It's Too Hot

I know it's indulgent to complain, given the much greater heat in many places, with people dying of it in parts of India and the U.S. South, but it's too hot in Minnesota already. 

We have an air quality alert from today through Thursday because of ground-level ozone, which you can't detect in any regular way, and for which you can't even use a mask to protect yourself. It occurs when it's hot and sunny, the humidity is low, and the winds come from a certain direction... plus there's pollution from vehicles and other sources.

We've had essentially no rain here since early May. It has been more than a month now. 

If it doesn't change, I'm afraid the northern Mississippi will run dry, which it almost did a couple of summers ago in August, but the drought this year has started much earlier, even though we had more snow melt to start us off. The water supply of Minneapolis and St. Paul comes from the Mississippi.

Minnesota people tend to think our state is water-rich, but we need to be more conscious of this resource. 

Counter to that idea, the exurb of Elko New Market recently approved the water-bottling plant I wrote about last year. So the company will be sending water from the southern Minnesota aquifer all over the country, paying the sprawl-burb pennies for the privilege, compared to the cost of the packaging and the shipping.

Something has to change.