For those in areas affected by the heat wave, I offer this quote from Thomas Wolfe's story, "The Lost Boy:"

It was a hot day. Darkness had come. The heat rose up and hung and sweltered like a sodden blanket in St. Louis. It was wet heat, and one knew that there would be no relief or coolness in the night. And when one tried to think of the time when the heat would go away, one said: "It cannot last. It's bound to go away," as we always say it in America. But one did not believe it when he said it. The heat soaked down and men sweltered in it; the faces of the people were pale and greasy with the heat. And in their faces was a patient wretchedness, and one felt the kind of desolation that one feels at the end of a hot day in a great city in America - when one's home is far away, across the continent, and he thinks of all that distance, all that heat, and feels, "Oh God! but it's a big country!"

And he feels nothing but absence, absence, and the desolation of America, the loneliness and sadness of the high, hot skies, and evening coming on across the Middle West, across the sweltering and heat-sunken land, across all the lonely little towns, the farms, the fields, the oven swelter of Ohio, Kansas, Iowa, and Indiana at the close of day, and voices, casual in the heat, voices at the little stations, quiet, casual, somehow faded into that enormous vacancy and weariness of heat, of space, and of the immense, the sorrowful, the most high and awful skies.

It's a damp, humid, wet heat that makes even a simple task like washing a vehicle in the driveway become too much within an hour...profuse sweating and need for cooling down meant "back inside to stay."

Hydrate and stay safe, friends!

Today I publicly express my profound gratitude to science for the discovery of practical and inexpensive air conditioning.
Blessed be the heat pump! :)

(101F at my home, expected to be 110F tomorrow...)

ificouldhietokolob Wrote:
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> Today I publicly express my profound gratitude to
> science for the discovery of practical and
> inexpensive air conditioning.
> Blessed be the heat pump! :)
>
> (101F at my home, expected to be 110F tomorrow...)

And evaporative coolers in Tucson!

On the subject of evaporative coolers, I keep a pet chicken in a shaded run in the backyard. I keep some fresh water in a large, shallow plastic pan when the temperature soars and very often I see her standing in it. Evaporative cooling at its most basic. When the temp exceeds 110, I bring her in the house, which she hates, but she spends most of the toasty summer months outside enjoying air conditioned comfort.

I'm staying as cool as possible in hot, humid upstate NY.

Went for a drive today in my AC car. A very long drive to a lake and back. :D

There was a downpour while was eating lunch there inside a diner. You could feel the breeze cooling things down with the rain. It was refreshing!

SoCal. Ugh.


"But it's a dry heat..."

Chicken N. Backpacks Wrote:
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> "But it's a dry heat..."

It may be a cliché, but it is a TRUE cliché.

I cannot understand how people can survive in high-temp, plus high-humidity, areas.


EDITED TO ADD: We were at 103 [weather report channel] today, with 112 predicted for tomorrow. Night lows in the mid-80s.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/05/2018 09:25PM by Tevai.

It wasn't that hot here today in so cal. it was only 95 but it

didn't even feel that hot.

That's cuz we be cool!

elderolddog Wrote:
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> That's cuz we be cool!


You be right.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

~Gwendolyn Brooks

It also peaked in the mid nineties in Sackamenna.

I grew up on the East coast during a time when nobody had air conditioners, only fans. We would sleep nude at night, sometimes with wet towels laid over ourselves. If we had a private outside porch we would take our mattresses out there.

Right, some people's houses had screened "sleeping porches." I think you find those in the Midwest as well.

Maryland will get a brief respite this weekend, and then the heat will return with a vengeance next week.

Chicken N. Backpacks Wrote:
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> SoCal. Ugh.
>
>
> "But it's a dry heat..."

So's an oven.

FYI Central Arizona
My back porch right now 114 degrees down 3 from an hour ago

Air conditioner worked well.

I went to Mesa 2 years ago on July 1 through 3. Oh my hell, a dry heat!!! I think I was in hell.

115+

I don't go outside during the day if I can help it. It's still hot after dark (100 at midnight) but not scorchingly unbearable.

I sit around the house all day in underwear trying to keep the temp to a balmy but affordable 90ish

Just impatiently waiting for September when it finally gets below 100, it actually feels decent by then

Gonna be a long three more months

It's dangerously hot today in the Southwest and southern California. Triple digits expected today through the weekend.

Montreal, of all places, had a high number of fatalities because of its heat wave this week. Mostly men, older than 50, living in un-air conditioned housing. It's high into the 90's is record setting, and accounts for the high humidity index with that.

It was a balmy 47 degrees in Mesa yesterday.

Celcius.

The saying was, "For three months of the year, Tuscon gets mean, uncomfortably hot. The rest of the year, though, it's simply unendurable."95

We got up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and drove out the Sonora Desert locations to do geological studies. We'd put up at 11:00 or 12:00, come in to the office and the AC.

In Vietnam, we'd hike ("hump") all day in 105-115 degree heat, soaking wet from sweat, monsoon rains, and river water. Then we'd feel like we were freezing at 80, 85, or 95.

What a bunch of wimps.

Dust bowl years were killers. Dust pneumonia - killing heat and choking dust - and many walked everywhere.

Pioneers lived in hot times and got through it without air conditioning.

If it is so hot someone dies it is usually stupidity on their part. If not, natural selection killing off the weak and infirm just as it should be.

It is not stupidity. It is often elderly and/or frail people living in hot, un-airconditioned homes. They might be too immobile to make it to the cooling centers. There have always been heat-related deaths in major cities during heat waves.

I have endured nights so hot that I couldn't sleep, both in New England and the mid-Atlantic. New York City during very hot weather is like an oven. The concrete and asphalt hold in the heat. Try being on an unairconditioned subway stuck in an underground tunnel! I am grateful for air conditioning, but I didn't always have it. Luckily, I could often escape to my mother's house on the shore.

Kids and adults have been sickened and even died from re-enacting the Mormon pioneer trek. Surely you know this? And if re-enactors have died, then so surely must have some of the original pioneers.

My mother has been in an assisted living facility in Florida. I just spent a week here dealing with her dementia and progressing congestive heart failure. She had a defribulator installed last week while I was at the hospital with her. What seemed to trigger this last hospital emergency visit was she turned the heat on in her room. It is 95 degrees outside and 100% humidity living in a first floor room with a asphalt roof and she turns on the heat. Sigh... She promised not to do that again when we talked in the hospital. Of course the first thing she did when she returned was to turn on the heat. The staff informed me immediately. We moved her to skilled nursing for rehab for 3 weeks. I am afraid she will not be able to have a room to herself anymore. The elderly do not handle heat. I am on a flight back home.

I am sorry, Eric.

:(

I'm sorry, Eric. Is there any way that they can put some kind of cover or duct tape over the heating controls?

I empathize with you Eric. Dealt with those same issues with my MIL.

Remember when we had to walk to our cars, which were kept outside!!!

And when we finally got to our cars, they didn't have air conditioning, seatbelts, or brakes?

But they had bench seats and you could dry hump without being a contortionist?!! <sigh>


That's what heaven will be, a 1965 Studebaker, three-speed manual transmission with the shifter on the column, and Saucie sitting right next to me, so people will know we're an item.

Those were the days! Driving on the freeway with the heater blasting and it was 105 out. We were young though....

According to the CDC, more people die from the cold than the heat. The explanation is that the human body adapts more easily to warmer temperatures, though there is a threshold at which the temperature-regulating system breaks down.

Also, many cold-related deaths occur on moderately cold days (as opposed to extremely cold days). But larger percentage of heat-related deaths occur on extremely hot days.

Regardless, the elderly are at greater risk in both the heat and the cold.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/17/cold-temperatures-kill-more-americans-than-hot-ones-cdc-data-show/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.301de66fc3cd

This reminds me of when we all were living in Africa, you know, before the original diaspora!

Next year in Johannesburg!!!

elderolddog Wrote:
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> Next year in Johannesburg!!!

:)

(Though I'd rather it be Pretoria. :D )

Yeah, but then it loses the 'jokey' part of sounding like "Next year in Jerusalem!"

elderolddog Wrote:
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> Yeah, but then it loses the 'jokey' part of
> sounding like "Next year in Jerusalem!"

I obviously have not waken up yet (and/or I am being affected by the heat, which is now increasing in scary ways).

Sorry for not being sufficiently bright to get the joke, EOD. :)

“we flipped our pillows over for the dry side—-there was no cool side.”

—-Don Bagley

I'm staying inside with Poncho. We have the A/C on. Once in a while I have to go outside and change the lawn sprinkler. We have all the blinds closed and lights off as well.

Our TV weatherman in Twin Falls says it's going to really hot though Monday!! I wonder if the morg will turn on the A/C for their services Sunday!??

>>We have all the blinds closed and lights off as well.

That's an old southern trick that I've used when necessary. It also pays (when you don't have A/C) to keep the windows shut as long as possible in the morning to keep in the relatively cool evening air.

During the 18th & 19th centuries, the summer was referred to as the 'dying season' in Virginia.

Anyone would want to stay indoors, with the AC, right? But we have outdoor parties to go to, at high noon! A back yard barbecue Saturday, and a kids' birthday party Sunday at a splash park, where there's no shade. At the beach, there's at least the ocean to cool off in. We're bringing a canopy, and I'm wearing a hat, but, really, I don't think I will be able to stay for the whole 3 hours.

I can't decide--is it better to cover up, like the nomads do in the Sahara Desert, or wear shorts and a tank top and keep slathering your body with icky sunscreen every hour....?? I'd rather stay home, sip sangria, and watch those Christmas-in-July movies on Hallmark.

We live in the Rocky Mountains. We've been having spectacular red sunsets every night, and then the air cools down, and we open our windows, and take the dog for an evening walk.

I think people die of the heat because they don't have control over their lives, like the elderly in care facilities and little kids and pets left in hot cars.

The AC use can zap the grid in areas that historically haven't gotten crazy hot.

We lived in Palo Alto in the late 90s-earlyaughts (no AC), and there were these rolling blackouts that jacked up *everything*, but IIRC, California's grid was being throttled by some jerks in another state.

In Philly: flip the pillow, flip the pillow. In Suffolk, VA: SWAMP COOLERS!

I do hate the heat but I need it right now to kill my weeds! The vinegar/salt does work in overcast but it takes a lot longer and you don't get that WOW factor. We have been lovely and cool with a bit of light rain. Perfect :)

Roundup took days. In the sun this took hours. When I get my vid card fixed I am going to post some pics. I tried Roundup gel last year and it was just worthless. I can't weed n' feed because of my tiny dog. Against the blackberries this stuff ROCKS. They laugh at Roundup. Laugh and give it the finger.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2127834,2127834#msg-2127834

If humidity is over 50% or the temp is over 75 F herbicides don't work as well.

Poor Herb!!!

What did he do to deserve such rancor?

You can cook your goose in a steamer or you can cook your goose in an oven. Moist heat or dry heat, if the temperature is high enough it still gets cooked! I cannot say I enjoy being baked more than I like being steamed.

When I lived in Colorado, I remember being fairly comfortable even when it was in the 90s. I never felt the need for A/C. Nights were cool and comfortable. By contrast, in Maryland, where it is humid, it will normally be rather miserable when temps are in the 90s.

I've been a lot of places, and can bear dry heat better than humid heat. In the Caribbean, I would take a shower in the morning, and would stay wet all day. My clothes would stick to my body, in a wet wad--not a good look.

The hottest days of my life were wherever and whenever I was wearing Mormon underwear! I was carrying around my own heat and misery, day and night.