At work we have several whiteboards about. These all get filled up with various scribblings, task lists, bits of code, diagrams... twenty-first century office graffiti. At least one of these has a running "gentlemen's bet" board. There's a bit of history behind that. A guy in that office was on his way out as I was on my way in — he was selling his house and moving to North Carolina. He had a list of dates on that board with initials beside them, and he said each person had chipped in a dollar for the privilege. The person who was closest to the actual date he sold his house would win the pot. I don't remember who won, but ever since then, there's been some kind of similar arrangement in place... minus the dollar part, because I really don't want to be accused of having a gambling pool at work.
The current bet board has a list of dates and temperatures. I was inspired by the early heat in March and decided if I really believed it was going to be a hot summer, why not put out some bold predictions and see what happens?
As it turns out I've been pretty close to the mark. I guessed the temperature would hit 95 by the first week of June — it reached 93. The next milestone was 100, which I thought we'd reach by July 3. It came extremely close today... 99 degrees this afternoon.
The temperature bet board goes up to 115 degrees... a number I picked, at the time, half in jest. But now, here we are very close to 100, and with another scorcher coming tomorrow there's another chance for that to come true. Charleston's highest recorded temperature is 108, so hitting 115 would be huge news. I'm guessing such an incident would be part of a widespread heat wave and thus huge news anyway, though.
The last time we reached 100 degrees was August 16, 2007 when it got up to 104. Anything is possible at this point. It's going to be a long summer.