I looked up the definition of "Indian summer" on Wikipedia (with apologies if this is no longer a correct term, and I hope everyone knows I mean no offense) and it says it is "a period of unseasonably warm, dry weather that sometimes occurs in autumn in temperature regions of the northern hemisphere."
It goes on to say some sources "describe a true Indian summer as not occurring until after the first frost."
If I go by that last bit of information, what we are experiencing here where I live is not an Indian summer because we have not yet had a frost. But it is definitely warm for late October. It has also been dry, but we are supposed to get some relief from that in the next few days.
The days have been nice, for the most part, but we have had some in which it has reached the low 80s. That just seems too warm for this time of year.
I don' remember much about the weather from year to year. I know we are not usually freezing cold by this time, although I do remember turning on the heat in October.
The only time we have turned it on this fall is when we got back from vacation a couple weeks ago. I had turned the air off completely, and there had been a cool spell during our absence, so the inside was pretty cool. But other than that, we have not had the heat on, and, in fact, we are still running the air conditioner from time to time, especially upstairs during the day when I am working. By mid-afternoon it can still get rather warm inside.
The most negative effect of this lingering warm weather is the bugs. There are mosquitos, wasps, ladybugs and "stink bugs" and unfortunately, some of them find their way inside. We need a freeze to get rid of them and we have not yet had one. Hopefully soon.
Speaking of fall and the accompanying changes, we will change the clocks back to standard time this weekend
This is upsetting to Wife, as she does not like how it will get dark in the late afternoon. We live on the east end of the central time zone, which means it will be almost dark between 5 and 5:30 p.m. She does not like this at all and always dreads this weekend.
It does not bother me other than knowing it bothers her, so I try to by sympathetic. When I was younger, I rather relished the return to standard time because it reminded me the weather was getting cooler, which I found pleasing.
At my age, now I try to live every day "in the moment" and not long for either the way things used to be or how they might be in the future. Time goes by so fast that I know, even if the time change bothered me as it does Wife, before I turn around, it would be time to set clocks ahead again. And, in fact, we are in daylight saving time for more of the year than we are in standard time.
That's how I am with anticipating retirement, which I find myself thinking about more and more. It will arrive when it is time, and I'll keep plugging along working.
In the moment.
6 comments:
I'm not sure I can remember a single year in the past, when we haven't had a frost before November. But this year we will cross that invisible boundary and perhaps not get one until nearing mid November according to the 10-day forecast. Yet another sign that we are warming up on a global level.
It really has been awfully warm for late October. At least the next week only calls for highs in the lower 80s. The nights are still saying warm, though. I'm still wearing shorts and a tee to walk in the mornings.
We have had more than one hard frost here. Perhaps we will have an Indian summer now. I would love it. The hunter in our house would hate it.
Warm and dry here. I don't believe it has rained a single drop in October. Maybe this is the new norm. On a positive note, I'm still getting decent tomatoes and peppers out of the garden.
As for the time change, I'm for saving all the daylight all the time.
For the record, we got an unexpected light frost yesterday, November 2nd. I was a bit off on my prediction.
It's the middle of November when I'm seeing this, Bob, and I don't believe we've seen freezing temperatures yet in central Indiana! Tonight we may get some snow, but temperatures are predicted to be back into the high 40's, 50's at least through this weekend, and maybe 60 next Monday. And while we've had a recent streak of rain, we experienced drought conditions during September and October. It does look like some normalcy will start to kick in by Thanksgiving. Now that we're retired, I don't mind cold and snow - we don't have to get out in it that much. I do worry for my sons driving in it, though, so I'm always relieved when the winter weather is mild for that reason.
I don't feel like we had an Indian Summer this year. I feel like we just had an extended summer that got less oppressively humid in October.
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