Cool Peaks
Listen in RealAudio
Email your weather question

It's still only the beginning of summer and you're already feeling the heat. Maybe you're thinking of where to go for a guaranteed cooldown. Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and you're listening to the Weather Notebook.

You could start by heading for the hills. The highest peaks of the Rockies can dip below freezing any time of year, and Mount Washington has never topped eighty degrees.

If you're looking for a cool summertime city, San Fransisco is your best bet. Almost everyday, fog rolls in from the Pacific, with temperatures in the fifties and a breeze that feels brisk if not downright chilly. Mark Twain was even said to have insisted that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Fransisco.

If its serious cold you want then take a trip to the southern hemisphere where the seasons are reversed and it's now wintertime. But keep in mind that there's a lot less land on that side of the equator, and the oceans help keep it from getting as cold as it otherwise might.

On this day in 1994, Australia saw it's coldest temperature on record. It was nine below zero Fahrenheit on Charlotte Pass, about a mile above sea level. Down on the coast in Sydney it has never gotten down to freezing, and the last time downtown was covered in snow was in 1836.

For the ultimate in cold try going all the way down under to Antarctica. That's where the mercury fell to a stunning 129 below zero back on July 21, 1983. Maybe a heat wave isn't so hard to take after all.

Special Thanks today go to correspondent Bob Henson. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory and is generously supported by the National Science Foundation and Subaru of America.