Yes, It's Hot Outside

zinnia in my garden

One of my goals when living in the South--and except for the almost three years my family and I lived in northern Minnesota, that would be my entire life--is to make it through May without turning on the central air. Most of the homes my husband and I have purchased in our thirty-four years of marriage (we married young!), have been older homes with lots of windows, so my goal is not impossible.  Had we an attic fan in addition to all those windows, the goal of being comfortable without central air would be even more possible. But this year I didn't come close to meeting my goal. I set the thermostat to 78° F the first week of May. The house can be comfortable with the thermostat set at 80°F if we're in one room, sedentary, with a fan circulating the air. We do live in south Louisiana, where the humidity is almost as high as the thermometer reading.

Our last home before moving to Louisiana (again, after 24 years), was near Atlanta. The average temperatures between Atlanta and New Orleans are just a few degrees difference, but those few degrees feel a lot greater when humidity is factored in. My husband moved to south Louisiana nine months before I did, and the first time my daughter and I drove south to visit him, we were staggered by the heat and humidity of a late June evening. After a year, I am acclimatized, but yesterday's heat (in the low 90s) was still brutal as I worked outside in the afternoon, edging my flower, herb, and vegetable beds and mowing the yard around them.

According to climate scientists, the weather is going to get even more brutal. This spring has been the warmest since 1895, when the first national weather data was collected on a regular basis. The previous national record for warmest spring was set in the spring of 1910. We've broken that record this year. In 1910, most of the country's temperatures were below average--tremendous heat in the West brought the national temperature up to that record-breaking high. But this year, nearly all of the country's temperatures have been above average. You can view these comparisons at Capital Climate's website: "Fat Lady Preparing to Sing: Crushing Warmest Spring Record," posted 28 May 2012.

Last summer, the PBS NewsHour created a new widget that tracks record-breaking high temperatures across the United States. I've added that widget to my blog in the upper left-hand corner.

Now I think I'll get a little earlier start on the yard work today, beginning with eliminating as many as I can of the nymphs and adult forms of the Leaf-Footed (Stink) Bug that are attacking our Creole tomatoes.

nymph of Leaf-Footed Stink Bug on my creole tomatoes this a.m.

adult Leaf-Footed Stink bug on my tomatoes this morning