These are "
the dog days of summer", the hottest, most sultry days north of hell itself that fry men's and women's souls. These are the dog days of summer when high-pressure hounds young and old alike and drives even the most desert-tolerant creatures to ground. These are the dog days of summer, folks; the days for which sweet, juicy Clay County cantaloupe and watermelon are grown!
Okay, it's hot outside. Triple-digit, clothes-wilting, energy-draining, expletive deleted hot. But are these truly
the Dog Days?
"Dog Days" goes back to ancient Greece where Aristotle used the term in his
Physics. The ancient Romans refered to
caniculares dies, "days of the dog", a reference to the Dog Star, Sirius, paving the way for astronomy and weather to collide. The original Dog Days were those days when Sirius-second in brightness only to the sun as viewed from Earth-rose just before or simultaneously with the sun. A brown dog often was sacrificed at the onset of Dog Days to appease the wrath of Sirius, the source (or so the old folks around the Mediterranean Sea believed) of the oppressively hot weather.
Sirius rising no longer awakens the Dog Days, much to the relief of brown dogs everywhere. For an explanation of this divergence over thousands of years, google "precession of the equinoxes". In today's world Dog Days refers to the lazy, hazy days that inform us it is nigh onto time for the Hotter 'N' Hell Hundred again.
According to
The Old Farmer's Almanac, Dog Days traditionally kick in about July 3 and burn themselves out roughly around August 11.
The Book of Common Prayer sets the defining dates as July 6 through August 17. These are the dates in the northern hemisphere (the southern hemisphere never had Sirius-based Dog Days) that Sirius would be rising with the sun if Earth was in the same orbiting characteristics as it was back in the good old days of the Ceasars.
However, it was another ancient peoples, the Egyptians, that forever leashed the Dog Days to hot, sultry weather conditions. In their days, Sirius rising marked the beginning of the Nile River's annual flood season and also just happened to coincide with the searing teeth of Egyptian summer.
Returning again to modern times, Dog Days by common usage is all about the weather pattern of high heat combined with high atmospheric pressure, and their namesake Sirius is all but forgotten. These are the Dog Days, the days of High Summer when only mad dogs and a few dogged cyclists venture forth into the noonday sun!