A big heat wave is supposed to hit the Southeast tomorrow. For a guy who is most happy in the winter months this is not something I am looking forward to. When I was a kid I got up early during the summer and played outside until about 11am. Then I spent the hottest parts of the day on the living room floor reading comic books and our Encyclopedia Britannica collection (I was a very nerdy kid). Then I would venture outside again around 7pm and play until after dark. The only breaks in this routine were for baseball games on Saturdays and regular trips to the swimming pool.
Tomorrow I have to wear a long-sleeve dress shirt to work instead of my usual polo because we are giving a customer a building tour. A building that is not climate controlled.
Sometimes being a grown-up is not as fun as I thought it would be.
Tomorrow I will start bringing up how awesome it would be to move back to Wisconsin to my wife. I have to shut up about that throughout the winter but I suspect that if I keep bringing it up only when it’s sweltering outside I might sway her in the long run.Report
It’s hot up here, too. After a fair bit of rain, it’s also humid. There’s no escaping it.Report
Today, I think you’re right, Blaise. But the divergence starting tomorrow is making a visit to Mom & Dad’s sound like paradise.Report
Yeah it’s due to get hot but the midwest has been paradise the last week or so. The kind of weather that makes ya wanna just roll on the lawn like a dog.Report
I understand that people in Maine say something to the effect of “if you can’t handle the winters, you don’t deserve the summers” as their way of communicating disapproval people who live there only seasonally. If Wisconsin is anything like Michigan, however, you guys have lake effect summers the same way you have lake effect winters which, if I recall correctly, involves saying such things as “it’s only 83 degrees! How come I want to die?”Report
They’re on the wrong side of Lake Michigan for real lake effect winters or summers. It’s more like Minnesota – lots of bitter, dry cold and not that much snow (recent years there were some freak snowfall levels but nothing like some other places consider normal), summers aren’t bad but for a few weeks of high 90s and high humidity each year.Report
I adore Minnesota weather. The summers are a touch to hot for me but the winters, that blissful clean dry cold! In Nova Scotia the cold was almost greasy laden as it is with salty humidity… brrr! It crawls under your clothes and clings to you for hours even after you’re in the warm. So gross!Report
My perception of Minnesota winters is severely skewed by the fact that the one year I lived there was 2005-2006, when they set records for all-time high and low temperatures for February in the same month. Walking to class in -53F, while a pretty reliable winner whenever most people complain about cold weather, was still a really, really crappy experience.Report
Tomorrow I have to wear a long-sleeve dress shirt to work instead of my usual polo because we are giving a customer a building tour.
My least fun business trip ever was to Miami in August, with coat and tie mandatory. The hotel, car, and office were all air-conditioned, but the walks between them were enough to leave me dripping.Report
Our clients are from Sweden. The amazing thing is that when we did this two years ago I assumed they would be even more miserable than us. Instead all of the Americans were a sweaty mess and I never saw a bead of perspiration on the Europeans. They claimed it was their wool suits verses our cotton khakis and shirts. I think it was something far more sinister.Report
Fishing Euro-cyborgs!Report
Consider the GOP convention in Florida. In August. they’re considering erecting an air conditioned tunnel for people to walk through.Report
Speaking of cyborgs, has anyone ever seen Romney sweat?Report
Sometimes being a grown-up is not as fun as I thought it would be.
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Image I was trying to insert:
Image.Report
109 yesterday, and I’m not even in Phoenix.
102 is for wimps.Report
We had our fifth straight 100+ day yesterday. That’s a record of some kind in these parts (CO). It reminds me of my time in Dallas: above a hundred in the day cooling down to a brisk 86 at night.
It aint right.Report
It was 82 yesterday, with moderate humidity. Fantastic–I was outside for hours. Today it’s going to be 90, and tomorrow is forecast for 108. That’s just godawful. Then 97-99 for my extended family’s annual camping trip this weekend. If you never hear from me again, you know what happened.Report
The weather here was a high of 76 yesterday, cloudless sky and zero humidity. Absolutely beautiful. I found myself looking hard for work to do outside last night.
The only bright spot to the heat wave coming tomorrow is that it’s supposed to be low humidity. We’ll see if the claims of Westerners about ‘dry heat’ are true.Report
“Zero” humidity? I do hope that’s hyperbole.
My experience out west was that dry heat really is much more tolerable, if you’re talking about temps in the 80s or 90s, but anything approaching 108 is hell regardless of the humidity. At best it’s the difference between terrible suffering and excruciating suffering.Report
That sounds about right, though one huge advantage to dry heat is that shade makes all the difference. In humid heat, the heat invades and it’s almost as intolerable as being out in the sun.
(That could be related to altitude, though. The two dry-weather places I’ve lived are in the Rockies.)Report
I’ve gone hiking for miles in 100+ degree weather. Tolerable with sunblock and a ton of water.Report
Dry heat is tricksy. You’re constantly tempted to drink too much water. It’s pointless running around in that sun. Unless you know what you’re up to, keep your metabolites right, you can get in more trouble than you might realise, guzzling water in the bright sun.
The only rational approach to the desert is to arrange your day around the sun.
In Phoenix and Tempe, I’d get up around 0400 and mess around outside by the pool for a while, eat breakfast, drink coffee, water the plants. I’d do some work until it got hot, then unashamedly take a long siesta. Get up in the late afternoon, water everything again, get in the pool and watch the sun set, work until maybe 2100, 2200.
Problem with Phoenix, it’s in a valley and the heat stacks up. The concrete and asphalt holds the heat, all that watering and swimming pool makes for humidity and the nights can be just awful. But toward early morning, it’s often quite cold. A stunning display of clouds lit from below, then the sun rises like a bomb….Report
ate plenty of pretzels. they got better stuff now than they did back then…Report
105 to 108 here in Houston. Heat index was up to 115. Humid as heck, too, which means even the shade isn’t so great.
Was supposed to be super hot to day (99 to 100+ depending on where) but it looks like it broke. My phone’s claiming only 95 and low 90s the rest of the week, so that’s something.Report
I’m in Austin. You get humidity that we don’t out that way.
As the tree line moves west, Austin’s weather becomes more and more similar to that of the West Texas desert. This isn’t just hyperbole: the tree line is moving East with alarming speed, and some models project it to be just outside of Houston by the end of this century, which would make Central Texas, including Austin, sub-desert at best. We’re in the midst of a multi-year drought, last summer was the hottest on record (90 days over 100, 25 or so over 105, and almost 4 straight months of 90+ weather), and it’s projected to get worse and worse. I keep contemplating looking for employment in Nome.Report
Try Pittsburgh. 😉 Or Minneapolis. Any place with a decent water supply ain’t too bad (and austin ain’t Atlanta).Report
I don’t know what it means to say “Austin ain’t Atlanta.” I suppose it’s similar to saying “A lake isn’t a grassland?”
I don’t envy Atlanta its humidity, but it’s significantly hotter here than there.Report
atlanta was built much later than austin, and has little water to speak of.Report
Lakes Lanier and Allatoona. They’re having shortages, but that has more to do with the size of its population and droughts than it does with having “little water to speak of.”Report
Until this week, Lanier was going to come off limits in the near future. Atlanta’s watershed is actually quite tiny. The Chattahoochee mostly diverts what water is gathered downstream through for Alabama and Florida, hence the court fights.Report
Is it small, or does it seem that way because the population is so large? If Kimmi had said that there isn’t enough, I’d agree with that, but I think that’s different than saying it’s not there. The question is how it’s distributed. I’ve lived in the desert, and Georgia isn’t it (even if it might be overpopulated or the victim of water diversion).Report
I’m sure it’s a little of column ‘A’ and a little of column ‘B’.
http://ofmpub.epa.gov/tmdl_waters10/attains_watershed.control?p_state=GA&p_huc=03130001&p_cycle=2010&p_report_type=
The watershed that flows to the city is small because everything other than the Upper Chattahoochee flows away from the city, what does flow to the city is largely earmarked already for power generation and environmental management downstream so Atlanta can’t just tap all that either. This is still a very manageable problem compared to almost anywhere out West, to be sure. The state, counties and cities have all had a very lackadaisical attitude about their resource management (surprise, surprise), no one wants to be the bad guy that raises water rates sufficiently to encourage less overuse and also to generate the funds to build more collection and storage capacity.Report
I don’t know what it means to say that Atlanta was built much later than Austin. Atlanta was a major rail hub by the mid-19th century. That puts it at most 10-15 years younger than Austin. Plus, Atlanta’s size overtook Austin’s more than a century ago.Report
I assume she is referring to the fact that it was burned down about 150 years ago, or maybe that nearly everything here was built in the last 20 years. I don’t know what that has to do with the price of tea in China, but there you go.Report
Baton Rouge man here feeling no pity for yall. The temperatures are in the high nineties with 50 percent humidity.
I asked my wife the other day if she thought some fundy would say god hates Republicans if a major hurricane hit Florida during the convention.Report
Too easy. It’s their punishment for not impeaching Obama.Report
Hey Mike, we’re lefties living in a sea of red. We have to get our giggles where and when we can.
Speaking of unbearable heat, has anybody heard from Jaybird?Report
https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2012/06/26/i-honestly-thought-they-were-thunderheads/Report
Speaking of unbearable heat, has anybody heard from Jaybird?
Oh, come on, he doesn’t lay it on that heavy. 😉Report
Is there where I point out that it’s 67, sunny, and beautiful here in Seattle?Report
Sun in Seattle? Fibber…Report
Actually, it’s beautiful 3-4 months out of the year. We’re just legally obligated as residents not to tell anybody about it so we don’t get more people moving here. 🙂Report
But then that’s 8-9 months of rain.
Ugh.Report
More like 8-9 months of clouds and drizzle punctuated by the occasional rainshower. Summer was far too short, but spring and fall were amazing even with the rain.Report
When we moved to the Pacific Northwest, I was promised 12 months of clous. I was so looking forward to 12 months of clouds.
I was lied to.Report
Baton Rouge gets about twenty inches more of rain a year than Seattle. The difference is that what Seattle calls rain we call excess humidity. At least in the subtropics everything stays very green.
I lived on an island in Puget Sound for about a year and half and will say the summer was truly splendid. It was almost as wonderful as May through August in Fairbanks.Report
Dudes, stop spreading the word!Report
Aw shucks, and I was going to tell you about some incredible hot springs near Buena Vista for when you need to relax after your raft trip down the Arkansas. Must keep secrets.Report
Oh, it’s ok to give tips to encourage visitors, but you don’t want to encourage people to stay. As a former Oregon governor said (paraphrased), “Thanks for visiting, now go home.”Report
60 and sunny where I live. We’re about 20 degrees below normal, stupid planet, always balancing things out.Report
We’ve had a few warm days, but this summer has mostly been the classic coldest winter Mark Twain ever spent.Report
“Sometimes being a grown-up is not as fun as I thought it would be.”
What made you think it’d be fun?!?!Report
You can eat all the ice cream you want and there’s no bed time!!!!!!!!Report
“Sometimes being a grown-up is not as fun as I thought it would be.”
Oh my god, yes!!! I’m still fairly new to the grown-up world and there is not a day that goes by that I do not have this exact thought.Report
I was promised all the ice cream I wanted and no bed time. I grew up to discover that too much ice cream and staying up late has consequences. Nobody told me there were consequences even when you can’t get in trouble with Mom and Dad.Report
Yes, but that I can live with the little things like ice-cream and bed time. I was under the impression that I would have more control. And money. I never have enough of either of those.Report