Dog days are gone, but not the heat

According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, we are out of the dog days of summer.

I know you did not realize that we were even in them, with stories of baking cookies in cars in parts of the United States, temperatures reaching 100 degrees and more in our cars here and mistaking your walk outside for a trek over the surface of the sun at times.

The dog days of summer doesn’t seem to be a season for us, especially in Alabama where those hot, humid days seem to last 355 days out of the year. Those other days are the only ones where the temperature drops below 70.

We all know what to do during those days to not overheat, so I won’t try to tell you how to stay cool or not pass out from heat exposure.

Instead, I wanted to share some more information I learned about those dog days of summer.

I had previously learned that these days are not, in fact, named so because dogs lie down in the heat of the day. Actually, the dog days of summer were named after the stars.

According to a National Geographic article, Greeks and Romans charted the movement of Sirius, the Dog Star, in relation to the sun.

The article states that dog days began “around the day when Sirius appeared to rise just before the sun, in late July.”

This article further states that the term “dog days” was only recently translated to English. Recently meaning within the last 500-600 years. This time was recognized, even then, as the hottest time of the year.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac has a website that states the 40-day season typically begins on July 3 and ends on Aug. 11. These dates coincide with the rising of Sirius mentioned in the National Geographic article.

Just because the dog days of summer end on or around Aug. 11, however, that does not mean that temperatures suddenly drop.

“The rising of Sirius does not actually affect the weather (some of our hottest and most humid days occur after Aug. 11), but for the ancient Egyptians, Sirius appeared just before the season of the Nile’s flooding, so they used the star as a “watchdog” for that event,” The Old Farmer’s Almanac’s website states.

The July 3-Aug. 11 time frame is the setting for the dog days of summer here in the United States. Around the world, that timeframe is not the same. Just as an example, the dog days of summer are technically occurring until Aug. 23 in Finland.

“Although July and August are generally known as the hottest months of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, the hottest period can vary from year to year,” the National Geographic article states. “And depending on your latitude, the astronomical dog days can come at different times.”

It also doesn’t help that the stars and Earth’s sky never match up the same way every time.

The article states, “the stars in Earth’s night sky shift independently of our calendar seasons.”

This means that at some point in time, the dog days could actually occur during the colder days of the year.

Maybe that explains the warm Christmases or Thanksgivings.

Cassie Gibbs is a staff writer for The Southeast Sun and Daleville Sun-Courier. The opinions of this writer are her own and not the opinion of the paper. She can be reached at (334) 393-2969 or by email at [email protected].