2014-06-22 – Yesterday was the Summer Solstice here in Chicago. But if you are following the World Cup in Brazil, things are very different. I didn’t realize that global climate change had gotten so out of control until I found out that, in Brazil, today is the first full day of winter!

But here’s the crazy part: even though it is winter in Brazil, the current temperatures  for all the FIFA World Cup venues range from 55° F to 83° F. Pretty toasty for winter, don’t you think? Admittedly, this may be a little unfair. The way they measure temperature in Brazil, the range is from 13° C to 28° C. More winter-like, I suppose.

Today’s game between the US and Portugal will be held in the City of Manaus. It is the warmest of the cities and is a sleepy outpost of 1.8 million people deep in the Amazon. It is barely winter there, being only 3.1° south of the equator. I don’t know if those degrees are in F or in C. Google doesn’t say.

People are complaining about the money spent on the World Cup in a country with so many poor. The tourist and development dollars (or Brazilian reais—R$) for these types of events often surpass the cost, and these dollars are expected to trickle down—or, since Brazil is south of the equator, trickle up.