It's official -- this was New York City's hottest summer ever since they started keeping records

It was hot even when I was out at 9:00 PM tonight. I'm still not used to this weather. Maybe I never will be. In my old neighborhood in San Francisco, not far from the beach, no matter what the weather was like during the day, as soon as the sun went down, the fog would roll in, and the wind would start howling as if it were auditioning for a horror movie.

Now some guy on the TV is saying "... and the word is HOT" for tomorrow "... and the word is HOT" for Thursday.

The NY Times has an interesting article about the record-breaking heat. It says this summer was hotter than the 1966 summer, when 1,100 people died of the heat. Yikes! I haven't heard of anyone dying from the heat this summer, though. I think the difference was that 1966 must have had a lot of short, but extreme heat spikes (the Times said the temperature repeatedly exceeded 100 degrees), but this summer, while I don't think it ever broke 100, it was in the friggin' mid-90s day after day after day without relief.

Photo credit: "Twisted Sparkler 1" by Lars Sundstrom