By Josh Resnek
Last Friday, the temperature hit 100 degrees in Everett.
Monday, it hit 102.
It was a fairly incredible moment as this writer couldn’t recall a day during the past 30 years when the temperature hit 100.
I was taking a cruise around Everett when I noticed in my car the outside temperature indicator said: 100.
Wow!
That is hot. That is uncomfortable. If you’ve been running air conditioning, that is expensive with a monster bill coming at the end of August.
This followed days of above 90 temperatures during what has become one of the hottest and most uncomfortable summers in recent decades.
Just a hot streak, you say?
Is it global warming and climate change?
Whatever it is, it is turning out to be deadly for nearly everything green.
Lawns everywhere have turned from green, to spotty green, to entirely burned and dead.
Our parched and burned lawns are an indication that there has not been enough rain to cut the devastation caused by the incessant heat.
Massachusetts authorities have warned that large areas of the state are experiencing a drought – and in some communities, watering lawns and other unnecessary water usage have been ordered cut back to conserve.
No such order has yet been handed down in Everett…but if the rain shortage continues, such an order is coming.
Sunday’s severe thunder storms dumped an inch of rain on everything screaming out for a relief from the drought that grows out of the earth.
That was the first time in more than three weeks when there had been enough rain to give our drought stricken bushes, trees, flowers and the crops we like to grow in our gardens a reason to live for a few more days.
In the absence of more steady rain, everything is going to die that isn’t already wilted and dead.
So far, there have not been noticeable or widespread blackouts and electric failures.
They are surely coming if the streets and sidewalks remain white hot.
The inevitable, and sad, we think, countdown to the summer’s end has already started.
But the heat shows absolutely no sign of letting up. What to do?
There is nothing to do except to complain, and to remember, that in three months we will be complaining about the cold.