Washington DC backs slowly away from summer on Saturday; for now

Washington slid away on Saturday from the sultry precincts of great heat, recording high temperatures only in the 80s, warm enough to avoid accusations of total backsliding, but not nearly so hot as Friday's full foretaste of summer.

As of 7 p.m. Saturday's high reading in Washington was 86 degrees, respectably, comfortably, and perhaps seasonally warm. But it was well below the almost breathtaking 94 of Friday.

That Friday reading was our first in the 90s this year, and at 13 degrees above average it almost seemed like meteorological audacity. Saturday's 86-degree high was also above average but by a less startling 5 degrees.

Saturday seemed to be one of those unsettled and noncommittal sorts of days that remind us that summer is coming, but also reassure us that its attendant miseries have not yet arrived.

These are the year's longest, brightest days, still getting longer and brighter. Our steady advance toward summer may be spelled out in the time of sunset. As given on the Time and Date website, it was 8:28 p.m. Saturday evening, and will be 8:30 on Monday, with the solstice later this month.

In its temperate nature, its soft breeze and relative thermal moderation, Saturday fell far short of the Washington record high for June 3. It was 99 degrees here on June 3, 1925, and stoic as our forebears may have been, they felt it.

A story in the next day's editions of The Washington Post about the effects of the heat on a city without air conditioning indicated that people suffered.

One death and two cases of heat prostration were called possibly due to the temperature, which was said then to be the highest in the country.

Residents and workers tried to cope as they could. More than 100 government employees were sent home because it was "too hot to work," according to an account in The Post. An Agriculture Department official was said to have called the suffering in one office so great that normal duties could not be performed.

On that 99-degree day, 98 years ago Saturday, the dress code for police officers was relaxed. Officers were permitted to open their shirts. Or as The Post reported it, they were "authorized to unbutton their blouses."

In Washington on our own Saturday, as evening fell and sunset approached, the skies continued to seem unsettled, as if waiting for atmospheric instructions on the shape the night and the following day would assume.

Through the day clouds had seemed in rapid motion, with dark billows seemingly sailing on unseen air currents above us, then producing tempestuous swirls and whirls, and finally ceding the sky for a time to patches of blue.

For the moments that they could be seen, those blue patches and the white-edged clouds that surrounded them while the June sun shone upon us seemed to whisper of summertime bliss past and present.

From the day's 86-degree high, reached at 12:33 p.m., the mercury began a slow descent, finding its way down to 71 at 8 p.m., suggesting the possible onset of still cooler hours.