I know it’s hard to believe, but not everyone in Southern Nevada is excited about living in the 70s in November!  While the rest of the country is donning jackets, boasting their gorgeous fall colors – even digging out from an early snowfall – here we sit in the desert under the golden yellow sun, in our summer shorts and flip-flops, waiting for a leaf to drop. What’s wrong with that? 

So I was actually surprised when I received a "hate-mail" last week barking at me about our beautifully abnormal November!  Okay, "hate" is such a strong word – let’s call it "less-than-like" mail.  This viewer is more than ready to wear their snuggly fall sweaters and obviously Mother Nature is throwing a monkey wrench into his plans.  Since I praise the extra-pleasant afternoons, he decided to take it out on me.  That’s okay, I guess because afterall, I do front the customer service desk for the Weather Complaints department.  It comes with the territory.

We’ll call our viewer, "frantically-in-need-of-a-fall-fix, Fred."  I sort of feel Fred’s pain, but it soon melts away when I walk outside at the end of my day – around 1 p.m. – and feel that sun bathe my face with comfortable warmth.  I can almost forget that blistering ball of fire that fried my skin and heated up my car steering wheel to a toasty 125 degrees as recently as early September.  We need this short little season (which always feels like it only lasts a couple of weeks) to really enjoy our sublime sunshine, without having to run like roadrunners from shady spot to shady spot to escape the burn.  I really like walking barefoot leisurely around my patio, instead of hopping around like a jackrabbit dodging cars on the Summerlin Parkway during the summer.  And I sure has heck don’t want to be shoveling the deck yet like they are back in Minne-snowta already.  Relax.  We wait a long time to get these beautiful autumn afternoons.  But Fred is still not digging it. 

So what can we do to make Fred – and all the other autumn chill advocates out there like him – happy?  We’ll focus on the crisp mornings and the cool evenings.  Those are nice, too.  The temperatures really take a tumble after that sun goes down before 4:30.  I get a shiver in short sleeves by 6 p.m.  Gasp!  It’s almost too cool to wear my summer capris in the evenings now.  AND I even have to throw on a light-weight warm-up jacket on my commute to work at o’dark-thirty in the morning.  AND… AND I flicked on my heater once already last week when we dipped into the 30’s overnight!  There.  Isn’t that enough?  Trust me, as quickly as our bearable fall and spring seasons pop up, they just as quickly evaporate into our high desert marathons of hot and cold.    

So don’t hate me because I’m not ready to flip the switch on the fireplace just yet!  I want our best two-week season of the year to linger as long as possible.  So what if it’s a little above normal – it’s great!  Relax and rake some leaves, Fred.  I’ll be checking in with you in mid-January to see how weary you are from wearing that winter coat. 

Posted by Sherry Swensk

Categories: Uncategorized