Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for July 12, 2014

Oh, how I would like to go on a Southern Hemisphere vacation to escape the summer up here. Maybe to Hamilton, NZ or BA, Argentina.

Ah…why endure Winter when you can be in Summer here in North America… ;)

Actually it’s only the Cape that has a winter rainfall, the rest of South Africa has summer rains and in the case of the highveld, in the interior, they have a lot of thunder and lightening storms. We do get some thunder storms but not as regularly as Johannesburg and its surrounding areas. This past week we have all been shivering due to a storm that blew across the country from the Atlantic. Some areas had temperatures as low as minus 9 Centigrade which is very cold for South Africa. The Cape got it first; high speed winds, rain and snow and they had some really, really cold days. We are beginning to thaw out a bit but even here in Durban it is much colder than usual.

We are going to have a week in the 90s here in the Pacific Northwest. See, it doesn’t rain all the time. (I wish it would, I hate hot weather!)

Here you go…there are several areas “south of the international date line”

http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/dateline.htm

Here in central KS the weatherman are very excited a cold front that is coming toward northeast part of state part will cool KS down Tuesday and Wednesday and we are mostly 100’s here cool down to under 80° low 56°.

Phoenix area here. It was a very balmy 100F Thursday. Mostly 105+F during the summer and we usually have a couple of weeks at 115+F. Oh – and summer temperatures run from about April through late November. There are hotter places on earth, but not many.

I wish I was in Brazil! It seem to be always summer there.

but it is a balmy 17C (62F) in Cape Town today [so says intellicast.com] Not bad for the dead of winter.

Known to whom? Not me or my friends!

I don’t think so. If she and Arnold REALLY enjoy each other, cold weather is the BEST. Nothing like a warm body in a cold tent ;-)

@Night, too true. Our schools increasingly teach just to their own tests (so without individual study, which I’ve always preferred, no one in this country gets a true education).

I never had the patience to be a teacher, but helped my own children in their studies and I still enjoy learning new things. My boyfriend was a math teacher for a while, but got into programming (I admire his knowledge).

Agreed Val.

I was in SA for their “winter.” I told our friends who live there that it’s not truly winter if flowers are still blooming! The coldest it got was about 6*C one night. All the other days were between 15 and 25*C. I live near central Ontario and those temps just DO NOT count as “winter.” We wore shorts the whole time. :) However, our SA friends were wearing jackets!