September has never been more welcome.

Finally Tuesday, the string of triple-digit temperatures broke — and so did our dark moods.

I’ve never been  more glad to bid August farewell — birthday month or not. Of course, I never thought I’d become blase about 107 degrees.  Or 108 or 109.

Labor Day lost much of its appeal this year as a day to fire up the grill.   I hear Saturday’s heat even spoiled the first day of dove season.

Could this all be some kind of great cosmic joke? Why, last year about this time, all we could talk about was the looming Y2K bug and what kind of devastation that might mean to our high-falutin’ way of life. Just what would we do if our mainframes and modems failed us?

All that time, Mother Nature must have been laughing. You think Y2K is something? I’ll give you something to really worry about.

And she did. Hailstorms. Tornadoes. Wildfires. Drought. Heat records toppling left, right and center.

This is what America will remember about the Year 2000. Not the elections. Not the Olympics. At best these will be a momentary distraction. But the weather.

Not enough rain out  West or here down South. Too  much to the East, where nearly 30 leaky and neglected rowhouses in Philadelphia collapsed after soaking rains.

It’s enough to make you believe in global warming.

What I wouldn’t give to awaken one morning to the sound of gentle rain falling, as if it would never end, and the smell of dusty brown earth growing moist.

Not these thundering, late-afternoon theatricals.

Early last week our house took a near-direct hit from a lightning bolt, but the only short-term casualty was our air conditioner.

Summer 2000 has not been kind to our homestead. We lost a 23-year-old cleyera bush outside our front door. One day its leaves started turning brown, and five days later it was dead. Turns out a gopher or armadillo had burrowed a hole at its roots just as July began to bake the moisture right out of the ground. By the time we spotted the “heat stress,” it was too late.

Last week, as August punctuated its driest month on record with two final days of record-breaking heat, a grass fire broke out across the road. It was put out — thank God — within the hour.

Then there are the various critters who decided to drop in to share some of the cooler, moister air we pay for by the month. Some ants.  A couple of mice. And crickets. Jiminy, there is nothing worse at 3 a.m. than incessant, insufferable chirping under your bedroom window.

Hard as it is to believe, this was not Shreveport’s driest summer. And we’re still several inches above normal rainfall for the year.

We forget how wet the spring was. But even that was melodramatic. Not three, not four, but  five hailstorms. Then the wicked winds of Easter Sunday evening, from which downtown and Allendale are yet to recover.

Then a forest fire in Kisatchie. And wildfires earlier this week in DeSoto Parish.

I took it as a good omen that the heat first broke Friday, the first afternoon of September, before climbing again. Parts of Shreveport were even blessed with a brief shower. The air smelled sweet and clean.

Now the rest of September has to live up to its promise — even the traditional cold snap by Week 3. Why, by then we may be chilling out at, say, 85 degrees.

Jiminy, I can’t wait.