Until this summer I harbored no special disdain for two-digit numbers starting with 9.

But now the mere sight of, say, 96, annoys me as much as a mosquito bite in a spot I can’t reach without risking a dislocated shoulder.

And of 99 we shall not speak.

I’m talking about temperatures.

Specifically about temperatures starting at 90 degrees and going up from there.

We have them every summer around here, of course.

But never so many, in Baker City, as in 2024.

Through Sept. 10, the temperature had reached or surpassed 90 degrees (far more often the latter) on 53 days this year at the Baker City Airport.

That’s more than double the yearly average of 26 such days.

And it eclipsed the previous record of 47 days, set in 2021.

On a dozen days this summer the temperature reached triple digits.

Those numbers all started with a 1 rather than a 9, but I don’t consider this an improvement.

Autumn is my favorite season.

But never have I awaited its arrival with quite so much anticipation as this year.

When I read a National Weather Service forecast on Sept. 10, predicting that a “strong cold front” would barrel into Baker County the next day, bringing the coolest air since mid-June along with a soaking rain, I felt much as I did as a boy during the week leading to Christmas.

Except in this case, I didn’t have to wonder what was inside the boxes wrapped in gaudy paper.

I know what a late summer cold front feels like.

That moment when the wind, which for weeks has been as refreshing as a dog’s breath, suddenly soothes, a balm that not even an air conditioner can mimic, is an exquisite pleasure.

The storm showed up pretty much on schedule.

This placed it in summer, of course, with the equinox 10 days away.

But no matter the celestial details.

Fall has at last returned, and I greeted it as I would an old and reliable friend whose face remains familiar no matter how much time passes between our meetings.

The threat of more two-digit temperatures beginning with 9 has only waned, to be sure.

I do not trust September.

And even the first week of October is capable of treachery.

But for now, I bask in the mild air of this meteorological middle ground, between the prickly heat just past and the coming of the cold.