This summer (terrible recent events in the north STL metro region aside), in terms of weather, it's been a surprisingly cool summer for the region weather-wise, for fairly substantial stretches at a time. Of course, such a stretch brings out the global warming-denier idiots in droves on comment boards. However, the cool stretch was too good to last, it seems, so we're back to scorching summertime temperatures here, which of course doesn't help said alluded to tensions. One small manifestation of the recent cooler stretches is given in this P-D article by Leah Thorsen and Jessica Bock.. More (well, not much, really) below the flip.....
It's interesting to see in Thorsen and Bock's article the mixed results of the recent cooler spells. On the one hand, at the Maplewood Family Aquatic Center last month, pool manager Robert Perks said that last summer (compared to this summer)"
'“We’d be packed and crazy every day,” he said. “Haven’t had that this year, though."
Instead he’s had to send lifeguards home, cancel evening water aerobics classes because no one has shown up and even closed early because the place was empty.
Last summer, 20,252 people had visited the pool by July 21, said Anthony Traxler, assistant city manager. This year, that number dropped to 18,840 - a decrease of nearly 7 percent.'
In that same vein, in Crystal City:
"Fewer people than in past years bought season passes to the Crystal City pool, said Bev Sweet, the pool superintendent."
If you went to O'Fallon, however, the picture is a touch more nuanced:
'Chilly water prompted the cancellation of a few morning swim classes for children at the Alligator’s Creek Aquatic Center in O’Fallon, Mo., said Tom Drabelle, a city spokesman.
Still, overall attendance is on par with previous years, he said.'
In a "zero-sum" sense, perhaps, what's been not so hot (.....) for pools has translated into increased activity for other venues in the area:
"The mild weather has been good for visits to the [Missouri Botanical Garden], where attendance is up 43 percent from July 2013 and almost 150 percent from the scorching summer of 2012.
In July, Children’s Garden attendance is up 79 percent from 2013 and 174 percent from 2012."
However, there is a mild qualifier about the increased attendance at the Garden this summer, namely possibly because of a famous toy of Danish origin:
"But the Nature Connects LEGO exhibit in the Climatron could also be a factor in the increase, spokeswoman Katie O’Sullivan said."
My nephew would be all over that exhibit, for one.
At the end of the article, there was this pithy remark:
'And there’s quite a bit of St. Louis summer left, which means sweltering days could arrive for those still craving that summertime thrill of cooling off in a pool.
Said [Jon] Carney, the [National Weather Service] meteorologist: “We can sure get hot between now and the end of September.”'
No kidding, especially now. Of course, with the hot weather, I've turned the AC back on. It was nice to keep it off for days at a time recently, where I think that I even managed to keep the AC off for a week and a half, or even more. I haven't compared electric bills from this year to last year this time, if I really want to be nerdy about it.
In a meta-sense, this does touch on the global warming-denier bigot commenters in that article, in a sense, about why they're as vicious and mean-spirited on comment boards as they are. They don't want to cut back or change their comfortable, resource-hogging and high carbon footprint lifestyle that's eating the planet faster than it can be replenished. Of course, there's hypocrisy on my side, because I have central AC too, I drive more car than I need, and I don't always bike to work when it's theoretically possible. (Those who remember such details may remember my loser tip jars this year of something like 4 flat tires while biking this year.) One could, in principle, go back to the denier bigots and ask them how they like the summer weather now. And true, one mini-trend in one small area is not symptomatic of all microclimates everywhere, which the denier bigots always ignore, of course.
Presumably the local municipal swimming pools are doing much better business now with the much hotter weather back in swing. (No, 3CM the loser hasn't done direct field work to check.) If so, good for them. With that, time for the standard SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week, which may or may not feature swimming pools or summer heat, as appropriate.....