Sticky hot and it’s not even summer yet. Usually our proximity to Boston and the Atlantic Ocean keeps us in line with lower highs and less solid precipitation. Not Tuesday, June 10th – Boston went from a low of 63 to a high of 91, while just a couple of miles away, Somerville ran the range of a low of 68 to a high of 97 – a steady 5 to 6 degrees higher than Boston all day.

So when a few of us decided to skip the Red Sox game because of the weather, we ended up at the Trum Field House ribbon cutting and it was no bargain either. The wind was a tease – just pushing the hot hazy air around like a wet washcloth. If you were there, you had to feel sympathy for those in attendance wearing full dark suits. Or even just a long shirt and a tie.

This area has had its spurts of years where blistering heat came early and other spurts of years where we got buried with snow late. We can easily remember the years where we had excessive snow, but why is it we can barely remember the years that scorched the asphalt around here?

Maybe because most people can’t remember the days when the asphalt would come off onto your shoes/sneakers or when the Bradlees parking lot had a faint odor of dead animal when you walked across it. How about the year the city ripped up a lot of the old crappy asphalt down to the cobblestone underneath and repaved most of the city? Probably would have been a good idea to replace the water/sewer lines then – the streets were dug down almost two feet down from the sidewalks.

So remember the years with the real hot hazy days of pre-summer – 1959, 1976, 1984, 2000 and now 2008. By the way, in 1881 it was 45 degrees.