Cape Cod Weather

When I was a girl I thought I would like to live on the east coast. Partly it was the lure of New York City as pictured in Vogue which at that time featured many pictures of society ladies and their offspring, especially the fascinating and sophisticated Penelope Tree, who appeared both in the society pages and the editorial pages. I yearned for the exciting centers of culture and fashion that I saw in magazines. Seventeen and Glamour Magazines featured beautiful and stylish girls whose looks and wardrobes I envied.  Disposable income in my family was rather tight, my mother's ideas of suitable hairstyles and makeup for young girls were conservative, and I lived in northern Ohio, far from the meccas of style. Popular novels and movies and a slight acquaintance with boarding school girls fed my obsessions and New England added itself as an ideal place to live.


Time and life took me around the south and the southern plains where I got to experience life in several different states but although I had thought myself permanently settled in the southern plains I was still fascinated by the east coast. When I finally started visiting Cape Cod I loved it, but only ever visited for a week at a time, some portion of which was always spent in Boston. The fact that one of those visits (in August) featured temperatures in the 50's and constant rain was lost on me. I fell in love with Boston and expected to be living in the city when I finally came east. Our plans changed to a move to beautiful Cape Cod with its slower pace of life, outdoor pleasures and extreme marine climate.


Now that I live here I have to credit my upbringing in grey and rainy "lake effect" northern Ohio as the only reason I survive the weather here. We've had rain most of the time, and grey all the time since Sunday, temperatures in the 50s and intermittent strong winds. After 34 years with the 300 sunny days per year Oklahoma City gets it is a shock to the system. Summers here are beautiful, but the rest of the year can be pretty tough. It's no wonder you see Cape Codders out on the beach in any weather, because if you waited for perfect weather in any part of the year when the tourists were not overrunning the place you'd be in the house for the rest of your natural life. Just about everything fun on Cape Cod happens outside on the beautiful beaches and ponds, and it's the hardy people who are not picky about the weather who love it the most.  It's the wet weather that makes my garden lushly beautiful with hydrangeas and rhodys of gigantic size, and it's the humidity that is so good for our complexions and hair but it's hard sometimes to love it.




The other thing that took me a bit of adjustment is that because of Cape Cod's unique situation sticking out into the Atlantic the weather forecasts from the closest major television market (Boston) are without exception always wrong. That's why there is always an umbrella or a rain jacket in the car and a sweater, a wrap, or a big scarf in my purse. Temperatures here change quickly when the sea breeze comes in, and we can never be sure that what we expect will be what we get. I love it, but today, in the midst of one of our endless nor'easters that reminds me that winter is on the way, I am crabby!

I must add that it is something of a knitter's paradise. Lots of yarn stores, lots of knitters, and a climate that allows you to wear and enjoy you beautiful handknits nearly every month of the year.