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