Hot enough for ya?

When I got into my car Monday afternoon, its thermometer read an even 100 degrees with a “comfort index” of 107 degrees.

That wasn’t the official temperature, but the car was sitting in the sun. It was close enough for me. It seemed like the hottest day of the year.

It was also the first day of school, one of the happiest days of the year for parents of school-age children. Fortunately, most of the school buildings in Storm Lake are air conditioned, so no kids had to be sent home during this late August opening.

When I was a kid in school in the 1950s and 60s, there were no air-conditioned schools. But we didn’t go to school in August, either. We never started school before Labor Day and graduation wasn’t until late May. Big city schools often stretched into June.

Now school starts in mid to late August and finishes in the first week or two of May. The state never intended school to start this early. The legislature passed a law a few years ago mandating that schools wait until after Labor Day to begin classes. The idea was to help out businesses, especially those in vacation spots like Okoboji, that depended on students to fill summer jobs. Schools could apply for dispensations from the state Department of Education, which were easily granted, and the intention of the law was subverted.

There were heat warnings out over the weekend so I made sure I got the yard mowed mid-morning Saturday and Sunday. I still worked up a pretty good sweat. Mowing grass won’t be an issue in another month so I have to enjoy it while I can.

We got a smattering of rain Monday morning, but other than that it has been pretty dry around here lately, enough that the lake level dropped a half foot or more and water is no longer running over the dam in Lakeside. Outlet Creek is dry for the first time all summer.

It has been a hot summer for much of the USA, but fortunately the Midwest has mostly been spared the suffocating heat that has wrapped around much of the country, especially the Southwest and East Coast.

These are the “Dog Days of Summer,” when life slows down so we talk — and write — about the weather. As Mark Twain supposedly remarked, ‘Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Including me.