Even the wind is hot

The National Weather Service says tomorrow's high will only be in the mid-80s, but after that it's hot, hot, hot until Tuesday. Even then, Tuesday's high will still be in the 80s.

I took a walk a little while ago. The wind blew, but it had absolutely no cooling effect at all. It was just hot air blowing over me.

A few years ago, a colleague asked why if our body temperature is around 98 degrees, why are we so hot when the outside air temperature is that high. I had a hunch, and I looked around and confirmed it. Our bodies produce heat, and we must shed some of that heat to maintain a constant temperature and stay healthy. For most people, the best outside air temperature for maintaining that balance is in the low 70s. Any higher than that, and our bodies produce heat faster than the environment can carry it away.

This week's weather reminded me of growing up on the farm in Ohio. We did our outside work in the early morning and in the late evenings. We stayed out of the afternoon sun as much as possible. We had all the windows in the house open and fans blowing.

About 15 years ago, I did a story on some old homes in Ironton being restored to their original conditions, or as close to their original conditions as modern living allows. The person who owned one of the homes said the towers that were often built on one corner provided a draft in the summer that moved air through the house, helping cool it. Also, they had wooden shutters on the interiors of the windows to keep heat in. The interview was done in wintertime. The shutters on this particular window where we stood were open. When he closed them, the room felt much warmer, almost immediately.

Not that any of this has any bearing on the great issues of the day, but I remember a lot of hot days of my youth.

Now that I think of it, there was one memorable afternoon when we worked in the hot sun. My father took me to one of my brothers' houses. He had just mowed a field of tall grass a few days earlier, and in that heat it was my job to load it into my father's struck with a pitchfork. We rode over to our barn, and I tossed the loose hay into the loft. That was the only time when I had to work in the sun, when my father could get some free hay. I was 12 or 13 at the time, I believe.