The year's first heat advisory.

But not the last. I'm not sure how it's done overseas, or up north (feel free to drop me a comment and tell me - I'm weirdly curious about such things), but here, the National Weather Service issues heat advisories on days when the heat and humidity are so bad that they literally fear people will die of it. Normally it's older folks who are at risk, or folks with compromised circulatory systems, but a roaring case of heat stroke isn't all that hard to get in this kind of weather, regardless of age or health. In fact, I wonder if the fitness people who ignore heat advisories are more at risk than the rest of us, just because they think they're too healthy to worry about it.

It's 93 degrees F here (34 C), with a 99F (37 C) heat index when you allow for the 45% humidity. I went to work out this morning, and after, I spent perhaps four minutes cooling down and stretching out. A fellow worker-outer made a polite comment about how I'd live to regret that, and I pointed out that it was like a sauna outside, and promised I'd take the whole cool-down-and-stretch thing more seriously when the temperature dropped below body temperature. She hadn't thought of it, but after I poitned it out, she agreed with a laugh.

Since I have a lot of international readers and one or two of them might find it interesting, here's why it's hotter than a summer in hell here:

The Gulf Stream. (Photo from here. There is a wobbly black X on the coast approximately where I live, that I added to the picture.) I was gonna just say "Bloody damned Gulf Stream is killing us", but it occurred to me that a lot of readers in, say, Asia or Australia would have no real idea what I was talking about. So there's a photo of it for you. The Gulf Stream is a current of warm (hot) water moving north from the tropics, along the coast of North America. It accounts for milder-than-average winters all along the coast, even up into New England and Canada; temperatures will vary widely between coast and inland. But we pay a hell of a price for those mild winters. The same current makes the summers hotter than the tropics can be (depending), and that same warm current drags hurricanes up along the coast every summer. (You can understand just looking at the photo, why hurricances survive so far north in the Atlantic, when they would never survive the cold waters of the Pacific at the same latitude.)

When I lived in Hawaii, which is almost into the tropics, the islands were surrounded by much deeper, much cooler water, and the temperature NEVER got as hot as it is here today; anything much over 80 F (26 C) was considered really warm. (Unless of course you were up a mountain somewhere or in the inland desert on the Big Island.)

Needless to say, I'm dyin'. I've only been out enough to run to the gym and back, and the husbeast is out now because he's a lunatic and hates staying at home. I can't decide if we should let the baby out later for a round in her pool, or not.

Anyway, there's your unneeded meterology lesson for the day. I hope, wherever you are, it's either cooler, or you're in air conditioning.