Tag: summer sky

It’s been a long, hot, dry summer in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Even after Tropical Storm Debby dropped over five inches of rain, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration kept the valley in the extreme drought category.

Each summer has become hotter and dryer in the seven years we have lived in Virginia. This summer has been the worst. We haven’t mowed our yard for nine weeks. Brown is the new green.

Watering our plants, shrubs, and trees became a daily necessity as the dry days morphed into drier weeks. The trees we planted when we moved look particularly dire.

Our regular morning walks happened just around sunrise when the temperature was tolerable, or they didn’t happen at all. During those early morning strolls, I couldn’t help but notice the beauty above me. Each day, the sky provided an ever-changing array of patterns and colors, heat or no heat.

The sky is easy to take for granted. Too often, we focus on our personal or professional busyness and fail to notice what’s overhead. Our frequent walks helped me appreciate the sky, cloudy or clear, more and more. The heat and humidity often created hazy, overcast days, but even cloudy days brought no rain except for a few teasing five-minute showers.

Then there were the days when white, puffy cumulus clouds floated across the pale blue sky like towering cotton sculptures. They took my mind off the extreme temperatures that brought heat advisories and extreme heat warnings.

I didn’t have to leave my house to enjoy the remarkable sky. A peek out the windows sufficed. I even found the overcast days bearable. Occasional breaks in the clouds brought momentary flashes of bright sunshine.

At sunsets, crepuscular rays streamed down from the heavens. My late father would tell his children that the sun was drawing water. I now smirk at the unfounded folklore but not at my gregarious father.

Living in one of the top agricultural areas in Virginia, I felt for the farmers. They labored under both the heat and the anxiety of no rain. In their prayers for moisture, I wondered if the farmers saw the beauty above them as they chopped fields of corn for silage to feed their livestock. Stressed by the drought, the stunted cornstalks curled, their floppy leaves singed brown, and many bore no ears at all.

The farmers who lived along the valley’s many streams and rivers irrigated their crops before the waterways dried up. Then, along came Debby with her drenching rains and ensuing flood warnings. A day later, the streams’ water levels diminished rapidly, and they returned to being braided again, their tumbled-smoothed rocks sending what water remained every which way.

Because of the summer’s heat, we kept our vehicular trips to a minimum. But when we were out, I admired the sky’s variety of moodiness. From clear to cloudy, partly cloudy to mostly cloudy, the heavens revealed all their emotions and, except for Debby, kept the rain for other geographic regions.

From dawn to dusk, nature’s color palette was on full display despite the persistent heat. To view the artistry, we just needed to look up. 

© Bruce Stambaugh 2024