Dream in the Rock, 64th Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Electra): The most frightening words in the English language to people living in the Deep South, "The a.c.'s out." 

It's not that unusual to see record warmth in May, but summerlike heat smashed record highs in parts of the Northern Plains and upper Midwest the past few days. On Mother's Day, International Falls, Minnesota, on the border with Canada and nicknamed the "Nation's Icebox," reached 96 degrees. That was their hottest May high on record and the dry heat has helped fuel wildfires in northern Minnesota.

Here in Georgia, we reached a high of 87° yesterday, closer to the record high of 91° (set in 1947!) than the average of 81°. But yesterday, when I got back home from my afternoon walk, I noticed that the air conditioning wasn't working in the house. The fan was running, providing some air movement and a slight amount of cooling, but the compressor wasn't running, so the air coming out of the ducts was the same temperature as in the house. And that temperature slowly crept up to 77°, then 78, and then 79, even as the evening temperatures were dropping outside.

I called my HVAC people and a repairperson is scheduled to arrive sometime between noon and four pm, which based on my past experience means sometime around 6:00 or 7:00. It's 78° in here now, which is on the upper end of tolerable, but as the day warms up (it's forecast to reach 85 outside today) it will get more uncomfortable.

This is frustrating because it's happened to me every year since my new system was installed back in 2021. Each year, a technician shows up sometime in late March or early April for annual a.c. maintenance and tells me the system is fine, and each year when summerlike temps first arrive in May or June, the system won't kick on like it refuses to today. Each year I have to schedule a follow-on appointment and it gets fixed within an hour or two.   

Everything's impermanent and this warmth too shall pass. When the repairman leaves this evening, I will once again be enjoying cool, dry air circulating through my home again while offering a toast to Willis Carrier, the patron saint of the South, without whom life would be unbearable down here.