Oct 16: Hot and Cold

The weather around the country is getting weird, and cold, awfully early this year. When a Major League baseball game is snowed out, as one was recently in Denver, you know that winter is up to no good. My mom in Chicago has been complaining about the early nip in the air. Yesterday she told me the recent overnight low there was about 28 degrees. Yikes. Coming before the middle of October, that temp seems a tad premature. We'll see what the next few months bring. Meantime, I'm happily roasting in an unusually warm South Florida. We like, no we love, heat down here of course. But we also look forward to our own version of a nip in the air. Well, the autumn lovers of Florida have reason to smile this weekend, I'm told.

Yes, indeed. Because the first big cold wave of the season is wafting its way through the air currents toward us. Wanna know how cold it's going to be? Hang on to your wool caps, folks - it's supposed to plunge to a high of 80 degrees. The lows? Maybe plummeting to a frigid 68 degrees.

Ha. Sorry, but as a reformed northerner I must confess that this sort of thing never fails to amuse me. And so our warm cold front will sweep into town and, if we're lucky, we can turn off our AC at last. For a while anyway. I can hear my unit running like mad now, as it has been since about late May, as I recall. The poor thing needs a rest and I'm ready for our annual shift of seasons, from toasty-warm tropical to fresh-breeze tropical. It's subtle, I admit. But it's also delightful as we throw open the windows and breathe unfiltered air 24 hours a day once more. That change should settle in for several months soon, perhaps starting in just a couple of weeks or so. For now, this early brush with cooler temperatures mostly will be just a welcome tease. Still, they're calling it a cold front on our weather forecasts, a reminder of just how relative the English language can be. This little South Florida "cold" spell may allow us to wear our light jackets if we go out at night. Maybe. The same weather in Chicago right now would inspire folks to break out their Bermuda shorts and flowered shirts. Funny how that works. In any case, I'll take the weather around here any day. All I know is, there will be lots of people from Chicago and New York and Toronto and all over the north flying down to Greater Fort Lauderdale for vacations this fall and winter. I don't think you'll find a lot of Fort Lauderdale residents booking casual holidays in those places any time soon.