Humidity

Stepping outside is like walking into a bowl of warm honey. Sweet as the magnolias, thick and heavy. Instantly covered in sweat, you wish you had joined that nudist colony you once read about in a David Sedaris story. But the nudists are just as frustrated as you are, and they have no clothes left to shed. Even the fish sweat on a day like today.

Where normally you could draw a ruler across the skyline, it now grows billowing mountains in a game of red light/green light. "I think those clouds will miss us," you try to convince yourself. Dark and impending, they are as heavy as the humidity.

First, the wind is a hot breath, blowing casually from the thunderheads, but as the shades of gray exchange for sickly greens the wind's direction switches and the temperature drops. It is sudden and violent, the way the thunderstrom forces its way through the ctiy and beach.

When it passes, there is a breif sigh of relief as the cool breeze has swept the stagnant, humid air away. Only when you start to survey the tree damage and flooding drains do you notice the thick, hot, sweet smelling air settling back on your skin.

This is the Chesapeake Bay in late June. You didn't expect the humidty to be gone for good, did you?