June Gloom and Beyond

I have the weather for Clinton, SC (where Brother Steve lives), on my home page, so I am pretty sure that the high for any given day over the last four weeks has not dropped below 90. And usually it has been in the mid-90’s and sometimes higher. And all of Russia appears on fire, the result at least in part of an intense and prolonged heat wave. Meanwhile, here in Santa Barbara, or more exactly here in Goleta…where I live..next to Santa Barbara, we recorded, one day recently, according to a guy I overheard at the club, the lowest temperature in the mainland USA and appear to be having the coolest summer on record. The average temperature for August in SB is 79 degrees. But I don’t think we have hit seventy once this month and the high one day last week was 62.

I don’t know anything about possible deeper causes for this cooling trend, but we seem to be going through an extension of “June gloom.” June gloom occurs yearly and punctually, obviously, in June and seems to be the result of the “marine layer” that usually hovers offshore deciding to move onshore and park there for a while. This year it parked in late June and decided not to leave. So each morning I open the blinds to leaden skies.
gloom1.jpgBut that’s not the whole story. The forecast for later this week is “sunny” and that would be nice, but the temperatures as forecast remain unseasonably cool. Usually, each summer, for a month at least I can’t control the urge to start going barefoot and end hopping around on the hot pavement. This summer…zip…not once have I felt the barefoot urge.

I think possibly that the exact spot where we are located–about a mile and a half from the ocean–may well be cooler than for Santa Barbara proper. I know that when I head out to work out at about two in the afternoon, I have on my jean jacket, and that by the time I reach the work out place, a couple of miles further inland, I no longer need the jacket.

It’s strange is all. Certainly, far, far, far better than broiling in the heat, but still a little spooky–those leaden skies–they have gone on so long.

gloom2.jpgGoleta sky at eleven AM August 10