This is the Ottawa Valley region, after all in eastern Ontario where weather patterns are known to shift in the blink of an unwary eye. An urban legend that really does have its basis in reality, as any who have lived here for any length of time are prepared to corroborate.

This has been, to say the least, a most unusual summer. In the prevalence of unrelenting heat, in any event. But the overheated atmosphere is a reality all over the world, as it happens this year, so we in Canada are not alone in suffering through a heat wave that takes its toll on all living things. Environmental scientists have reached the conclusion that the stifling heat, responsible for drought and for deadly wildfires has been helped along by the jet stream deviating from its usual pattern, exacerbating climate change that has brought along the phenomenon of global warming.

These changes are seen in the extreme temperatures, winds, rainfalls and wildfires that have raged across the globe. Here in our tiny portion of that globe we persevere and tut-tut-tut at the changes but our way of life and our health  is not, for the most part, directly impacted other than for the discomfort brought to us through prevailing weather conditions. Vulnerable populations with no access to relief, where agricultural output is impacted, where poverty makes all such seemingly intractable challenges worse, will see the impact on them in the number of people dying attributable to the heat.

Our problems, minuscule as they are in comparison, still do afflict some. The elderly in particular are susceptible to the effects of extreme heat and humidity on their failing systems, and among them and the very young there are life casualties. There are also wildfires burning in Ontario and British Columbia displacing people in the affected communities.

Here, in our little geographic enclave, we've adapted our daily routines to minimizing the personal effects of extreme heat and humidity, the dry atmosphere nonetheless where rain has fallen sparsely. And now, suddenly, we're in a situation of relentless, heavy rain and thunderstorms pouring out of the sky to inundate a landscape below gasping for lack of moisture.

Nature's timetable of weather events is her very own.