The War Against Florida Summers
Exposing the false advertising behind the snowbird's summer snow.
I’ve lived in Florida for seven years this August. I moved down here for college in a desperate, manic attempt to flee the seasonal cold of Pennsylvania. At the jaded age of 19, I decided that 19 winters were enough, and so I moved to St. Petersburg, the literal Sunshine City, which boasts the country’s most days of sunshine per year.
I wouldn’t trade these past seven years for anything, but I am a bit crabby about what I believe was some false advertising by the State of Florida tourism board.
Not because there isn’t the “warmth and sunshine” that was advertised. More so because I didn’t realize the dangers associated with it. Kind of like cigarettes, circa 1950.
Reason #1 being, obviously, this whole skin cancer inconvenience. Thanks, record-breaking sunshine.
Reason #2 is the summer humidity, which you don’t realize exists when you visit for spring break, as I did annually prior to moving.
The two combine for a one-two punch of heat that I’ve yet to experience anywhere else.
Step into the sun, get a sunburn. Step into the shade, receive no relief because it’s somehow just as hot.
Even when the sun sets, it still feels like falling into an industrial dishwasher when you step outside at night. The only respite from a Floridian summer is an air-conditioned room. But when it’s hot from before dusk ‘til after dawn, the sensation of being trapped next to your AC unit is comparable only to the feeling of hugging your heater during a snowy winter.
Sure, you may not have to shovel your car out of the snow here, but you do need oven mitts to touch the steering wheel.
(Even then, I got sunburned while commuting to work.)
I admit that being trapped inside by awful weather is better when said outside is a view of palm trees and purple sunsets, though I could just as easily point to a picturesque winter stock photo and taunt it in front of you:
I realize that if I returned to Pennsylvania for a year, I’d remember why I moved away, but right now, with the daily heat index exceeding triple digits, I can’t seem to recall the reason why. All I seem to remember is telling my mom that I self-diagnosed with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), then sending my application to Eckerd College into the ether.
What I didn’t realize is that Florida wouldn’t eliminate my climate-related depression completely. It just supplanted it. My SAD chose a different season to be sad about.
The mounds of snow were displaced by the unbearable humidity. An overabundance of killer sunlight replaced the horrible lack of sunlight. The rain…well, the rain is still the rain. But whereas it rains for a few days straight and then stops up North, it rains for about thirty minutes every day here. And when it rains, it literally pours. Any afternoon and evening plans in a Floridian summer need an indoor backup due to the constant thunderstorms that roll across the peninsula.
And don’t even get me started on the hurricanes. You want to feel trapped inside by the weather? Try six inches of water in your living room and gale force winds rapping on the window.
I’ve spoken to plenty of family members and friends up north who dismiss my complaints. I’m the boy who cried sunshine, the asshole who doesn’t realize how golden my handcuffs are.
To them, I say, I’d like to see you try.
Because the people who do try are a different breed.
Florida Man Meteorology
Endemic to the state is not only Florida weather, but also Florida Man.
You know the type. Everyone has a favorite headline. Mine is “Florida Man throws alligator through drive-thru window.”
One theory to explain the abundance of Florida Men in Florida is purely legal (since Florida journalists have open access to arrest records, they can report on them more), but others are environmental.
The warm weather allows for more people to be outside, including criminals and drunken transients (or, vacationers, as you Outlanders call yourselves) who take more risks in our backyards than they would in their home states.
But I think the reason for Florida Man goes further than that. Today’s Florida Men are just the descendants of their Florida Ancestors. The Original Florida Men were fucking crazy.
My evidence?
They were the only ones brave enough to settle this land without AC!
For example: Today’s weather, as I write this, is a whopping high of 91 degrees.
OK, fine, whatever. That’s reasonable.
But then the humidity is expected to hit nearly 70% today, making for liquid air, which is then boiled by the extreme UV forecast.
Yes, you read that right. EXTREME!
The combined Real Feel index will be well over 100 degrees for about 12 hours. And that’s not even counting the daily thunder and lightning that will roll into the afternoon, scaring dogs and magnetizing swimmers.
That — all of that — combined is enough to keep me inside all day. No lounging about in hammocks, no trips to the beach. I guarantee that the Visit Clearwater ads that you see aren’t filmed in July, when the paint on your car is about ready to melt off, and your local bar’s refrigerator breaks.
Now imagine doing this every single day without modern technology. No air conditioning, no ice machines, and no sunscreen. No Brita filter for your water during red tide. No bug spray for the clouds of mosquitos.
That’s how I know that anyone whose grandparents moved to Florida must be crazy by design.
And yes, I get it, people who settled the snowy terrains above us must have been crazy too. But ye olde Northerners of yesteryear had conventions of comfort that the OG Florida Men couldn’t even begin to imagine. They alleviated the cold weather with fireplaces, blankets, and coats.
There’s no anti-fire. No chimney sucks the heat out of rooms during the summer. In the cold, you can just keep putting clothes on to stay warm. But once you get naked, that’s as cool as you get.
Take all that and put it together and what do you get? A sunburnt leather bag walking around in the nude during a thunderstorm.
Thus, Florida Man.
Miscellanea…
Reading Rainbow: The Atlantic’s Supreme Court rambling about the public’s lost faith in the court and the court’s lost faith in stare decisis.
New Vocab: I just learned what the word proscenium means.
Not an awkward part of your body that you can’t see without a mirror, it’s actually a part of a stage where the fourth wall begins.
Boo? Fuck you: In honor of last week’s MLB All Star Game, please enjoy this vintage video of six-time All Star Chase Utley responding to New Yorkers at Yankee Stadium during the 2008 ASG.
Shouts out to…
Seinfeld, for helping me through a rough bout of COVID.
Top Golf of Maryland, for one of the worst cocktails I’ve ever had, The Golfbag.