That's Pretty Cool!

How about a summer weather post? It seems that this has been an unusual summer, so I decided to record a few of my thoughts. So far we have had a fairly mild summer with a lot of rain. We saw our thermometers reach 90 only a few times in all of June and the first half of July, although we have had some very humid days to go along with all the storms. The heavy rains have been the most notable weather events this summer. I wish I had kept track of all the days in which we have had a down-pour! According to the National Weather Service, our area had 6.45 inches of rain in June compared to a 4.26 inch June average for rain. They say we are already at the July average of 4.28 inches of rain and we are just half way through the month!

The good news about all the rain is the fact that we have not had to water our garden. The bad news is the fact that the garden has gotten pounded very hard during several hard rains, winds, and even hail one day when a small tornado touched down not too far away from us! It was 92 degrees today and the weather man thinks this will be a very hot and humid week with temps in the 90s everyday, and the "heat index" into the 100s. The chances for rain are low until the end of the week.

Every summer I hold off getting the air conditioners out for as long as possible. We figure if the house is too cool, no one will want to be outside working and playing and enjoying the summer. We are blessed with a lot of shade around our house, and the hills keep the sun from shining directly on us for very long, so we tend to stay fairly comfortable. Only one night have I been uncomfortable sleeping, and that was a few weeks ago at the end of June. The day time teperature had been 90 degrees beginning in the early morning, followed by a 20 minute hard rain shower in the afternoon which brought in some oppressive humidity when the sun blared the temperature back up to 90! That night we slept with no covers but I awoke sweating around 1:30 in the morning. When I looked at the thermometer outside it was showing 80 degrees! I don't even know what the temperature was in the house, but that night it wouldn't have even helped much to sleep outside. That was the first time I thought we should get out the old faithful window air conditioner. But the next day was not too hot and I actually didn't think about it again. Until today....

Today was actually not very uncomfortable, but I was in town and heard folks talking about the terrible heat and how bad it was going to get this week. If I had not run several errands today, I would not have realized the dire danger we were facing! It began this morning. We watched Matthew, Christina, and Simon do a martial arts demonstration at a local day care and the workers there mentioned how hot it was going to get. At Walmart I overheard a couple men talking about the heat. After Walmart I stopped to pick up some cattle feed and the fellow at the feed store told me that things were going to get unbearable because of the heat. Next stop was for the Impala panel that was damaged last month when we hit a deer and the guy at the junk yard asked us if it was hot enough for us. We also needed some things from Auto Zone and one of the workers there had a good attitude about the heat. He said it was going to be hot, but that he would rather have the sunny days instead of the rain no matter how hot it got!

Well, all this talk about heat led me to look up the weather forecast and I found out there was a heat advisory on for our area. It also said this: "PRECAUTIONS ARE URGED FOR THOSE ENGAGED IN OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES THIS WEEK... PARTICULARLY DURING THE HOTTEST PARTS OF THE DAY. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS... STAY OUT OF THE SUN AND... IF POSSIBLE... STAY IN AN AIR- CONDITIONED ROOM." Well, I guess they talked me into it, because after carrying a couple of 100 pound bags of feed to the barn and feeding the bulls and Gracie, I got the window air conditioners out of storage, and brought them home. I brought two for upstairs, one for the boys room and one for the girls room. These were newer ones I bought last year to use in the Lawrence county house. I also brought home the old faithful Fedders unit for our living room.  That air conditioner is beginning to take on the aura of a legend!

Now for my air conditioner commercial. I bought this Fedders window air conditioner back in 1989 in Richmond Kentucky at a Rose's store that has since gone out of business. That summer we purchased and moved into a very hot 12x67 mobile home. I guess we used this Fedders air conditioner pretty heavily for 3 summers in that trailer, and it did a great job. We took it with us when we moved to Eastern Kentucky, even though we had central air in the mobile home we rented during '92.  But I'm pretty sure we have used it sometime during every summer since 1993 when we moved here to Pure Water Hollow! It is still doing a great job cooling right now as well, even though it is 24 years old! Maybe I'm strange, but well made products from previous decades still make me smile and reminisce about the "good old days" when American manufacturers and workers still took pride in things they produced!

It will be nice being able to have a cooler house on the very hot days, but we will be sure to not let the air-conditioners spoil us.  There is still too much work to do and fun to have outside!