Walked outside the back doors tonight and as soon as my bare feet hit the patio I knew something was different – the lack of warm tile meeting my skin. It was still muggy and warm, but the air had a different feeling to it – unless you’ve lived out here in the Valley of the Sun you wouldn’t understand it. See, for the past five months everything has been about the heat: the air, any surface you might touch, just the very feeling of it. And it’s not as if the heat was gone when I stepped out onto the patio, it was different. Not the kind of relentless heat you just get accustomed to, but a different kind of heat, a heat with – if it makes any sense – a coolness to it. It felt strange.

If the future forecasts are to be believed we’ve had our last triple-digit temperatures of the year. With just four weeks remaining until the 2nd week of October when the heat gods flip the switch and we enter “Arizona winter”, seeing days in the 90s and nighttime temps in the 70s means really only one thing: pool season is over. as long as the pool temp stays in the 80s I’ll continue my nightly dips, but you can bet the clock is ticking towards the end of another pool season.