Cool place to be

The unofficial beginning of summer has given swimmers the cold shoulder.

Only nine braved the water during the hour and a half the Jackson's city pool operated on Monday's opening day. The high temperature that second day of June was only 65 degrees.

Cool temperatures have kept the Capaha Pool, where the water temperature is only 70 degrees, closed all this week. Doug Gannon, who supervises the Cape Girardeau pools, got in the water with a group of lifeguards undergoing training. At 70 degrees, he said, "You can't stay in the pool that long."

With maintenance and removal of the bubble now complete, the Central Pool is due to open for limited hours today. The water temperature there is 76 degrees because the pool's heater is being used.

Temperatures for the first few days of June have been about 14 degrees below normal. Wednesday's high reached only 72, which was 22 degrees cooler than the 2002 high on the same date.

For the pools, part of the problem is the low overnight temperatures, which have been in the 50s recently. Those low temperatures pull down whatever heat the pool has gained during the day. The ideal pool temperature is in the high 70s or low 80s.

The Jackson pool opened later this spring than scheduled because May rains delayed painting.

Fifty swimmers came to the pool Wednesday. During normal summer days, the count is close to 200. The swimmers included the Jackson swim team, who were plowing through the water at 6:45 Wednesday morning, when the air temperature was 55 degrees.

Pool manager Carole Baugh said the only thing that isn't out of synch this year is the lifeguards' tans.

"Some have a good head start," she said. "They tanned for the prom,"

Fortunately for swimmers, a warming trend is coming. Mike Nadolski, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky., says temperatures should reach into the 80s during the weekend. That's just a few degrees below normal. "It looks like from Sunday on through the following week we should be at or slightly below normal," Nadolski said.

A low-pressure trough over the Midwest has been bringing in cooler Canadian air. Cloud cover and rain also have held temperatures down.

The Cape Girardeau pools will officially open for the summer Tuesday, the day after the last day of school. That's the usual timing. "All of our lifeguards are high school students," Gannon explained.

Cool temperatures always affect sales at TYS Hawaiian Snow, says co-owner Tyson Zahner, but they don't stop them. The Jackson location is only open during the summer, but the Cape Girardeau store remains open all year round selling barbecues and coffee drinks along with the shaved ice confections.

"You'd think we wouldn't sell any at all," Zahner said. "... But even in November and December we still sell shaved ice."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182