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Summer, The Concept.

Summer, A Concept
This year's early history of the 120 Days of possible good weather in Wisconsin.
by Jeff Jordan

Conjure a mental picture of what summer looks, feels, and smells like in your imagination. It's hot. The people that populate your mental picture are in shorts, t-shirts, and flipflops. They are sweating if they are doing something active. They may be relaxing in the shade or cooking themselves on the beach.

One thing is sure, they are aware that that sun could hurt them. Have you ever had the experience of smelling sunscreen in the winter? If you're like me, it immediately channels your thought's to summer.

Summer is golf, tennis, mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, cookouts and reading a novel in the hammock. It's grilling food, while you consume your beverage of choice. That soft drink, beer or breezer never quite tastes the same in the winter as it does outside in the summer. It's particularly noticeable when you've come off the court, the course or the backyard sweating and thirsty. I've often thought that Mother Nature permitted non-alcohol beer to be invented and widely available to reward me for cutting the lawn.

It's June 29, 2019, in Wisconsin and summer is here. Depending on who you ask, the summer weather is two or three weeks late. We will have sustained hot and humid weather this weekend. Until now our weather has been characterized by below average temperatures and record rainfall.

https://w2.weather.gov/climate/getclimate.php?wfo=grb

What probably sticks out in most peoples mind it the lack of sunshine. Even on days where it didn't rain, overcast or mostly cloudy skies made for a gloomy atmosphere. Some of us get a little bit cranky. Others can become bat shit crazy. Apparently, when we don't get sufficient sunshine exposure, we are deprived of vitamin D. I'm not sure how that works, but unless they are talking about climate change, scientists have to be trusted on this.

Make no mistake, some of us don't wait for the weather to tell us it's summer. For many, it's the calendar. The bikes came out, the motorcycles created their expected noise factor, and as usual, some people wore their summer attire as soon as May abandoned the nightly low temperatures of near or below freezing. We can be assured that golfers yanked the bag of clubs from the back of the garage, right after they found them when they moved the lawn mower to make room to store the snowblower. Or maybe it was the gas grill that was in the way. Whatever the case and even though nobody used them, the lawn furniture was taken out and placed in a proper position.

Ah, summer at Camp Jeff in the foothills of the frozen tundra.

Adios from Poppa Jeff

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