June began Saturday in the nation’s capital, with one of those days so warm and dry and atmospherically wonderful that it might have seemed like a dream — if Washington had not had an almost identical day Friday.
With its high temperature of 81 degrees, Washington exactly matched the average high for so significant a calendar day as the first of June, the month identified with all sorts of joyous outdoor celebrations and with the start of astronomical summer as well.
The 81 degrees was a temperate sort of temperature, marking a day that seemed content to grant to barbecues the undisputed right to sizzle and to confine to food preparation any noticeable steaminess.
Saturday seemed a dry day in the most obvious sense, meaning that it did not rain, at least not through early evening. In the seeming absence of showers, or of their apparent likelihood, Saturday departed from a tradition established in May. Last month, it rained every Saturday, and on a couple of them, it rained a lot.
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But by early evening, D.C.’s first Saturday in June seemed to revoke the weekly permits for rain and clouds. Moreover, to the untrained eye, Saturday gave scarcely a sign that it would allow precipitation at night.
Clouds were indeed there on Saturday, but they seemed to be high, perhaps five miles up, and thin, almost gauzy, as if made of some fragile fabric with strands that had been carefully teased apart.
Humidity, the unwelcome guest on many a warm day in Washington, seemed to make itself scarce. Such quantities as dew points and heat indexes often are cited as numerical explanations of warm weather discomfort. Although these quantities could be computed Saturday, they could readily be factored out of the comfort equation.
For example, at 2 p.m., with the mercury at 80 degrees, the dew point was recorded at more than 30 degrees below that. It was an almost absurdly low 49 degrees. In practice, it meant that no way existed to wring raindrops out of the uncharacteristically dry air.
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East is east, and west is west, it is often said. But on Saturday, Washington seemed to show similarities to conditions often experienced near the other side of the continent. It seemed to display an uncommonly strong resemblance to sections of Southern California, at least in terms of meteorology.
In all of this, Saturday seemed to show its kinship with Friday, a day similar in so many ways. With a high temperature in the 70s, Friday was often described as an example of the sort of weather that should be summoned to the Washington area more often.
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