Ready, Set, Summer

Get ready. Summer is almost here, and for Wichita Falls, Texas, that means hot, hot, hot! .

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I really like Wichita Falls. The people are mostly friendly. The traffic is light. And the climate is mild for 8 months of the year. From June to September though, it is extremely hot! It only gets down to about 79ºF at night in mid-summer. Call it good, call it bad, but there is also no humidity, so it's a dry heat - with little to no rain, and mostly clear skies.

During those sweltering hot days, the heat just drains me. I find myself dreaming of moving to cool places. Literally cool! I have researched different climates and rainfall and have decided that I don't know what I want. I like it here most of the year. Winter is usually pretty nice. In the winter, if you want to call it that, it gets really cold for about 28 days, but that's not four weeks straight. It's spread out over October through April. February is usually the coldest month with some freezing rain.

We don't get much snow. It might snow twice in a winter. When it does snow, kids will be covering the whole yard carefully scooping the thin layer of snow off the ground just to make a two foot tall snow gnome. On one of those days, kids could probably sell their snow drifts like a commodity to some poor child that wasn't lucky enough to get a 4" snow drift! Also don't be fooled by the messed up school definition of summer. September gets really hot most afternoons of the month. The mornings start off cool though. And also it gets windy in September.

I love Christmas! Sometimes when it is 115ºF in late-July, I like to bust out the Christmas music and dream of better, cooler days. If you want to psych yourself out on one of those melt-your-shoes kind of days, just take a trip to Hobby Lobby and hang out in the Christmas in July display area for an hour or two. The smell of plastic Christmas trees might not be healthy to breath, but if it gets your mind off the summer heat, it could be just as good as swimming.

Let's talk about swimming. Now if you know me, you won't be wondering this, but some of you may be thinking, "Why not just go to the pool?" Reason: I really hate swimming. I don't see the point in it. I'll go a couple times a summer because Joyce and the kids like it, but if I had my "druthers", I'd never go. Joyce and my sister Penny have taunted me before saying that I couldn't swim, but I showed them! I just don't like getting my head under water, and consequently I am opposed to water-boarding and believe it is torture, akin to swimming.

If you've never been here to Wichita Falls in the heart of summer, then you really have no idea what it's like. Once our whole family went out walking in the cool of the evening in Holliday when we lived there. We were so grateful for the sun going down. It was noticeably cooler! We passed the bank and the digital sign flashed the temperature: 106ºF!!! Yeah. Pretty sad, huh?

I try to make the best of it though. When I started at Howmet, I remember putting a meat thermometer in the car to see how hot it was after work. It was usually about 175-190ºF. I decided I could use the car like a slow cooker on a typical sunny day. Now if you try this, please make sure there are no clouds in the forecast, because if it clouds over then you just end up with a slightly heated up version of what you started off with.

One of the funniest things is how much hotter Wichita Falls gets than other places around here. On the news weather map we're usually about 5-10 degrees hotter than all the other towns around us. Just drive an hour in any direction away from Wichita Falls, and enjoy!

Today is not that bad - rainy and cool. But I know what lies ahead. And if anyone knows of any "cool" places throughout the year that they would like to share, then please do. I don't think I'll ever make it to Seattle or Eureka, California. Also I would like to hear what other folks from here do to battle the heat. In the meantime I guess I'll just keep on developing my imagination through daydreaming of cool places.

--Johnie