It was hot here this summer. Maybe not by your standards, oh sweltering New Yorker.  Nor by yours, oh stoic Japanese watching Tokyo melt around you. Nor by the wide-eyed Norwegians who watched their paper-dry forests burn like — well, paper.  As the temperature hit 90 in Oslo and the rain ran away and cried.  On Finland.

But for us, it was hot.  We live in a misty seaside redoubt of cool air and mist on California’s central course: a small city of beaches and cliffs on the shore of a fortunate bay. “Heat” is not us.
A nice summer day begins with morning fog.  This is a good thing, because it freshens the air and clears by 11. Then comes a golden afternoon. The thermometer crests at a pleasant 73F under blue skies scalloped with thin fronds of cloud.

In many ways — not all — it’s Paradise. We live in the blower of a mighty marine air conditioner. Without it, California would be a desert.  The cool, gray clouds  keep the coast mild, and the inland valleys only tolerably hot. Hot enough to ripen tomatoes and almonds and kumquats. But not enough to hurt.

Yet when summer rolled around this year, the fogs did not come.  Every day dawned clear.  And our coastal Paradise hit the 80s day after day.  It was a disaster. No one has air conditioning; it’d be like a swimsuit on a penguin.  Normally.

And we griped and sweated like the weather wimps we are while Sacramento and Modesto and Red Bluff and all those places 100 miles inland hit 105 over and over again.   And the land was bone dry.
And then came fires.  Mother Nature said, “Oh, look, there are 14 million dead trees in the National Forests.  Let me… take care of that for you.”

Gee, thanks, Mom.  Yeah it’s “nature’s way” to burn land that needs clearing, but Mother Nature enjoyed it way too much.  Her senile cackle echoed ‘cross the sky while ash and smoke from three dozen fires made the daytime sky a bleary mess.  Cities burned.  You heard me: cities.

Our fault, of course, for not clearing the dead wood.  And for not letting the forests burn naturally, because they were full of our vacation and retirement homes. Mother Nature only hurts you if you don’t fear her.  Oh, she’ll teach you.

That was the first half of summer: abnormally hot.  Then came the second half: abnormally cold.  Temperatures dropped.  Our fog came back; thick and iron grey, Reluctant to leave before 3 in the afternoon.  If that.

And the inlands cooled, too, and the fire armies got the upper hand against the Carr Fire and the County Fire and the insanely massive Mendocino Complex Fire. They’re contained now.  Still not out, after two months.  But not spreading.

And today, and yesterday, and the day before, the weather here in Paradise got its feet back under it. The fog vanished in late morning. Gentle wind caressed the cheek, like an old girlfriend in a good mood.

Come afternoon the sunlight turned everything a mellow red-gold.  Down at the farmer’s market, the usual suspects sipping beer among the booths shone like some pantheon of surfer gods and old hippies. A warm wind blasted in from the west with the scent of flowers.  It flowed down the throat like wine.

This is the “old” normal weather here.  But is it normal anymore?  I haven’t seen it around much lately.

So I don’t know. If anyone knows what’s normal anymore, please tell me.  Before “normal” changes again.

I do know this: the rains weren’t much this year; not a drop has struck the ground since mid-April.  The hills and valleys are overgrown with “fuel,” trees and brush that have never been cut back.  If this were a normal year, September and October would be our hottest months.  We called them Fire Season: when California used to burn.

But now Fire Season never ends.  We had wildfires last December, if you can believe it. Our old balance of fog and rain and sun is in danger.  Nobody I know questions global climate change.  I question the sanity of those who do.

Yet I still fear Big October, and another heat wave; the land is dry, after all.  And perhaps another drought to come. And Mother Nature, that remorseless monster with a mirror for a face.

Till then, maybe, Paradise is back.  I should enjoy it while it lasts.