The heat of August is pooling around us, forcing us to swim more than walk though its heaviness. Every day this goes on is a bit more oppressive than the last, each push past the open door into the thickness a new struggle. Someday, soon, there will be a thunderstorm to wring out the atmosphere like a towel. But not yet.

This hottest day of the year, on average, is 28 July in Minnesota. This is 5 weeks after the solstice, and as such is a direct measurement of the heat capacity of our atmosphere. That is related to the water in the air, which holds more heat than dry air. Between the sun and the water, there is everything needed to sustain life on this planet. Though this feels heavy at times, it is what we are made of.

There is nothing that can be done about this heat, of course. The outdoors is the temperature it is. When it comes time for thunderstorms to condense this water, drizzling the future Mississippi River over us, it is only something we can track and warn.

Five weeks, the measure of our heat capacity, is not a measure of what humans can take. This process does not particularly care about our little walking-upright chimp species. What we can take is a much smaller time, at least before it starts to make us miserable and slightly crazy. Crime goes up this time of year, among many other things. We are all past our breaking point.

But relief will come. It always does. And sometime around 28 January it will not be 90F outside, but will fall to around -10F. That 100 degree swing in what we can reasonably expect for temperatures is one of the many wonders of living in the middle of a large continent. You cannot think of humans as anything other than very small, almost helpless creatures compared to what is simply heavy in the air around us. I like that.