Summer Has Left the Building

Sometime last week, autumn snuck (yes, I will write snuck and not sneaked) into my den. Perhaps the better way to put it, however, is that summer, has left the building, just like Elvis used to do.

You may recall that I recently wrote about autumn here, reporting that one can define it either meteorologically or astronomically. I also wrote that my own perception was that autumn unequivocally arrived in my life when the sun no longer reached through the window to my computer monitor.

I noticed the absence of the morning sun hitting my computer screen on Friday, but I thought, in retrospect, that it had probably been a day or more since I had last seen that glare on the corner of my monitor. It was only on that day, however, that I realized that I did not have to adjust the monitor by tilting the screen or going to the window to pull the shades.

One doesn't necessarily notice the absence of something right away unless that particular something were quite important. We are more likely to notice when something happens for the first time than we are to notice that something banal didn't happen, and a wee bit of sunlight on the corner of my monitor really is quite banal.

I can tell you that, as I write this piece early in the morning, the weather agrees with me that fall has arrived, as it is barely above 10C/50F outside. I sit here in my hoodie but with the window, nevertheless, still open. Many months are coming when that option will not be afforded to me, so I am not rushing to shut the window. I will, however, shortly avail myself of a second mug of steaming coffee, which I may sip under the blanket on my chair as I play my morning games of Sudoku.

The 14-day forecast shows that daytime temperatures will continue to be pleasantly autumnal, hovering in the mid-20s, or 70s in Americanese. Nighttime will be quite cool but will remain above 10°C/50°F *. Trees have begun to change colour, a process that will soon seem to accelerate.

* I tend to make note of 10°C and 50°F because those temperatures match up perfectly on the two scales. It is also relevant to me because back in geography class we would use it as a reference point in classifying climate zones. If the warmest month on average doesn't reach 10°C/50°F, we would consider it to be an Arctic climate. To be defined as a Humid Continental climate, which is the zone in which I have always lived, 4 months would have to rise above 10°C/50°F.  A zone with only 1-3 months greater than 10°C/50°F would be classified as subarctic. Territorially, a very large proportion of Canada lies within the arctic or subarctic climate zones, but most of us don't live up there.

Since I have already strayed off-topic, permit me to stray a little further. 

In our local Humid Continental, technically the short summer variety, climate zone here near Ottawa, we have 5 months, May through September, that average over 10°C/50°F, with October coming close. July is the hottest month, with a monthly average of about 21°C/70°F. The average high for the month is 27°C/81°F. Of course, many days can exceed that average high temperature by quite a lot. It does get hot here, and humid hot to boot.

Meanwhile, average monthly temperatures fall below freezing for the 4 months from December through March, January being the coldest at -10°C/14°F. Let us not even talk about how dang cold some days can be.

Phew! I really didn't mean to go there.