Having passed the summer solstice enveloped in a massive dome of heat, we can take some solace in the promise of decreasing daylight, from now until the winter solstice (on or about December 21). Of course, it will be months before summer heat begins to abate but longer nights will offer psychologic relief, if little cooling.
While our warming climate will surely lengthen the period of summer-like weather, it will have no effect on the astronomical darkness. As we endure drought, wildfires, summer storms and hurricanes, that fact is somehow reassuring.
It may take a few weeks to notice the loss of daylight but, by then, early avian migrants will grace our wetlands and beaches. Unaware of dire heat-stress warnings, they respond only to the solar retreat, chasing the perpetual summer on which their lives depend.
