I grew up hearing about the summer of 1980.
I don’t remember it. I wasn’t around. I came along about three years later, in January 1983.
But if you grew up around here, you’ve heard about it.
People talked about how men didn’t work past 11 a.m. They talked about the days without rain and the relentless string of 100-degree afternoons.
They talked about 1980 the way old-timers talked about wars and depressions. It was something you survived.
Turns out, their memories weren’t exaggerating much.
According to the National Weather Service, Dallas-Fort Worth recorded 69 days of 100 degrees or hotter in 1980.
Of those, 42 came consecutively, from June 23 through Aug. 3, a record that still stands. Every single day of July reached 100 degrees.
That’s not summer. That’s punishment.
And then 2026 came along and said, “Hold my beer.”
This year hasn’t taken 1980’s crown, but September apparently didn’t get the memo that summer is supposed to be winding down.
On Sunday, DFW reached 103 degrees. It was the area’s 12th 100-degree day of September, setting a record for the most triple-digit days ever recorded during the month.
For perspective, the National Weather Service says the average last 100-degree day at DFW is Aug. 27.
We passed that exit a while back.
Fall is coming, of course. I know because I can see all the signs.
Retailers have firewood stacked out front. Halloween decorations and pumpkins have taken over the stores. Harvest decor is everywhere. You can even find Christmas merchandise if you look hard enough.
Jennifer and I found ourselves looking at Christmas trees in the Home Depot garden section Saturday.
It was 103 degrees outside.
Nothing says “O come, all ye faithful” quite like walking back to your truck and burning your hand on the door handle.
I went to Tom Thumb Sunday morning and saw people wearing Dallas Cowboys jerseys for the game-day discount.
So, like I said, all the signs are there.
Football is back. Halloween is coming. Christmas trees are on display.
Fall apparently forgot to show up. Still, I know it will— and then winter.
And you won’t catch me complaining about snow and ice in February. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself now.
I suppose the changing seasons are mostly a matter of perspective. We get used to whatever we’re living in and start wishing for whatever we don’t have.
I tell friends from other parts of the country that North Texas weather really isn’t that bad.
We have three months that are unbearable and nine that are decent.
But at this point in September, it would be nice if the sun would just go away for a little while.
That thought takes me back to Burlington, Vermont, last April.
I was there guest-lecturing at the UVM. Burlington sits on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, with the Adirondack Mountains rising across the water in New York.
It is about as beautiful a place as you will ever see.
The university put me up in a waterfront hotel, and that first evening I went walking along the lake around sunset.
People were everywhere.
They brought picnic baskets and yoga mats. They brought dogs and children. I saw two police officers who had apparently just gotten off work walking together and unwinding from the day.
Tourists took pictures. Locals sat and read books.
And everybody seemed to be waiting for the same thing.
The sunset.
We watched it sink behind the Adirondacks, turning the lake and mountains into one of those scenes that doesn’t quite look real.
I remember thinking, “This would be a beautiful place to live. Imagine getting this sunset every night.”
I mentioned it to a colleague at the university the next day.
“Yeah,” he told me. “That’s the first time they’ve seen the sun since September.”
What?
My friend had grown up in South Carolina, so he was accustomed to a little more sunlight himself.
He explained that by late fall the days in Vermont become remarkably short. The sun starts going down in the late afternoon. Winter brings long nights and short days, and many of those days are cloudy and gray.
His claim that they hadn’t seen the sun since September contained little hyperbole.
Suddenly, the scene at the waterfront made more sense.
Those people weren’t merely watching a sunset. They had missed it.
They weren’t taking the sunshine for granted because, after a long northern winter, sunshine wasn’t something to take for granted.
There was something poetic about that.
Here in Texas, we spend August and apparently half of September cussing the sun. We park beneath the one scraggly tree at the far end of the parking lot just to get six square inches of shade. We sprint from one air-conditioned building to another.
Up there, people came out of their houses and gathered along a lake just to welcome the sun back.
It reminded me of something Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
That’s easier advice to appreciate in Vermont in April than Texas in September.
But the sentiment holds. Perspective is funny that way.
We spend a lot of our lives longing for what we don’t have instead of appreciating what we do.
Somewhere, somebody would love a little of this sunshine.
And somewhere else, somebody is probably staring out a window at a cold, gray sky and dreaming about Texas.
We should remember that. We should be grateful for the sunshine.
We should appreciate what we have instead of wishing for something else. We should embrace the season we’re in.
I’m trying.
But right now, I’d settle for 92 degrees and cloudy.
Under the current conditions, that would feel like Vermont to me.
Source: Freepik.com