Heat or High Water

“Write while the heat is in you.”

-Henry David Thoreau

Technically, Buenos Aires isn’t actually tropical.  Located at 34º S, it’s about 11 degrees south of the Tropic of Capricorn.  However, like Florida (Also not  located in the tropics), that doesn’t prevent it from being barraged by tropic weather.

Today. was. miserable.  30ºC with 90% humidity.  For those of you that don’t speak meteorology, that means extremely hot, and extremely muggy.  Even now, at midnight, the temperature has only dropped 8 degrees with the humidity remaining stable.  It is sweltering.  I feel like I’m in a Faulkner novel.

If that wasn’t fun enough.  About 2:00 p.m. this afternoon, the clouds rolled in.  A severe tropic thunderstorm hit B.A. like hammer to nail.  At one point we couldn’t see more than 10 feet through the torrential downpour.  The rain was thick and abundant, and warm.  By 4:00 p.m. our pools were overflowing, the lower sectors of B.A. were flooded waist high, and the sun was completely blotted out.  It was virtual nightfall.  The sunlight returned when the storm subsided around 5:30 p.m.  Returning to daylight after darkness within a matter of hours was experience of surrealistic proportions.  As if the tempest wasn’t content to merely ravage our climate, it also felt compelled to screw with our very minds.

And of course, throughout all of this not once did the heat decrease.  And as the night continues on, I doubt it will.  Welcome to summer.

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