Friday, June 29, 2018

Evanston, July 29, 2018

"What is so rare as a day in June?", the poet asks. A 67 degree day at Evanston in June.

Jody warned me it might happen but when I saw it on the buoy I intercepted her on the way to our pool practice and said we had an emergency and had to get to the Evanston beach immediately. One thing I had forgotten to check the wave height. Fortunately it was low, no surf at the beach, but there were 2 foot swells away from there. And windy chop. The buoy didn't lie, we actually thought it might be earlier when it gave ridiculously low readings, I did get a 67 degree reading, although it seemed to go down a bit towards the end of our swim. We were plenty warm. But the waves and sun made for bad visibility, and even though Jody intentionally slowed down a little so I could stay close, we had trouble seeing each other.

We went to the wall and back but didn't dawdle much because we were both playing hooky.

Postscript: To see just how rare this was I went back in my diary 20 years all the way to 1998 when it was 70 already on June 23. I recorded an Evanston temperature of 67 or higher only 5 times in June, including today. The warmest was a 74 on June 30, 2012, we also had warm days June 27 1999,and June 27, 2005.