This afternoon, I actually burned my hand on my house door knob. It only took a few minutes for the sun beating down on the front door to heat up the door knob. The last time that I got a good burn on my hand was after touring the then, Budweiser Plant, in St. Louis. I unlocked the doors and then set down in the driver's seat. With out thinking, I took hold of the steering wheel. Second degree burns was the result of that situation from a couple of decades ago. And, like then, I never gave a thought that reaching for the door knob would be a like situation. The angle of the sun came over the brick wall of my gate entrance to the porch. It heated the door know that quickly. Less than ten minutes of watering my plants was enough. My hand is still very red at this writing.
The thermometer on my porch read 108°F then reached 112°F. At about 8 P.M. CDT the needle was still pointing at the 100° F mark. It's going to be 99-102 +/- for the rest of the week. I will not be going out until this high pressure that is parked over us decides to move to the Atlantic where the regular Bermuda high normally parks.
Firday, it was a day to visit the Farmer's Branch Rose Garden. I missed peak of some of the roses by a couple of weeks. Now, that I know how to complete that part of the wagon wheel route, I'll be back! The place is amazing with a wide canal that meanders through the southern side of the garden. When I was ready to make my return trip my bus was late. The stop was in the direct sun so I crossed over to the median which is tree lined and shady. There was another stop directly across from where I had been in the sun and where I was in the median. Which ever bus came first was going to be my bus back to the rail station. As it turned out, the bus that I got was not going to transit center where I wanted to go. The trains were down from downtown to Mockingbird because of the maintenance on the tunnels. The schedules were really jammed so I rode the next bus going north because I was so hot. I didn't need a heat stroke for sure As it turned out, the trip up north and back to the train station was about an hour. When I got back to the rail station, I stepped off the cooling station bus I rode to cool down and stepped onto the bus that pulled up within four minutes of my de busing. It took me to Addison transit and then cross town to the Spring Valley station that was an 8 minute ride home. It is just to early to have this crazy heat wave. The bad part is that one the retired senior weather guys explained correctly that usually when the spring is extremely dry, we tend to get 30-40 days of 100 plus temps. Last year we had 8 days the weather guy said.
Spring and Fall have always been my best time for images any way and now, the spring was cut short with half of May in the upper 90s. It's gonna be a long hot summer.
