By Allen Hamrick
The last couple of weeks have been hot enough to melt the nuts off a train axle. The humidity is so thick it glues your shirt to your body soon as you walk out the door. It is officially the Dog Days of summer, and it seems to be a personal vendetta of Mother Nature against humanity in many parts of the country. From July 3 to August 11, the air turns to soup, and the sun will burn eyes right out of their sockets. Car hoods become branding irons, and the electric bill looks like a social security number. Dog Days is the moniker we use to describe the misery we go through during this time of year, though it has nothing to do with panting dogs. People are scrambling for the nearest cool water hole to soak their heads and are spending every chance they get near or on the water.
A few thousand years ago the toga wearing Greeks and Romans looked up at the night sky and saw a star that they brainstormed was the cause of the wet heat. This star, Sirus, is also known as the Dog Star. They looked at the bright star and decided in their limited wisdom that due to its brightness it was collaborating with the sun to dish out the intense heat to destroy the earth, turn people mad and ruin their crops all at the same time. This, in fact, is not a fact at all. Sirus is far enough away that you can’t get there in a lifetime being 8.6 light years away. It simply can’t glue our shirts or wilt our souls.
The microwave we experience this time of year is due to two things – tilt and good ol’ fashioned thermal lag. During July and August, the northern hemisphere is tilted straight toward the sun, and West Virginia doesn’t wear sunglasses. The earth’s water sources and the land masses soak up a lot of heat during June, and by July and August, all that moisture and heat is thrown back up at us. So, when your sweat mixes with the humidity in the atmosphere, there is no way to cool the body down. Welcome to Mother Nature’s sauna where there is no fee to enter and no real way to say, “No thanks.”
The Greeks and Romans used to sacrifice a dog during these days to appease the star to try and find relief but thank goodness our thought process is different these days. Now, we sacrifice our wallets to the AC and drink water like we are getting paid to do it. So, when you step outside in the morning and your go says you have got to go and your spirit says no, don’t look up, the sun will blind you. Stick with the Dog Days angle; after all, you gotta blame something for it. Stay hydrated and cool because Autumn will be here before you know it.
