I’m writing this post as the tail-end of the latest heatwave slowly dwindles. Along with the cooler air and chance for storms this shift in temperature is bringing, we’re also getting a nasty shift in air-quality. All the cold air coming from up north is still filled with wildfire smoke, after all. Which means we’re all basically stuck in a position of “horrible heat” or “smoke-filled air” as the old, stable, warm-but-not-too-hot weather of post summers gets blown to and fro by the more extreme conditions to the north and south. It is just over a month into Summer and we’ve had three heatwaves in that time alone. I’m sure we had more over the course of the year, but they didn’t really register the same way these ones did since all they brought were unseasonably warm temperatures (like that time we had temperatures in the 70s back in February) and not actual heat advisories like the summer ones always deliver. I wish I could reliably say that at least this is it for the next ten days based on the forecast, but even tomnorrow’s forecast is no longer an acurrate prediction I can rely on [turns out that even this morning’s prediction for today was off by almost ten degrees and it looks like this week’s heat is going already be more intense than predicted over the weekend]. Today was supposed to be cool and stormy, but instead we’ve just drawn out the dwindling temperatures from the past two days to create a humid swamp of an atmosphere that smells of smoke to my sensitive nose. Tomorrow’s supposed to be rainy now, but I’ll believe it when I see it since I sincerely doubt it will cool off as much as the forecast claims it will. I find it difficult to believe it’ll go from a heat index of over one hundred to dipping down into the fifties in less than forty-eight hours (and barely more than thirty-six), but the weather is strange and largely unpredict able at this point, so who knows. Maybe it’ll happen [it didn’t].

It certainly doesn’t help the climate-changed-twisted weather that the federal government under the current shitheel’s administration has decided to gut every single public-good agency with a special vindictiveness for any of the science-based ones. Which includes all of the weather services that every private provider of weather forecasts relies on. It makes sense that the data would get more and more spotty, that things we could trust in the past would start to fail as money ran out, as workers left, and as the runway ran out for everything that had been already in progress. It’s disheartening to think about, but it very much supports the “hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil” ethos of the current US government. After all, hurricanes can’t possibly be happening if we don’t see them coming. Best to bury our heads in the sand and spend all of our waking hours bracing for disaster. That’s never taken a toll on anyone ever, has it? What’s one more source of constant background stress in our lives that are slowly being destroyed (environmentally, financially, socially, and even literally in some cases) by unscrupulous capitalists, shithead fascists, and “well-meaning” centrists?

It’s difficult to relax when I’m this warm. When I can’t escape the heat and have to spend an entire day at the office slowly perspiring because I can’t stand the noise outside my office and there’s not enough airflow in my office to keep it cool now that the HVAC has gone down for this part of the building YET AGAIN. It’s difficult to unwind when all I’ve got at home is the choice between having my back and butt sweat from the couch I’m sitting on or having my entire body slowly overheat from being tucked away in my office with my own body heat, my gaming PC, and basically no airflow (my office is too small for a box or even tower fan). Neither choice is great, but laying on the floor near my AC unit and overhead fans all night is only going to mess up my shoulders and back. Plus, it’s not like I’ve got the mental focus for reading and all of my handheld games would be much better experienced on my new TV, so it’s all kind of a moot point as it is, all without even getting into how uncomfortable I’d be on the floor after ten or fifteen minutes. Better to pick something I’ll genuinely enjoy, that I’d actually be able to escape into for a bit, than that, even if I’m going to be too warm and eventually get uncomfortable.

It’s so exhausting to remember a time when heatwaves were an occasional event. When they were a rare occurrence. When it was a thing worth noting not because of the danger they pose to human life but because it was so strange to think of a heatwave striking an area that was known for it’s cold winters. Now they’re just a regular part of life and everyone is merely shrugging their shoulders at the whole affair since they need to get used to it anyway. It’s not like the heatwaves will stop, so better start adjusting to the new warmth of our particular slice of the world. And, you know, most of the rest of the country since this heat doesn’t just hit here. It sticks around and blows to the east, slowly coating a full half of the country before it slowly starts to subside. I want to take some comfort in knowing that this heatwave is probably the shortest-lived in my area, tending to get blown away the quickest by more moderate temperatures, but I know too many people who live in the dangerous zones that have to deal with the heatwave for a week or more instead of my three-ish days. There’s no comfort to be found in the brevity of misery, anyway. At least not for me. All I get from that is just less overall misery. If the heat skipped me entirely, that’d be another matter, but it likely won’t unless I move further west and that’s not likely going to happen any time soon. Better to just get myself mentally prepared for regular heatwaves so at least I’m not surprised every time my apartment heats up to the point of my AC unit being unable to cool it down.