We turned the corner this week from July and headed straight into August - usually the hottest month of the year - and I don’t mind telling you that I am frightened.
Sunday night, Kindra and I went for a short walk along the North Canadian River and nearly sweated ourselves to death. If I had wrung out my shirt, it would have raised the river level by half an inch.
Monday evening, it felt even hotter as we ran errands.
At home, our poor air conditioner has been ginning almost around the clock and doing the best it can, but the heat has been kicking its butt.
And there’s no break for a few days. As of this writing, the forecast for the next five days calls for sunny skies and highs of 102, 102, 102, 102 and 100 degrees. Then there’s a chance for some rain and highs in the lower 90s.
That’s not as bad as the summers of 1980 and 2011, but I was a lot younger in those years and seemed immune to the heat.
If you were around in 1980, you will remember that we had 50 days with temperatures of 100 degrees or above, which was a record for Oklahoma.
You could walk outside that summer and hear your skin crinkle from the heat. Then you’d realize, no, that was just the bermuda grass you were stepping on.
I was single and renting a one-bedroom house in Fitzhugh that summer. The house was a former parsonage for the Methodist church and had no air conditioning. They’re tough people, those Methodists.
I remember being really hot all summer, but I played softball and golf a lot and could run a fan in the window to suck in what passed for cool air at night.
The summer ended, eventually, and everyone was happy when autumn brought football season and cooler temperatures and all was right with the world again.
Then 2011 happened. The records that we grudgingly set in 1980 were like so much tinder in 2011.
We set a record for the hottest summer for any state since the inception of records in 1986.
Take that, Arizona. We scoff in your general direction.
Oklahoma City reported three days of 110 degree temperatures that year and the state high was 114, but I swear it was hotter than that in my garden. I could water in the morning and the okra would be wilted by mid-afternoon.
It was hot all over the state all summer, but the poor folks out in Jackson County saw highs of at least 100 degrees on 70 days.
Think of it. Seven weeks of 100 or above. Here in Pott and Lincoln counties, we were at 100 or more for 43 and 41 days, respectively.
When all is said and done, 2023 may not reach the all-time records, but, boy. It doesn’t have to for me to wave the white flag.
In fact, I hollered calf-rope Monday night and bought a portable air conditioner.
This is the kind of air conditioner that you can move from room to room and vent with a hose out the window.
We ran it in the bedroom Monday night, and the boost it gave the air conditioning made a big difference.
My original goal was to get the room cold enough to make ice cubes, but we eventually modulated to the upper 60s.
It felt good. Luxuriously cool. I recollect the dogs barking a time or two as I drifted off, but I conked quickly and slept until the alarm went off.
That portable a/c was money well spent.