It is often said that there are only two seasons in Arizona; summer and Winter (though I would debate Winter, when it only gets as low as the forties overnight, and the highs are in the sixties/seventies). We do actually have a full cycle of the seasons though. For instance Fall began just yesterday. It will be over in three or four days, likely.
Fall and Spring in Arizona are basically what summer is basically anywhere else. We finally have highs in the eighties and lows in the sixties. The major difference is that, to those of us who live here, it is starting to feel a bit cold. It is not quite sweater weather yet, but it soon will be. A few more days of this ideal temperature and we will be into full blown Winter. Wearing sweaters on days when it is sixty, even as we see the senior citizens walking around in shorts and tank tops. Odd, that.
I have always believed that the climate you live in changes your body, by that I mean that it changes the way your blood flows, changes the way your mind perceives hot and cold, basically just changes you completely. I went to google before I began typing this to see if I could find a medical explanation. I was not able to find what I was looking for. In the absence of facts, I will go ahead and give my very own clinical explanation (to be taken with a huge bag of salt).
I moved to Arizona in late November 1994. I moved here from Oregon. When I left Oregon the daily temperatures were running from (just guessing here) high thirties for lows, to high forties for highs (possibly low fifties). When I stepped off the bus in Arizona it was over sixty, downright warm. My first “Winter” here I never really wore jeans unless I was at work, it was just too darn warm for them.
Fast forward eleven years.
As I type this it is 76 degrees according to the national weather service, though just a touch under seventy in the house ( I just turned off the cooler ), and it is feeling a bit nippy. I am wearing shorts, a tee shirt and socks, but thinking I might need to break out last year’s sweat pants. My fingers are actually cold, so cold that it is difficult to move them for typing purposes. This at just under seventy! How did eleven years make me go from hot in the high sixties to cold in the high sixties?
My theory is that the temperature actually effects how thick your blood is. In cold temperatures the blood will thicken up a bit so that it can hold the warmth from your abdomen all the way to the little digits on your fingers. In hot temperatures it will have to thin down, not for cooling purposes, but to be able to get the blood/nutrients to the extremities as fast as they are using the oxygen (when it is 117 outside you tend to use a lot more salt and minerals than you do when it is cold).
In my theory I simply assume that it takes a long time for your body to adjust to the new climate, which would probably be true anyway. The theory of evolution shows that beings that are most suited to the climate of any particular area tend to thrive there, while those beings that aren’t suited simply die off (if you are religious, read that as “God wipes beings that aren’t fit for their environment off of the earth”). That is why the earliest know humans were nomadic, right? They had to wander around to find not only a decent climate, they had to find food as well. If the chill has forced all the little creatures off to better climates, early man had no choice but to follow.
That might have all been well and good for early man, but I am sitting here with cold fingers. Perhaps I should go ahead and migrate to a warmer climate? But where? Perhaps hell, I hear it is pretty warm there.
I was not able to get Darwin, God or Satan to reply to questions. Bunch of smug bastards.
Happy Fall!