A suffocating hot day in the city today. The sort of heat that when you go outside, you feel you can not breathe even after the minimum of exertion. Appears that we will have more of the same for the next few days to come.

Of course, having a heat wave may be preferable to what we experienced yesterday. It may have been brief but that sudden downburst in the afternoon did considerable damage. Driving around town, you could see downed trees and debris everywhere. Eleven thousand homes including ours lost power for several hours. Crews everywhere were trying to clear power lines damaged by the storm. Yet for all of that damage in the storm and fury, we received just a scant bit of rainfall, hardly enough to make a dent in the drought.

But it is August and just a month or two away from a cooling trend for the rest of the year. Could not come soon enough.