06 June 2010
The Best of Both Worlds
08/06/10 16:52
While you do get used to the humidity of coastal North Carolina, it is nice to have an occasional break from it. With clear blue skies, warm temperatures, and no humidity, you are close to a perfect day.
That other factor is the wind. Most of the time when you get low humidity, it is when a front has crossed the area, and with the front often we see winds. Still it is possible to have an absolutely perfect day with light and variable winds the day after a front goes through the area.
The humidity might began creeping back up, but it will still be much lower than normal. If it sounds like nuances in the weather are important, they are.
When visitors come to the Crystal Coast, they often do not realize that many people living here just consider the out of doors another room to their homes. It is also not unusual to see chairs and even a table in people's garages. A well positioned garage which has a breeze blowing through it can be a very comfortable spot.
Our home has double front porches, one over the other. In the morning when our oldest daughter is visiting, she likes to sit on the upper one and read. On a nice day with a breeze, the front porch is a great spot to be until around noon when the sun starts to hit it.
We also have an upper back deck. Usually in the very early morning, the dew and dampness is enough to keep you off of it. However, by nine AM the upper deck can be a very nice spot. When I am working in my upstairs office I will often go out and enjoy the view while our inside cat prowls the deck looking for adventure. In the winter, there is less moisture, and I often go sit on the steps and soak up the warm winter sunshine.
When I am doing yard work our garage is often my cooling off spot. With both the garage door open and the back door which leads to our stamped concrete patio where we have our propane grill also open, there is almost always a cool breeze pulling through our garage. It becomes a wonderful place to work or cool down after mowing the yard.
I have a couple of my male neighbors whom I see in their garages so much that I am almost convinced that they live there. It is just a function of how nice it can be here on the Crystal Coast with a little shade and a breeze.
Recently I attended a family reunion in the central part of North Carolina. Getting together under the shade trees is a time honored North Carolina tradition. Unfortunately for our reunion the heat index when we started was 104F. We had a great shady yard for our event, but we certainly could have used some coastal breezes.
The changing weather along the Crystal Coast is one of the things that makes it such a great place to live. You can wake up to a very cool morning or sometimes a very warm morning. Occasionally we get fog which usually burns off by ten in the morning. There are days with you wake, and there is very little wind. Yet often well before noon a breeze will kick up. Most of all I love the one thing that rarely changes, our beautiful blue skies.
When the sun rises here on the coast, I feel blessed to have an opportunity to enjoy whatever weather might be headed our way. As my friend Ed is fond of saying, somewhere along the coast, the wind is not blowing, we just have to find that spot.
With the dry weather that we have been seeing, even a little rain might be nice once in a while, but it is really nice to have one of those best of both worlds' days where the humidity is gone, the warmth is here, and the winds are light and variable. Now that is the kind of weather we live for here on the Crystal Coast along North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks.