The river barely runs through it

The Roanoke River is barely trickle these days.  We recently stopped by the riverside park on Route 419 where it crosses the river just before Lewis-Gale Hospital.

According to this stream flow table, the river which runs through Roanoke only has 33% of the water that it normally does at this time of year.

I figure if there are any trout left in the river, they are already parboiled.

I am not sure about Roanoke, but I saw today that Raleigh is close to having its hottest August ever.

It is easy to lose seasonal perspective when you have faced day after day of temperatures in the nineties.  The best news that I have seen is that the high temperature in Boston was 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

You can be certain that if cooler weather has settled into the northern parts of the country, it won't be long before we are enjoying it here in the south.

I have a warm spot in my heart for the Maritime region of Canada where we lived for seventeen years.  While eastern Canada is much warmer than most folks think, it does cool off quickly in the fall.

We once ended up with without power for week due to an early September snow storm.  We were living on the Bay of Fundy which is on Nova Scotia's western coast.

I just checked the long term forecast for Halifax, the largest city in the Canadian Maritimes.  Starting the last couple of days in August their temperatures start trending downwards to the point that daily high don't even break 68 degrees Fahrenheit for a week. 

That's hard to imagine since we have not seen anything as cool as that on the North Carolina coast for a while.  We did taste one night of cooler weather in Roanoke over the weekend.

If we can get some fall rains and cooler temperatures, just maybe this drought can be broken.  I know the farmers would like some rain while there is still a little growth left in the pasture grasses.

I have only one suggestion for those who have had enough of the heat, head for the Canadian Maritimes.  Here's my travel guide to Maritime Canada.

It was only a year ago when I wrote about Roanoke getting more rain from a tropical storm than Carteret County on the Carolina coast.

I bet the Roanoke area would love a repeat of that almost 7 inches of rain they got in September 2006.