Today is the middle of summer. Well, it's close. I guess the more specific way to calculate it is to get the date and time of the spring equinox and the date and time of the fall equinox. Take half of that and add that amount of time to the spring date and time. Google tells me that the fall equinox will occur at 2:50 AM on Monday, September 23. But I think of the 21st of March, June, September and December as the beginning of the seasons. Taking the 2nd month after each of these (May, August, November and February), I take the 4th day of those months as the mid point of the season.
It seems reasonable to me that the 2nd half of summer would be hotter than the first half, what with heat deep in the land and stones and water. I just saw an article that the last couple of summers in the northern hemisphere were hotter in the first half. I don't know what is predicted for the US Midwest this year. I know that August, September and October are often months when big storms rise up in the Carribean area. I hope we don't have that this year but I am not especially optimistic.
A couple of weeks ago, we had serious weather conditions in central Wisconsin. A macroburst created very damaging winds, which knocked down large numbers of trees. Just losing a good tree is quite unpleasant but it is much worse to have a tree crush a car or a garage or a house. Falling trees broke many power lines, leaving people with no electricity. I realize that the pioneers had no electricity and survived but we aren't pioneers. We were without juice for about 50 hours straight and we lost quite a bit of frozen meat and vegetables. It would be nice to not have that happen again for another quarter century.
