New Mexico – High desert nights
Posted by Pete | Posted in News | Posted on 15-06-2010
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Some of the things I have enjoyed about New Mexico is the cool nights. Once the sun goes down it gets cool. We leave covers on the bed year round due to the night time cold. Some mornings the patio is too cool to have breakfast on it. The other morning things were just right for eating breakfast on the patio and I could not talk the other household member into eating out there. But we did leave the door open to the patio and enjoy the cool breeze coming into the kitchen…. The paper stated the other day that June 15th starts the monsoon season. If it hits and the afternoon humidity picks up could change some of that patio dining deal. Our monsoon varies, sometimes we get some good moisture…sometimes empty promises…The paper thinks maybe heavy this year…We will see…Us getting some moisture is kind of like the Mountain West going to a BCS Bowl….Could happen, but not likely….
Other than my bleeding sinus’s caused by the low humidity, you hit on the very thing that made my acclimation to the New Mexico climate most difficult in the late Sixties. Back in my young days, I usually preferred to just walk very fast in going to the mess hall at six in the morning instead of dressing the way I really should have. I soon found out that I couldn’t walk fast enough to outrun the cold. The problem was that it didn’t seem all that cold when I first walked out, but the coolness seemed to penetrate to the bones more than it did in sticky, humid Alabama. After eight months to a year, I finally figured out what was going on, and I learned how to really enjoy the dry, cool, and never so hot New Mexico climate. Now I actually miss it.
After I left Albuquerque, I settled as a chemist for a time in Richmond, Virginia. When my coworkers asked where I was before coming to Richmond, I said Albuquerque. They immediately would ask, Isn’t it hot in Albuquerque?” “Not to me, it wasn’t” was always my reply. Every human being walking around in Albuquerque is his own “swamp cooler”. The sweat is ever present, but invisible; and there is a distinct cooling effect as it disappears. For that reason, I never felt hot in New Mexico even while I rode my bicycle often for hours at the time throughout the day, and I never felt hot or wet with perspiration as I would have in the hot Alabama summer. For an Alabama boy, it did feel odd to scrape salt off my skin at the end of every ride. As a result, I ate salt, both on my food and as pills, like it was a valuable commodity, as it was.
Right on for both comments. It is very comfortable here most of the time. June is our hottest month, mid-day sometimes reaches a 100 or so, but come sundown you can expect some cool night breeze. It is refreshing….