D.C. serves up a warm, dry, delightful 90-degree Saturday

It was 90 degrees in the District on Saturday once again, but it demonstrated how delightful even a 90-degree day can be when the sweet summer air is totally lacking in humidity.

Saturday was also notable for the coolness of the morning, when the mercury in D.C. descended to a pleasant and comfortable level that had not been encountered here in weeks.

A few minutes before sunrise, the thermometer proclaimed that the temperature in Washington was only 68 degrees. It was a July milestone of minimalism.

Even in the strictly numerical sense, that 68 proclaimed a definite victory over the steamy forces of summer.

Although it may have occurred too suddenly to organize a celebration, that 68-degree reading marked the first time in a substantial period of punishing heat that Washington had been cooler than 70 degrees.

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On July 2 the low was 66 degrees. Since then the low temperature each day had been in the 70s. That is, when it was not in the 80s.

One of the best techniques for summertime survival in an often-steamy city like Washington is to enjoy the consolations of cool shelter at night. But high nighttime temperatures frustrate that effort.

Thus, Saturday’s morning low of 68 degrees seemed enough in itself to make the day worth welcoming. That reading is the average low temperature in D.C. in the middle of June, a month with a far better meteorological reputation than July.

Among the other delights, large and small, offered by Saturday was the sight of the moon during morning daylight. Waning, but still more than half full, it rode high in the west, an almost ghostly apparition in a blue sky.

Around 9:30 a.m., it seemed to be an isolated presence, unaccompanied by any cloud in an expanse of sky that showed the barest hint of summertime haze.

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The temperature was in the low 80s. A dew point on the border between the 50s and 60s confirmed a suspicion that humidity had temporarily abandoned the Washington area.

It suggested the start of long sunny hours of summertime pleasure, of a kind of day that seemed to represent late July at its atmospheric pinnacle.

It seemed benevolent and beguiling, filled with luxuriant but benign warmth. Clouds eventually gathered, but they drifted in a lazy, almost dreamlike way.

Saturday seemed to be close to the peak of July enjoyment, and almost everything about it combined to dismiss even the possibility that summer could ever be fearsome or disagreeable.

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