We’re having a heat wave

BY GREGORY J. RUMMO

LIFE IN THE BOONIES

When we moved to the Boonies, one thing that immediately impressed me was how much cooler it was even during the "Dog Days" of summer, like where we find ourselves in the midst of at this very moment.

It is not even 9:00 a.m. and already it is 86 degrees outside my office window. Even the cicadas are too hot to sing. Yesterday afternoon the temperature in my parked car read 111 degrees. By the time I was a mile from my home, idling at a traffic light, it was a much more acceptable 103 degrees.

But minutes later, driving through my neighborhood in the woods only a block from my home, the temperature had dropped further into the mid-90s. It's the effect of all those trees and very little pavement to absorb and re-radiate the heat. I have observed temperature differences of as much as 13 degrees between Paterson and Butler, a mere 20 miles distance as the crow flies but a world of difference as measured by the area of land surface covered by concrete and macadam verses forested areas.

Trees are very effective reservoirs of solar radiation. They literally absorb it, along with atmospheric carbon dioxide and in the process known as photosynthesis they grow, producing leaves and a complex polymeric carbohydrate structure which we call wood. In fact, a tree may be viewed as a source of long-term solar power in a very real sense. When one is cut down and burned, the energy that it has stored over all those years is released as heat and light.

When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Westchester County, New York, I remember the heat waves of summer specifically because we had no air conditioning. Somehow we managed to survive. It was a treat to go out to eat in a restaurant with air conditioning, or to go to the theater or even a department store.

But in the evenings it cooled off nicely and we opened up all the windows in the house to let the cool air in.

That was 50 years ago; literally "last century" (it pains me to think my life has spanned two centuries.) There was a lot less developed land in the 1960s and consequently a lot more trees. Suburbia was even more a place apart from civilization than it is today. And so in the evenings, with less concrete and less paved parking lots and highways, my world was a cooler place.

The heat is supposed to break later this week with increasing clouds and humidity and a chance for afternoon and evening storms which will bring much needed rain to the parched lawns and gardens of suburbia. And even up here in the Boonies, we are looking forward to some cooler weather. Our protective green canopy could use a break too. It has been working overtime this week to moderate the summer's first heat wave.

Gregory J. Rummo is the author of "The View from the Grass Roots." Contact him at GregRummo.com