Actually, the first sign of a fading summer came right after the Fourth of July when the first back-to-school ads began to appear. Fireworks were still smoldering but those ads were out there reminding everyone that the time was already near for washing down the blackboard. OK, those commercials were pushing the season a little, but just about a week ago, I did notice a major change.

I was getting up, as usual, before the sunrise, and I saw that the twilight just wasn’t as glaring as it was a short week or two earlier. You could just see something in the air that hinted of early autumn – not mid-summer. As it turns out, during the past two weeks, we have begun to lose sunlight at an accelerating rate – now the sunrise comes along one minute later each day, and the sunset occurs one minute earlier.

The day is shrinking.

We are losing two minutes of daylight each day. And this week, we moved beyond a milestone. The highest average temperature for the year is 85.4 degrees. We just reached that, and now, this weekend, the normal average slips lower to 85.0. I bet that change will not even be detectible, but each week, that average will go down about a degree. Eventually, we are bound to feel it. Without question, by all measure of astronomy and meteorology, we have turned the corner on the hot summer of 2005.

Still, summer is far from completely calling it a season. After all, in August, the tropical high pressure system that brings heat, humidity and hurricanes to New England does reach its northernmost position of the year. There are spells of very humid weather waiting to saturate our experience. We will have a chance to experience more of those moments when the world appears to standstill – as it always should during the time of the solstice - even if it sometimes seems to be a bear.