Another extremely hot day at the Oceanfront finds sun shades flapping in the wind Tuesday. (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot)

Most days this summer, 84-year-old retiree Bill Tugwell rides 10 miles on his electric bike from his condo to the Oceanfront, biking along the Boardwalk and people-watching in the sun.

Tugwell wears long sleeves — on Tuesday morning, he got a skin cancer spot removed from his shoulder before making his coastal pilgrimage, so his shirt was covering a bandage — and striped compression socks to keep himself from losing moisture. Years of wearing a leather jacket on Harley Davidsons prepared him for a summer of long sleeves and hot temperatures, he said.

The people-watching is worth the heat, and it’s better than the alternative.

“Do you want it too cold or too hot?” Tugwell said. “Because that’s about all we get these days.”

This summer, heat and humidity swept across Hampton Roads, tying records and causing cities to become so hot that they have set up cooling stations. This weekend, temperatures and dew points will go down due to a cold front — but that doesn’t mean the heat is gone for good, National Weather Service meteorologist Roman Miller said.

In fact, the cold air at the end of the week is more of an abnormality than the heat the area has experienced for much of the summer, Miller said. And it is unclear whether this cooler weekend signals hotter or colder trends approaching this fall.

In Chesapeake, Sunscape Land Works landscapers Nathan Wohlschlegel and Ethan Cotter looked dressed for totally opposite temperatures — Wohlschlegel wore a long-sleeved shirt, cargo pants and a scrunchie for his long hair; Cotter wore a tank top and shorts — but both noted the challenges that a 108-degree heat index can bring to the job site.

“It gets easier, though,” Cotter said. “After two weeks you kind of get used to it.”

“Well, some people do,” Wohlschlegel said.

For a crew of two or three workers, Sunscape will use up to two cases of water a day, supervisor Josh Mathias said. On other days, it has been so hot that men have had to take breaks in the air conditioning to prevent heat stroke.

Despite the heat, today is a good day — the job site has some shade, there’s fresh ice in the cooler and the trio still has half a case of water left to drink.

Cotter dreads winter, but both men are excited for fall, when temperatures are perfect “for two or three weeks,” he said.

“Looking ahead, it’s kind of too hard to tell about fall temperatures and what they’re going to be,” Miller said. “I mean, this trough of cooler air is not going to last forever over us. We will warm up eventually.”

For Mathias, fall means he and his men will be safer, and cooler. Plus, his water bottle bill will go down.

“A bottle of water is like a sip right now, but in the fall it’s three or four,” Mathias said. “Ice can last two days instead of just one.”

Suzannah Perry, suzannah.perry@virginiamedia.com