I love Virginia, but I absolutely do not love Virginia’s summers.
These days, the heat and humidity start climbing in May — sometimes earlier — and by the time we get into June, we are firmly ensconced in what I’ve started calling Florida Season, which now lasts well into September and sometimes into early October.
Look, if I wanted to live in Florida, I would move there.
True story: On October 2, 2019, after our first visit to Portugal, we landed at Dulles Airport at around 5:00 pm and it was 95°F. The heat didn’t break in Virginia until three days later.
In 2020, my part of Virginia experienced five straight weeks with temperatures in the 90s from the last week of June through the end of July. It was miserable.
I grew up in Virginia and lived in a house that did not have air conditioning. It was mostly fine because we didn’t have a lot of 90+°F days in the 1970s and 1980s. I thought maybe my memory was filtering out hideous summers, but I looked at historical weather data and confirmed that most of our summer days had highs in the 80s, with occasional spikes into the 90s.
Climate change is happening and it’s making a lot of places unlivable.
My dream is to go to other places during Virginia’s summers. Cool places. Chilly places. Places where I would need to wear a sweater.
I always guffaw when L.L. Bean sends me catalogs in June and July with “summer weight” sweaters for sale. Are you kidding me? Summer sweaters here in the Mid-Atlantic are not happening. For years, Maine sounded like a magical land to me and I fantasized frequently about those cool summers that required sweaters.
I’ve been to Maine exactly once, in the early 2010s, when we stopped for a short visit on our way to Canada. I remembered those L.L. Bean catalogs and got excited about cooler temperatures. I was so ready.
Y’all, it was 98°F when we got to Maine. And the place where we stayed overnight did not have AC. In fact, the house had exactly two fans to move around all that thick, humid, hot air. I was so disappointed.
I have a dream. A dream of spending summers somewhere cooler and I would need to wear a sweater. I’m not greedy, it could be only part of summer. If I could be somewhere where cooler in July — absolutely the worst month in every way — I could manage June, August, and September.
Where would I go?
As I’ve mentioned, Maine is not guaranteed to be pleasant. Ditto Quebec and Ontario across the border. The Pacific Northwest has started experiencing searing heat waves, thanks to climate change.
New Zealand would be lovely. I’ve been down there in both June and August and was absolutely delighted to experience their winter.
I love Portugal and I would definitely like to spend the summer somewhere on the Silver Coast. I wouldn’t be chilly enough to require a sweater, but cool ocean breezes would compensate for that.
I’ve been chilly in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in June. I could live like that, for sure.
I just want to experience the joys of summer sweaters, is that so wrong?
What about you? What are your thoughts about summer weather and where would you like to spend your ideal weather?
Acadia (Mt. Desert Island) in Maine would work. Larry and I also have been searching for where to spend the summers when we are older. The heat plus the all-day mosquitoes simply destroys me!
I remember visiting your place in July of 2012. It was 105 degrees and I thought I would die getting from my car to your front door.
We are also looking at Portugal. We've experienced the wet season in northern Portugal & Galicia, Spain in November (2016). Seriously have never seen so much rain over multiple days in my lifetime. Not liking the heat too much, we were originally eyeing Galicia or Asturias, Spain. Seeing all of the moss growing on those tiled roofs changed my mind...it's green for a reason. But Portugal pulled us in, so we went back in September 2021. Much better weather, explored the Algarve, Lisbon, Setubal, and determined that we would need to escape from the summer heat if we land south of Lisbon. So next time we'll deep dive the Silver Coast through Porto. Ocean "breezes" may be a bit of an understatement...guess we'll have to see for ourselves!