How's the weather in your area?

[Uncle Al]

Well it's 12:20 AM on 28 June. My indoor-outdoor thermometer is reading
82.8*F which is about 18 degrees cooler than it was at 5 PM, 27 June.
It's still blasted hot Thank goodness there is a bit of a breeze

Uncle Al

[Jack Williams]

Well here in New Zealand we're still in the middle of this monster storm "wider than Australia" which has engulfed the country, hitting last Friday. The newspaper headline (page three though) "Monster storm will rage all this week". Trees have fallen on power lines causing outages in various places. We do always seem to hang in OK right here in Kelston, an older suburb of Auckland though. Only a ten minute outage to stop the clock. So far! (That was Wednesday).
The wind blusters on. The 155kph (100mph) stuff was all last weekend long, but it's settled down to just about 130k max gusts since with sunshine and showers. The biggest snow dump in 50 years further South collapsed the indoor sports stadium in Invercargill. Fortunately no one was in it at the time, but much consternation and rethinking in engineering circles. There is flooding in many parts and roofs blown off etc. While mine so far remains intact (I renailed heaps of it some time ago) it is now Thursday our time and the storm thrashes on with still powerful 130k gusts with heavy rain and hail showers, but sunny spells as well. The constant thrashing is getting a bit tiresome, even though things (right here at least) are staying intact as I speak. It seems we are in the "eye" of it right now, and this weekend will see the final big rage as we come out the other side. Hope the country doesn't completely capsize by then!
Jack.

[ChrisM]

Wow Jack! You make me happy that my boat is several thousand miles away!

(And here I was going to complain that it's still > 90F here, and too hot for more than the least of clothing.)

Chris

[Jack Williams]

It did indeed get a bit tiresome, but in fact slid off into the Southern ocean, so we had quite a relatively calm weekend up here, but the South Island had gales and much heavy snow. Since then, we've had a couple of lovely sunny and warn Summery days. Such that I have gone over from the perennial cord skirts to the lighter also perennial denim ones!

[AMM]

... Since then, we've had a couple of lovely sunny and warn Summery days...

I'm not sure what counts as "Summery" in your climes. In some parts of the USA, "summery" = above freezing, in others (like where Since1982 lives), anything less than 35 C is considered to be skiing weather.

Here in the NYC area, it's been 20-25 C, with one day getting up almost to 35 C. It's autumn here, specifically "Indian Summer." When I was a kid, we always said it was invented by the Indians to fool the Europeans who were moving in (and ruining property values ) into not preparing for winter.

[Kirbstone]

Our weather continues to be so rapidly changeable that any sunny spell is measured in hours only. Temps. in the mid to high teens Celsius mean that our Indian Summer is over. (I missed it, as I was sitting on the loo at the time), so I'll have to wait until next year....

[crfriend]

For what it's worth, we've had three straight days of 15-20C temperatures at 100% relative humidity. Needless to say, everything is soaking wet and clammy. We lit off the A/C today as we hit about 27C and needed to get rid of some of the humidity in the house.

At ~ 42.4 North latitude we're now in the high speed rundown to the shortest day of the year, and that's already taking a toll on this writer. I hate the dark days, and I hate winter. Something to look forward to. Time to dig out the heavy long skirts and heavyweight legwear.

[Skirthead]

rainy and wet. The Burmese pythons are swimming all over the neighborhood in the foot of rainwater here.

[couyalair]

We are in that difficult period when you never know what to expect.
Last week, I was swimming in the sea; this week, no chance. The water has gone cold and there is often a chilly wind. I did not even take my clothes off when I went for a walk on the beach yesterday afternoon, but cycling home it suddenly felt warm.
I've had a woolen kilt on a couple evenings, but most days, cotton is still fine.
Today, I had breakfast in a long t-shirt, then took it off to go outside to water the plants. The sun was already hot -- no need for a skirt or anything else. When it is like that, it's easy to put up with the days getting shorter.

I too detest winter weather, dark, cold evenings and so on, which is the main reason for my moving south. At least I know I'll be able to get outside some 350 days a year here, whereas in continental France, there were winter days when I just could not face going anywhere -- and that is no good for health or happiness.

Martin

[Jack Williams]

Well, it made it to about 20c for a couple of days, but today, back to the cord. Very changeable which is common here in Auckland. It never gets really cold though, as in snow, here, just further South and on the mountains. It can be pretty humid in the actual Summer, but nice right now.

[crfriend]

Well, it was going to happen sooner or later -- we had our first hard frost last night; when I awoke, there was a crusting of ice on my car that, had I needed to drive it anywhere, would have required scraping it off. I really would have preferred this to have happened later.

The air-conditioners came out of the windows yesterday (with me hurting my back with the big one), the heavy comforter is now on the bed, the storm windows are in place, and the potted plants we'd put outside for sunshine over the summer have been brought in. These things are just part of the annual ritual of bundling up for winter in New England. The autumn test of the safety-systems on the boiler happened last weekend, and it's now a question of when we opt to light the thing off (usually when we can't take the cold any longer).

The cold snap will make the autumn leaves really turn color now, which will be nice for my European co-workers who are in town for two weeks beginning tomorrow.

I'm jealous of the local bears -- I wish I could hibernate until the weather was nice and the days getting longer again.

[Since1982]

Regarding the ice on the car,

I really would have preferred this to have happened later.

I bet later you'd have said exactly the same thing, no? Same way I feel about our approaching hurricane.

[crfriend]

... and I had a nice coating of ice (not frost) on the car to prove it this morning. 'Tis a pity I was parked on the lawn instead of the driveway (Sapphire needed to get out yesterday and I was ill in bed). A ten degree slope isn't bad until one needs to lean on the (ice-covered) car to scrape the windows off and navigate around it in the dark to do the other side.

I managed to step on the hem of my new skirt three times, almost fall over once, and filled the driver's side of the car with leaves from the wet lawn. Lovely. And I'm in for five+ months more of this -- and it gets worse -- before it starts to get nice again. Foo!

[Kirbstone]

Moral of the story here is: Shorten that hem, but not by too much, lest you show an unseemly ankle!
Remember, we all get shorter as we grow older....

[crfriend]

Moral of the story here is: Shorten that hem, but not by too much, lest you show an unseemly ankle!

I'm not all that hung up about it. In fact, I got so torqued off about it after the third time (and the near fall) that I just grabbed the thing and brought it up well above the knees to keep it out of the way. I figured it'd be better to be cold for a few moments than injure either the skirt or myself.