AI has been overly cool and wet in LR for what feels like 2 months now. It slowly backs off towards other models as the target approaches. Not sure what the deal is either.
I would say the closer to the water you are, the more optional it is....I think we are about 3 miles as the crow flies from Bellingham Bay....that said, I'm glad we have it.
Before we got A/C installed, we had a whole house window fan mounted in one of the spare bedrooms. It would theoretically cycle all of the air in the house in about 12-15 minutes. The reality was we would have to run it for 2-3 hours in the evening to get the house cooled from the upper 70's down to around 70, and then we would leave it on low overnight to get the house as cool as possible....62-63 on a good night.
There was a 2 year period when I lived in the south where I didn't have any A/C. The first place was an apartment and that just sucked. Second place was tucked way back in the woods, so that wasn't too terrible, but still pretty hot. The last place was a brick duplex that was in the sun all day. It had a very old, inefficient window unit mounted in the wall, but I could not afford to run it. To make matters worse, I worked graveyard at Waffle House (this was in Athens, GA right next to University of Georgia, so it was quite busy), so I was having to try to sleep in the heat of the day. I would take a cold shower when I got home, sleep as much as I could until the house got too hot, then fill the bathtub with cool water and nap in there until I had to get ready for work. And of course my crappy old car only had 2/55 A/C (2 windows open, 55mph...people of a certain age on here will know LOL).