At a few minutes before six this morning, I woke to the sound of crashing thunder and rain slapping against the apartment. About a month ago I mentioned how slowly the summer was approaching; now it’s nearly the middle of June and there’s still barely any sign of it. It’s been raining off and on all day here, and the temperature has barely broken into the mid-20s. This sort of thing is unheard of in Antalya in June.
For me, it’s great news. Last summer was unbearably hot, with record high temperatures in July and August (the highest of these was 53 degrees, which is 127 in old money). Like many Turks, we don’t have air conditioning in our apartment, so when the peak of the summer comes there’s not much else to do but stay as stationary as possible during the day and only move around at night when the temperature drops from blazing down to a mere scorching. Last August I was taking about four cold showers a day just to keep from melting. Going outside in the afternoon was pretty much impossible.
So I don’t understand what’s going on this year— perhaps it’s one of those global warming anomalies where we’re one of the places that gets more rain and less heat. I’m not exactly sure how that works, but in any case I’m not a fan of extremely hot weather, and especially now that I’m training for the marathon, the cooler the summer the better. Is it too much to hope that this mildness will hold straight through until September when autumn sets in? Probably, but a girl can hope.