Ah yes, the weather... I've had plenty of experiences with hot, humid, painful weather.
I live in South Texas.
Our averages are in the high 90's, and we can get well over 100, and that's in the shade. When there's no breeze, it feels even hotter, especially since the humidity sets in.
I've had to march outside, at 3:00 PM in a nice, thick, heavy, band uniform before. Not very fun. We've had people pass out before...
Our railroad tracks here (although not very well maintained), look like wet noodles drooped across ties... No high speed trains here...
As for air-conditioning... I always thought everybody had it. I mean, if you didn't have it down here, you'd die. People actually steal window units off of houses when it gets really hot. I remember going through New England on a day that the weather people claimed was 'really really hot', and I was like "this is hot?" But I was close to the sea, so it wasn't that bad, but when I went on a little hike to some mountain my uncle knew about, the humidity was terrible, and the mosquitos were awful...
Of course, right now, there's a tropical storm (with the possibility of becoming a hurricane) 130 miles off the coast, barreling right down on me, with a flash flood and tornado... Such fun. I had to dig a trench on the side of the house to get water to drain, because when the city re-surfaces the alley behind our house, they just add layer after layer of dirt and rock, and it finally built up where the water on the side of our house doesn't drain...
Of course, it's 88° right now, at 12:30 AM, and there's almost no wind, and partly cloudy skies... You'd never think that in about 2-4 hours, there'd be a hurricane right over us... It's kinda creepy.
But our area needs the rain badly. We haven't seen normal rainfall amounts for over 5 years (I think it's somewhere around 8.) That, and the bay on South Padre Island needs to be flushed out with a good storm surge. That hasn't happened in a long time, and a good flushing will make fishing in the winter a lot better.
It's a good thing this storm is fast moving... By noon tomorrow, this thing is supposed to be across the lower part of Texas. It's scary because many people live in mobile homes, or very poorly built houses, and they don't stand a chance against high winds and rain, much less tornadoes...
I just hope nothing terrible happens. I just better have my PowerBook charged, in case the power goes out. But then again, my cable modem would die too, so there's really no point... Oh well... I'll take pictures for ya'll.
