Coping with “a little heat”

From the San Antonio Express News, August 1, 2009: “It should come as no surprise to anyone who stepped outdoors last month that July’s daily average temperatures lit the city’s records on fire. Not only was it the hottest July on record, it also was the hottest month – ever”.

 

After reading the above excerpt from the newspaper it would be a gross understatement for me to say, as I often do when describing the weather in San Antonio and south Texas, that summers here get “a little hot”. Making that statement would also be another example of me being what my daughter says I am, “captain obvious”. We live in south central Texas, 150 miles from the Mexican border so naturally we’re going to experience heat. Most of the time my family and I relish warm weather but man, seriously, this has been quite a summer of extreme heat. During July we endured, no suffered, 22 days of temperatures that were 100 degrees or higher!! Other parts of the US has experienced a very rainy and cool summer so far and I’m sorry for that but it’s all relative. Back when we lived in Chicagoland I used to complain about the weather often but it was a different complaint. There I complained about the lack of warm weather, and the relatively short summers. Now, in San Antonio I complain about the extreme heat, and the very long summers.

 

Of course when it’s sunny and hot here, it seems like you’re in an oven when you step out of an air-conditioned building. Is it global warming? Who can say? It’s not only the heat that’s an issue, it’s the humidity, and it’s the intensity of the sun - all three become very oppressive over the course of our long summers. But all of those things are what we’ve come to expect here in south Texas when we describe summer. This time though we’ve gotten very little relief from the heat – very little rain, and very few “cold fronts” so far. We’ve had some fronts come thru from time to time the last few months. During those periods we’ll “cool” down to a mere 93 to 95 degrees (hey, it’s all relative) and there’s nearly rejoicing in the streets when that happens. Once during a summer visit by my late dad Billy, he said, “there’s always a breeze flowing down in San Antonio”. Dad was right, only he didn’t complete the sentence…there’s always a breeze, it’s a very hot breeze!

 

We’ve lived here now 14 years and in the early years I used to think that San Antonio’s humidity wasn’t that bad. In the last few years I’ve changed my opinion…a lot! Humid is humid, so I guess it doesn’t really matter who has the worst, but I will say that in my opinion San Antonio’s humidity is bad but it isn’t as oppressively bad as places like Houston, New Orleans, or even St. Louis, thank goodness for that. Here in the Alamo City, it’s not unusual for me to have to change shirts twice or more a day when I find myself outside for long periods in the summer – the combination of humidity and intense sunshine just brings out the sweat in me. My best friend Al says that I “sweat like a farm animal”. We joke that a place like Phoenix Arizona has what they call “dry heat”. By comparison, San Antonio sometimes has a “wet heat”. Phoenix’s heat may sneak up on you, in San Antonio it doesn’t hide, it smacks you in the face from jump street (a phrase that may not have been heard in decades,…sorry about that).

 

So how does a man like me from the Haughville neighborhood of Indianapolis handle this heat? I grew up experiencing a four seasons climate, now I live in a place that has but two – summer, and the cooler months. Back in the day in the midwest we’d have a little warm spell in Indy and we might complain but we’d somehow survive. We always knew that it wouldn’t be long before the summer would end and the cool of the fall season would arrive. I mean, really, summer didn’t officially arrive until June 20 or so, then it left, unofficially, around Labor Day. That’s not how it goes here in the land of the long summer – sometimes we kind of skip fall, meaning it will stay hot and toasty, or warm well into late October. It’s not unusual for it to be 70-75 degrees on Thanksgiving. That’s pretty impressive in a lot of ways although we’d really appreciate a cold spell every now and then for Thanksgiving. Turkey and dressing and all the fixins’ seem to go better with cooler temps in my opinion. When I was still playing softball I always thought it was so great to play in the “winter league” playing into early December. It didn’t matter that many nights I had on a couple of layers to stay warm, I was just happy to be playing ball while my friends and family in the northern climates had put their cleats away long ago.

 

So again I ask, how does the Haughville man survive the heat? We’re pretty blessed here to have many ways to cool off from the summer heat. Here’s some of the wonderful “escapes” that we have at our disposal in San Antonio:

* Outdoor pools – our subdivision pool, and the YMCA pool have been lifesavers, no pun intended.

* Water parks at Sea World; Six Flags Fiesta Texas; Splashtown; and the USA’s number one waterpark at Schlitterbahn (30 miles away in awesome New Braunfels). Schlitterbahn is especially cool because the water is spring fed (and always cool and refreshing). One of their tube rides dumps you into the lovely Comal River.

* Great rivers for tubing and swimming – one of the prettiest rivers I know of is the Guadalupe River; the Medina River (also very pretty), and the San Marcos River. There’s also a couple of huge lakes/resevoirs nearby (we rarely go though since we don’t have a boat).

* The Gulf Coast – only 150 miles away is Corpus Christi, Port Aransas, and Mustang Island, all with plenty of beaches; 300 miles away is lovely South Padre Island (alledgedly with beaches as nice as parts of Florida, only my daughter has been there in our family); and beautiful Galveston, about 250 miles away.

 

Those are some of the ways that my family and I survive or escape the heat. The other way to escape it is to avoid it. During our long summers it’s not unusual for people to stay inside their homes during the day to escape the heat. In my family we do our outdoor exercising, and most of our errands either early or late. It’s kind of a funny existence here during the summers. When the heat leaves in November and we get the “winter” weather we’re all sooo happy to be able to pull out our sweatshirts, “hoodies”, and jackets. Just as a point of reference, last “winter” we had exactly two days where the temps dropped below freezing, yep that’s it, two days. Usually we can enjoy the cool weather thru early April…and then it begins to heat up…sometimes gradual, sometimes abruptly, you just never know what to expect.

 

In summing up the impact of this record heat wave, we came here to south Texas for the weather – the chance to have warm weather all year. Having to put up with a little heat shouldn’t be that big of a deal, right? I will always complain, it’s in my DNA, but I love where I live. Always have, always will.