Friday, July 23, 2004
Hot Times
The Seattle area is having a scorcher--90 degree temperatures for a few days here. This kind of weather is the lead news story in much the same way as our annual snow day. It is a variation on the theme of "40's, 50's or 60's with chance of rain".
The problem with this kind of weather is that our gardens and all of our natural vegetation is dependent upon water and lots of it. A few days of hotness and everything turns brown rapidly. As you can imagine, we do not have many cacti around here. Most people do not really even know how to water their lawns. A few people like us have sprinkler systems but ours is not working because we had a new fence built and the fence guys cut the wire and didn't fix it properly so our lawn is.....not good.
Nobody has air conditioning. When you are surrounded by gigantic bodies of water at every turn--both fresh and salt water--a breeze usually happens at night so crucially opened windows cause the natural air conditioning to happen. I have heard stories about southern Californians moving here and either looking at million dollar homes to buy or building such a home. One of the first questions is about air conditioning. Usually, these people are met with blank stares from the builder or real estate agent with a response that that is a few thousand dollars wasted.
I mean--why would you want to shut your windows on a nice day and breathe fake air when you can get a fresh breeze off of 55 degree water???
On the other hand, we do have an interesting problem with days like this. Low tides happen this time of year and the seaweed rots. All over the Puget Sound region people complain that their local sewage treatment plant has gone haywire because the smell is....pretty terrible. This happens every year and happened last week in our neighborhood. The managers of the sewage treatment plants receive calls and every year there is an article in the paper (like yesterday) saying the smell is ROTTING SEAWEED.
Hmmmm! Maybe air conditioning is not such a bad idea after all!
The Seattle area is having a scorcher--90 degree temperatures for a few days here. This kind of weather is the lead news story in much the same way as our annual snow day. It is a variation on the theme of "40's, 50's or 60's with chance of rain".
The problem with this kind of weather is that our gardens and all of our natural vegetation is dependent upon water and lots of it. A few days of hotness and everything turns brown rapidly. As you can imagine, we do not have many cacti around here. Most people do not really even know how to water their lawns. A few people like us have sprinkler systems but ours is not working because we had a new fence built and the fence guys cut the wire and didn't fix it properly so our lawn is.....not good.
Nobody has air conditioning. When you are surrounded by gigantic bodies of water at every turn--both fresh and salt water--a breeze usually happens at night so crucially opened windows cause the natural air conditioning to happen. I have heard stories about southern Californians moving here and either looking at million dollar homes to buy or building such a home. One of the first questions is about air conditioning. Usually, these people are met with blank stares from the builder or real estate agent with a response that that is a few thousand dollars wasted.
I mean--why would you want to shut your windows on a nice day and breathe fake air when you can get a fresh breeze off of 55 degree water???
On the other hand, we do have an interesting problem with days like this. Low tides happen this time of year and the seaweed rots. All over the Puget Sound region people complain that their local sewage treatment plant has gone haywire because the smell is....pretty terrible. This happens every year and happened last week in our neighborhood. The managers of the sewage treatment plants receive calls and every year there is an article in the paper (like yesterday) saying the smell is ROTTING SEAWEED.
Hmmmm! Maybe air conditioning is not such a bad idea after all!
// posted by Janet @ 9:15 AM
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