Texas & Washington's Different Sizzling Summer Scorching Heat Waves

No, what you are looking at here is not some Fort Worthers Rockin' the River at last night's Happy Hour Inner Tube Float in the Trinity River.

I saw that which you see here on the front page of this morning's Seattle Times online.

The people in the photo are floating in Lake Washington, a clean body of water suitable for swimming and fishing, with no signs warning people not to eat the fish they catch.

Western Washington has had itself a couple days in a row with the temperature above 90, which has a large percentage of the population seeking heat relief by heading to one of the hundreds of beaches available for cooling  purposes in the Puget Sound zone.

We are a couple hours before noon at my current location in North Texas, with the temperature rapidly approaching 90, on its way, I assume, to going over 100 again today. The North Texas locals don't whine about the temperature the way Western Washingtonians whine.

In North Texas the summer temperature can go over 100 day after day, for weeks.

In Washington what the locals call a heat wave usually lasts only three days, before a meteorological effect, the name of which I can not remember, kicks in.

Basically what happens with a Western Washington heat wave is all that hot air starts to rise and head over the Cascade Mountains to Eastern Washington,  which causes cool air to be drawn in from the Pacific Ocean, sort of natural air-conditioning that you have to wait for three days for it to kick in.

Possible thunderstorms are on the weather menu for North Texas. Currently I see nothing but a clear blue sky when I look out the window, with my temperature monitoring device telling we are currently chilled to 86....