The July Doldrums Begin

How can one be motivated to enjoy a garden when the low temperature is 82, and by 9 AM the heat index is north of 100?

Is it a joke that Weather Underground says that today is supposed to be much cooler than yesterday?  What a joke!  The 92 forecasted high will be topped by 10AM.

Active Advisory: Special Statement

Elev 571 ft 36.05 °N, 86.93 °W | Updated 9 min ago

Partly Cloudy
87.6 °F
Feels Like 101 °F

N
3.7
Wind from SSW

Occasional thunderstorms likely to begin at 1:00pm.

Today is forecast to be Much Cooler than yesterday.
Today
High 92 | Low 74 °F
80% Chance of Precip.


Yesterday
High 102.6 | Low 69.8 °F
Precip. 0 in

Is this typical, RB?  I lived in Nashville in the mid '80s and although it was a bit more humid consistently than Ohio, really the only thing I remember weather-wise was the winters.  Less snow, more ice, no infrastructure to deal with either when it occurred!

Scorpio, you wouldn't recognize the Nashville today compared to the Nashville of 30 years ago.  It is the worst kept secret that thousands are leaving California, New York, Illinois, and other locales and ending up here.

The metro population has swelled to close to 2 million.  It was about 900K in the middle 1980s.  The area is growing around 9% per year, and there is so much new commercial construction going on that areas that once were nice green jungles are now concrete jungles.  I live in Bellevue between Edwin Warner Park and the Natchez Trace Parkway.  It used to be mostly farmland with lots of horses in this area, but now there are three large shopping centers, a giant YMCA, a private high school with about 2,000 students, and multiple new subdivisions where there was once just grass and trees.  Thus, it is hotter here than it was 30 years ago.

Also, the actual official temperature and other data for Nashville is taken at Old Hickory Lake actually within the Mount Juliet city limits.  My house is about 32 miles from that weather station, and the temperature difference is market between Old Hickory Lake and Bellevue.

In the past few years, additional real weather stations have come to exist that better show what the real weather conditions are for our neighborhood, as well as others.  The science museum has readings for downtown, and it reflects all the extra concrete and buildings downtown.  It is usually 5-7 degrees hotter there than at the lake.

Green Hills is probably the hottest section of town now.  It has been 10 degrees hotter there than at the lake where the "official" temperature is taken.  Bellevue is a couple degrees cooler, but the humidity is a little higher due to the lush greenery.

In August of 2008, there was a heat wave here like no other in the city's history.  The official high reached 109, but the actual temperature downtown was 114.  It reached 116 on the temperature gauge in Edwin Warner.  All the while, there was still a good bit of humidity.

Today, at 3 PM, the severe storm came through here, sending the temperature down from 98 to 78 in about 30 minutes.  70+ MPH winds hit the area, knocking trees and power lines down throughout.

If you can remember the streets, Harding Pike had traffic light outages and one lane blocked around St. Thomas Hospital.  The traffic backed up all the way to 9-mile hill in Bellevue.  Woodmont Blvd., Lynwood Blvd., and Jackson Blvd. were all closed due to downed power lines, telephone polls, and/or trees.

As luck would have it, a large oak tree limb found its way onto one of our squares, totally wiping out a straight neck squash, a black beauty zucchini, and a couple pickling cucumbers.

If by chance you listened to talk radio when you lived in Nashville, in the early 1980's, I was the sports director at WLAC AM radio and a weekend sports reporter for channel 2 in those days.