Here, and there

Lord, help us all who are roasting in the South. There will be no break from the braincookery anytime soon!

I just looked at the weather forecast for the Raleigh area over the next few days. This is what I saw:

(apparently cactii will be springing up all over for a few days this week!)

Details are thusly:
Today – hi 86
Wed – hi 90 (gah!)
Thu – hi 93 (double gah!)
Fri – hi 93 (nature hates us!)
Sat – hi 93 (I give up.)
Sun – high 81 (wait, RAIN? I've decided to not move to Seattle)
Mon – hi 81 (I might need a sweater)

That forecast, my friends, contains a stretch of weather that the locals call ‘effing HOT,’ where the 'f' does not stand for fabulously. This malingering horrible hotness, however, should come as no surprise to anyone around these parts as this is the year we’re absolutely SMASHING the record for having the most days in the ‘90’s. Oh my yes. The former record-holder was 2007, when it was so hot and dry 100-year-old oaks were wilting and weeping willows couldn’t muster up as much as a sniffle. That year there was a total of 83 days that hit the 90 degree mark, 77 of which had occurred by this point in the calendar.

2010 is proving to be a bully in the hot department, with a total thus far of 87 90+ days. I think we’re safely going to have at least 4 more to that total in the next week, with the promise of more to come. Also – we’ve been a while (nearly a month!) without rain of any sort. Not even a thunderstorm. Those cactii you see on the weather graphic are for real, man. There was a herd of tumbleweeds rolling into town this morning, and by gum if there weren’t some armadillers ridin’ em! Hoo-EE!

Y'all - we're used to hot down here, but 'used to' and 'accept as a way of life' are two very different things, and I'm thinking we can't take too much more of this before we all simply sublimate into a pile of reddish dust in our cars and on the sidewalks, simultaneously giving up pretense of being able to survive under such brutal conditions.

It will be much like the rapture, except limited to a geographic area. All y’all up north won’t get to play along in this mass extinction, I’m afraid, because I just took at look at where the Biffster is going to be this week and up in MI HAILZ-a-poppin right about now because the temperatures have soared into the 80’s (!), and in NY they’re getting rain Wednesday and Thursday, with highs only in the 70’s. OoooOOOOooooo....That’s daggone near-to parka weather, right there!

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How is it where YOU are? Hints of fall? Woodsmoke in the air? LL, have you had snow yet?

Do tell, and then have a lovely afternoon. Tiff out!