Today was the first full day of Fall, if I read my almanac correctly.

Fall, or Autumn, begins on the day of the autumnal equinox, when every place on Earth gets 12 hours of sun and 12 hours of night.

In much of the northern hemisphere, it means cooler weather, perhaps even cold weather, in regions closer to the North Pole.

In the UAE? The first day of Fall is really just Summer by another name.

In the colder parts of the world, the sun is eagerly anticipated, back in April or May. And if it lingers into September, people talk fondly (in the U.S., anyway) of an Indian Summer.

In the Gulf, we can hardly wait for the sun to stop being a fireball that has been cooking us since May.

Just because it’s cooling somewhere else … doesn’t mean we are keeping pace. Only 12 hours of day, today, yes, but we are irradiated more than enough here to make it miserable, still, out of doors, long after sunset. And the AC is still running pretty much full blast.

I come from a region, Southern California, where we know not to think that September is going to be a bunch of cool, crisp days. September in, say, the Inland Empire is often the hottest month of all, and I associate the first week of high school football games with extreme heat and late sunsets.

It’s another ballgame entirely in the Gulf, where summer blasts right through September and consumes all but a day or three of October, too.

As the weather chart here shows, the average high in Abu Dhabi in September is 102 Fahrenheit; the average high in October is 95.

Not even natives of the region consider 95 “cool”.

Can’t be sure November will cooperate, either, especially the first half of the month. The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix has been held in November since 2009, and on several occasions drivers have complained that the heat was unpleasant.

However, if we can hang on till December, then we will get three months of average highs in the 70s. That is when this is a great place to be.

Fall is fun, in temperate climates. In the Gulf, however, the first six weeks of it are pretty much Summer business as usual.