As Temperatures Whipsaw, No 'Just Right'

Chilly May Segues Into Sweltering June

The first touch to the steering wheel stung. Feet stuck to sandals and shirts to backs.

The season's inaugural hot spell made a sudden entrance this week. It wasn't really unusually warm. But after a brisk May, the 14th-coolest on record, the difference to many in the Washington area seemed striking.

"Monday was a shocker. You weren't expecting all that heat at once," said Johnnise Etheredge of Indian Head, who is 4 1/2 months pregnant and advised water, not soda, to endure.

Temperatures crept into the 90s Monday for the first time this year, and then again yesterday, weather forecasters said. The "Bermuda high" -- the summertime weather system that pumps humid air into the mid-Atlantic -- is projected to continue cooking the region in mid-to-upper-80s temperatures the next seven days before the weather cools.

"It's kind of ironic that people are complaining that it's too hot. Last week, it was too cold and everyone was complaining," said Michael Halpert, head of forecast operations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs.

"There is no 'just right,' is there?"

Shaded by a wide, white umbrella at the La Plata farmers market yesterday, Tina Eaton said she had hoped to postpone summer for two more weeks, long enough to salvage her romaine and bibb lettuce crops, which become bitter as the temperature rises.

The drastic shift from May to June had a more melancholy effect on Eaton's 18-year-old son, Marshal, who was raising 90 broiler chickens for his 4-H club. When he returned home from work Monday night, he discovered that a third of his chickens had died of heat exhaustion.

"He's very depressed," she said.

In Gambrills, Arundel High School will let out two hours early today and tomorrow because the three-story building does not have air conditioning. At Eastham's Exxon Service Center in Bethesda, 15 people brought in cars with broken air conditioners yesterday. Just one customer had stopped in with an AC complaint all last week.

Fewer complaints came from area residents who were close to the water. On the Port Tobacco River in Charles County, four business consultants had traded their Ashburn office for a 21-foot powerboat and planned to spend the afternoon anchored with a cooler of beer.

"You expect this kind of heat," said Scott Burroughs, 29, just before his friend Jason Dunn of Reston shoved away from the dock. "I welcome it."