The changing of seasons is always difficult to know when one relocates.
Having lived for almost have of my Old Home, I can easily enough tell you how Autumn begins: it will cool slightly through the end of September and then, right at the end of September or beginning of October, there will be a spike of heat, followed by a rapid decline of temperature; by the end of October, if one did not have one's garden in it would be too wet to start one.
In New Home, the pattern was different - not only because of the increased period of heat (from April to almost November in some years) but the fact that there were very few leaves to fall to the ground. One grasped that the season was changing mostly by the cast of the sunlight and the slow cooling of the temperatures - or at least, less and less truly hot days.
In New Home 2.0, of course, I have no stars to set my course by yet, only advise from coworkers and the proposed weather outcomes my phone presents me with every morning.
My coworkers have noted that the Summer (or at least, the potential hot part of it) starts reliably around the beginning of July and ends sometime around the beginning of September (two month is a fair exchange compared to the up to 7 months in New Home). True to their prediction, the heat started around the first week of July and - if the phone weather holds true - will continue to drop from here. Even this weekend we were in the high 90's F, but by this Saturday we will be at 70 F or even 69 F, dropping to at least one day to 64 F.
The cast of the sunlight has not quite seemed to catch up, although the fact that I now live in a location that is more cloudy suggests that this aspect will be difficult to judge at best - again, if phone weather is correct we do not have another full sun day for 1.5 weeks.
Which leaves, of course, the trees (pun unintentionally discovered).
The leaves have already started to turn - not in droves, but in drips and drabs that sprinkle the parking lots and roads, the small circular leaves of trees that we simply do not have at home. The larger ones are not falling yet, but I can begin to see them turning on the outer edges and ends of the extremities.
I wish I knew things better here to know what kind of Winter this might portend: life will be different this Winter as I am now in an apartment and the only heat available is either the small wall units installed in every room (likely highly inefficient, or at least my initial tests of them were) or the much more efficient units we purchased. That, of course, and hoping that the fact the apartment seemingly stays warm in Summer will translate into Winter as well.
It is disorienting, this first round of seasons where one has never been. There is both the tremulous hope of experience new things and the almost certain fear it will be worse than one imagines.
I'm guessing it will take at least a couple of years to develop a sense of your new seasonal rhythm.
ReplyDeleteDoes your apartment get much sun? That would certainly help with warmth. And I wonder, do you have a copy of Paul Wheaton's Building a Better World in Your Backyard? It talks about heating one's personal space as opposed to a house. Lots of really good ideas.
Leigh, I think you are right (although interestingly, I found just yesterday that the local Japanese garden made a post about "subtle signs of Fall". So I may be on the right track.
DeleteThankfully, we do get a lot of sun - it is one of the reasons we chose this location and this unit as it was recommended to us by our apartment locator that in this area, large windows with lots of exposure to sunlight are a must. We are also on the third floor and have South and West facing windows - we get a lot of the hot sun in Summer, so I am hoping it will pan out.
I will check, but I may have Wheaton's book as part of a bundle I supported two years back. I have certainly read/seen some of his ideas and implemented a few of them myself.
Wait to Worry. No one can change the weather or the future. Even the Weather Channel often misses things.
ReplyDeleteIf you want a POSSIBLE outcome, searching the weather patterrn is as easy as searching on your cities website which often has the annual temperature patterns there. From there, you can divine what is to come.
Anon - After writing this, I did look up overall weather patterns. Winters are supposed to get in the 34-45 F range - cold, but not unbearable.
DeleteProbably missed this but quilts, blankets, throws? Long underwear? ....... :)
ReplyDeleteNylon12, I am a great believer in flannel and blankets. If the March weather when I got here was indicative of anything, I am probably over-concerned.
DeleteI remember those first couple years after I moved to the frozen tundra up north. Winter would always catch me completely by surprise and then spring seemed to be delayed for weeks beyond when I felt it should have been there. Then after a decade of living there, I moved back to my home area and had to relearn everything all over again.
ReplyDeleteSaying that, after four or five years of drought, I'm having to remember how things used to be before all that with the seasonable rains now swinging into a mellow dry fall. I really miss those times when this was the normal.
Ed, readjustment can be hard. The only "good" thing in this instance is that this sort of weather is what I went to college in, so it is not completely unknown to me. I at least have an idea of what it will be like.
DeleteA two-month long summer sounds pretty good to me, TB. And your expected winter temps sound almost balmy. Enjoyed the post. It made me want to experience living in a different clime. Though, central Indiana's climate has changed over my lifetime. It seems to me that winters were colder, and summers a bit milder when I was a child. Then again, way back then little girls wore skirts to school even in the winter, and in the summer I wore sleeveless shirts and shorts, and spent as much time as possible barefoot.
ReplyDeleteThanks Becki!
DeleteGiven the last 15 years, two months of Summer sound good to me as well. I am looking forward to the change in climate.
I do wonder sometimes how much our visions of climate past are tinged by our view of it at the time - growing up, we spent Summers outside without AC. Not something I relish now.