Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 June 1902 — July Weather Forecast. [ARTICLE]

July Weather Forecast.

July is primarily the month of patriotism and perspiration. It is the month when the busy mosquito reaches the prime of life and becomes the most affectionate; it is the month when the night-blooming hive becomes universally stylish; it is the month when the potato bug and the amateur elocutionist become ripe, and it is the month when the rural lad with the low-necked overalls steals watermelons and cholera morbus from the neighbors. July this year will open cool, but the normal temperature will be regained by the Fourth, so that the nose of the orator of the day will have .the customary blister burned on it. Exceedingly hot and dry weather will continue until the 7th, when the temperature will change for the hotter. This condition will continue until the 12th, during which time the regular crop of hot weather jokes will be harvested.

This will be followed by a backactionary storm period during which much damage will be done on land and sea. There will be severe winds, dashing rains, thunder, lightning and rural profanity. Farms will be torn up by the roots, and hail stones about three inches larger than the newspaper readers’ incredulity will fall. This storm will last until the 15th, when the temperature will drop from six to eight inches throughout the United States. During the cold nights of this period we advise housewives to throw a superannuated newspaper over the verbena, and to upholster the nonblooming oleander with an overworked bed quilt. We also advise farmers to keep the shoats and the spring calves in out of the night air as much as possible and to bed down the hens a little more generously. From the 15th to the 20th a hot wave will sweep through the country from south to north. Persons who, during the cold snap, had concluded that summer was practically over and were preparing to put up the baseburner and carry the cactus down cellar, will suddenly change their minds and their wearing apparel when this warm wave comes.

During this time there will be quite a drop in butter, especially where the farmer tries to bring it to town in a porous bottomed market basket. The summer resort mosquito will go down to the depot to meet the big delegations from city and town; the hired man will leave the plow in the furrow and go fishing; the country merchant will roll in the barrel of ax handles from in front of his store, lock up shop and wander off some place where he can dangle a line in the water and catch a blister on the back of his neck; and the annual grasshopper delegation will march across the country arid trample down the hay, eat up the garden, kidnap the children and burglarize the smokehouse. On the 21st there will be three bank robberies and a thunder storm. On the 22nd there will be a balloon ascension. On the 23rd there will be open hostilities between a bald-headed man and a fly, on the 24th the wind will shift to the west, ana on the 25th there will be a Sunday school picnic in northern Texas which will break up in a cyclone. The rest of the month will continue hot and sultry, and people will divide their time between looking at the tops of their thermometers and saying mean and unkind things about the state of the weather. And, thus discouraged, out of sorts and universally cussed, with no one to speak a kind word for her, July will sneak quietly out ana away while August will hop upon the scene.