Cooling Off on Paper

I’m sure it’s hot where you are too, so if you want to dismiss this as just another post by a heat wimp, go ahead. You’ll have even less sympathy when I admit that the extended forecast is for cooling temperatures and a chance of drizzle (see weather graphics above from the Seattle Times). However, it will be HOT today in Bremerton. Stick around if you want to cool off—at least on paper.

Yesterday (Thursday) was miserable. SeaTac Airport reported a high of 94 degrees. How hot did it feel where I was? I’m not going to sugarcoat things. It felt like 94 degrees. It was 82 degrees at 11:15 PM inside my place at Treasure Island when I went to bed last night.

The National Weather Service issued an Excessive Heat Watch for Thursday afternoon through Friday evening for the Seattle area. I didn’t add the initial caps for emphasis—they did. The watches are issued when hot temperatures and high humidity combine to create possible heat illnesses.

Hot weather during the week isn’t a big burden for the tens of thousands of knowledge workers in the Seattle area. The employed can stay cool all day in their air-conditioned offices. If they are even thinking about us older folks, it’s probably something like “How’s retirement working out for you?” It’s tougher for the retired, the unemployed, and some blue-collar workers to stay cool. There’s only so much time you can spend at the mall, library, movie theater, or QFC. I wouldn’t want to be a roofer or highway maintenance worker today.

If I haven’t made the point by now that we aren’t having user friendly weather, let me offer one last personal observation. Yesterday was the first time I ever seriously shopped for a window air-conditioner in 35+ years of living in Kitsap County. I didn’t find one that will fit the windows at my place at Treasure Island (they slide horizontally instead of vertically so the opening is fairly small), but I’m still looking.

So what to do in the meantime?

I get my extended weather forecasts from the Seattle Times web site. They seem to be less prone to exaggeration than radio and TV. Plus the interactive weather tool makes it easy to look for a more favorable forecast in the area than the one you have to endure.

Awhile back I noticed that it always seems to be up to 7 or 8 degrees cooler in Bellingham than it is in Bremerton (compare the weather graphics at the beginning of the post). For most of the year that’s not necessarily a good thing, but it matters today. The Bellingham forecast (high of 83) sounds heavenly. I don’t know much about Bellingham except that it’s about 25 miles from the Canadian border and home to Western Washington University. Sounds like a great place to visit.

Or consider Forks on the Olympic Peninsula, where the temperature will top out at 77 degrees today. Not bad. If you can’t find a motel room (Forks is small), there are plenty of places to camp nearby. Forks markets itself as the gateway to recreation on the Washington coast and in Olympic National Park. This week their slogan could be “Come cool off in Forks.”

Just knowing I could get somewhere cooler without boarding an airplane is usually enough to get me through our heat waves. I hope this tip works for you too. :) But just in case, I plan to keep looking for a window air-conditioner.