So as I sat one morning drinking some spiced apple-flavored tea and chowing down on pumpkin pancakes, trying fruitlessly to will my favorite season of the year to come sooner, I couldn’t help but notice the humidity hanging thick in the Florida air. It was kind of an anxiously awaiting-fall mood killer, to be honest. And I’m apparently not the only one who noticed the long string of excessively hot and humid days – on the front page of my local newspaper was a headline informing me it had been the hottest month the United States had ever recorded.
Record Breaking Streak
Not to mention, January to July is the warmest seven month period in recorded history in the continental United States, as well. And lucky me: my air conditioning repair company has rescheduled on me about five times due to “more dire emergencies,” and no amount of damsel-in-distress acting is getting them here any quicker (though it is my own fault for skipping my past three scheduled maintenances, thinking it would save me money – I’m not excited to see what this repair will cost!). My house has been a sauna for the past three weeks, and from how long it’s taking, I’m assuming I’m not the only one struggling with my AC during these months.
Environmental Damage
All this sauna-basking got me thinking about these statistics, though; it’s pretty difficult to think about anything else. Having the hottest seven consecutive months ever recorded – records started in 1895 – is no coincidence. This has to be more than just the natural variances in the climate; I’m starting to worry that we are damaging our environment more than we realize, and as we can see, the more damage we do to it, the more it will rear its head back at us. It’s probably time everyone – myself included – starts thinking about what we could do to cut back.
Reading the last line of the article almost made me want to dump the remnants of my pumpkin coffee down the drain (…almost): some meteorologists suspect that this heat wave could continue well into the fall. I guess I won’t be cozied up by the fire any time soon. I guess we should look on the bright side, though, when the air conditioning repair company finally gets here, they can look to make sure my heater is in working order so I won’t be having a similar incident when it’s freezing outside rather than sweltering.
Sara Klemowitz is part of an elite team of writers who have contributed to hundreds of blogs and news sites.