As Temperatures Whipsaw, No 'Just Right'

A few miles away on Route 6, former Marine Cpl. Ryan Turner, 21, tanned by his family's swimming pool. "I'm very happy," he said. Recalling the two months he spent in 110-degree heat in the Kuwait desert, he asked, "Why is everyone freaking out?"

Perhaps it's because May averaged a cool 61.9 degrees, compared with 71.8 degrees last year and an overall average of 65.6 degrees. The chilliest May on record was an average 59.2 degrees, in 1882 and 1907.

The contrast came when the heat kicked in this week in a slightly stickier way than usual. For June, the high is typically 83.9 degrees, with an average temperature of 74.5 degrees. The thermometer recorded 92 degrees at Dulles International Airport on Monday and 89 degrees Tuesday. A high of 90 degrees was recorded yesterday at Reagan National Airport and 91 at Dulles.

"People are a little bit shocked because it's such a dramatic change," said Maryland's state climatologist, Kenneth Pickering.

Weather watchers do not yet have strong signals about what to expect for the summer. Instead, they are predicting what is known as "equal chances," meaning it could be warm or it could be cool.

"We just don't know for this area," Halpert said.

For people laboring outside, repairing sewer lines, mowing grass and patching asphalt, the arrival of summer is always an adjustment -- no matter when or how it happens.

Dressed in dusty canvas pants, work boots and gloves, Joey Garner lugged a 40-pound bag of concrete to plant new street signs in a subdivision of half-million-dollar homes in Charles County. The trees were too small to provide shade on the unforgiving asphalt, so Garner's glasses slid from his nose as he hunched over a two-foot ditch.

"It takes a lot out of you," said his brother, Jeff Garner, assistant public works director in La Plata.