Every year between about June and September I get all kinds
of grief and derision thrown my way from friends and family living in the Northeast.
“How can you stand to live in 120-degree weather?” (We use a
machine called an air conditioner.)
“You can fry an egg on the sidewalk out there!” (Perhaps,
but it wouldn’t be very sanitary.)
“You must be insane!” (I…um…well, you got me there—but it
has nothing to do with the heat.)
Yes, it’s true—it gets extremely hot in the Phoenix-metro
area for about three or four months every year. But the heat never stops our
daily lives. We drink lots of water, stay indoors where it’s cool, and
sometimes splash around in one of the 43 gazillion pools in our area. Such a
tough life we lead in the summer months. I understand why you mock me on an
annual basis.
So forgive me my dear friends and family back east if I take
a little bit of evil pleasure in seeing the barren, arctic wasteland you are
now living in as a result of Winter Storm Hercules. From what I can discern
from the plethora of Facebook posts I’m seeing, most of you cannot get to work,
many of you are shivering your proverbial “tushies” off shoveling snow, and a
decent amount of you are soon going to run out of hot chocolate. According to weather.com, there has been 7.4
inches of snow in the past 24 hours and it is currently 21-degrees in the
Brooklyn neighborhood in which I grew up—with a wind chill that makes it feel
like it is 6-degrees. Right now in Phoenix it is 70-degrees, with a wind chill
that makes it feel like it is 70 degrees. Hmm…guess there’s no wind today.
Of course this winter storm is not a one-time isolated event
for those of you back east. You get several of these every year. Last year in
New York City a total of 26.1-inches of snow was recorded in Central Park. In
the winter of 95-96 (just a few months after I moved to Arizona) there was a
record 75.6-inches of snow dropped on the Big Apple. Checking the record books,
that year in Phoenix there was a grand total of zero inches of snow. Who’s
insane now? Who’s eating eggs off the sidewalk now? Huh? Huh? Huh?
Okay, I’ve had my little gloat fest. Perhaps in a few months
when you hear about triple-digit temperatures in Phoenix you’ll think twice
before giving me so much crap…but I doubt it.
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