Musing - on the editor's mind

Is it just me, or is summer over without it ever getting hot? It certainly never got really hot or stayed hot for any long period. It never reached the degree of “I have no choice but to wear every Hawaiian shirt I have, day after day without end and that will provide some relief.”

The overcast, with or without smoke, damped down temperatures. There was no rain to speak of, but the clouds seemed all too omnipresent. It was June gloom for sure, and the gloom never really left.

There were fires in 2017 and a record summer drought. But I have never seen, personally been in, an August when people wore face masks to filter air for breathing. Three times I passed people mid-month: Port of Skagit employees in a golf cart on North Third Street and two set of couples on First Street.

The weather data shows that August was record cool, averaging in the sixties for the daily high. It is not just the angle of the sun dropping, or the nights getting longer. Last month I noticed the lower slant of the sun casting itself through windows and doors. As afternoon turned to evening the light softened and the breeze cooled. They come as a pair, a team, the light pastel and the breeze a damp breath.

As August melded into September, the nights are not only longer but seem blacker somehow.

Summer isn’t over: There are two-plus weeks till the fall equinox, but the long daylight filled days are a receding memory. Dusk is 8 p.m. and by the time you read this, still earlier nightly. And the cool of the evening comes sooner, too.

All of this with practically no rain. Plowed farm fields on either side of Chilberg Road look like desert dust. There is no moisture in the soil. More than a little bit of rain will be a very good thing. Who would have thought we would be saying that?