a most useless rain

When it is boiling hot, you don't really expect steam, until you do. The temperatures in Toronto have been at a steady roast for the last week. My thermometer outside my home office window is in the shade and has been stuck around 33ºC, with humidity at gross percent, the "feels like" numbers are more like 40-42º (around 105ºF). There hadn't been rain in a dog's age, but even a faint possibility was full of promise.

I stepped out onto Bay Street into a haze that had me sweating only seconds after leaving the confines of the atmospherically controlled office tower. I was desperate for a chocolate soft serve (custard cone to Newfoundlanders), which a van parked across the street sold. Side note: how has the cost of a small soft serve cone doubled in four years? Has ice cream pricing started to parallel real estate prices? It had been quietly raining, but the drops seemed to steam off upon touching the radiant asphalt. The streets were wet for perhaps a minute before they simply went dry. It was a bit strange to see wet pavement dry before your eyes, as though the wet was being sucked through the street. In reality, it was floating off, not soaking through. The rain hadn't made a dent in the temperature. If anything, the air felt thicker. In Newfoundland, a warm, but damp day, when it's humid yet foggy, is referred to as "mauzy". I can't say it was something you'd get every year in St. John's. Because everyone seemed to refer to August as the dog days of summer, as a kid, I assumed it had something to do with its closeness, its humidity, like the smell of a warm, wet dog. Humidity always seemed surprising to me in St. John's, as though a place so near the North Atlantic was caught off guard by it. In Toronto, humidity is effectively a default setting. Most of the city feels like a dank basement for weeks at a time. In this current heat wall (a heat wave sounds too pleasant. A heat wall slams you the second you step into it), the rain has no impact on temperature. There is no relief. It's like stepping from a sauna into a hot shower. This combination of heat, humidity and drizzle is the closest I've had to that mauzy feeling half-remembered from summers in my youth.

By the time I had ascended back up the 28 floors to my desk, what was a drizzle had become a squall, with rain streaking sideways and splattering against the windows of the office. Briefly, colours popped back to life. Greens were dark and fresh as produce, while reds shone out and yellows practically glowed. Then the rain stopped. The temperature was unchanged. The humidity had no doubt risen, and the city returned to its sallow grey.