And it's even worse in Pakistan: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/hotter-human-body-can-handle-pakistan-city-broils-worlds-highest/
My sister reports that Portland is way too damn hot.
The first time I felt real heat was during my first summer in Baltimore. Coming from the northern climes of Canuckistan, I just couldn't believe it: could not believe that people were expected to function normally at temperatures that exceeded normal human body temperature. 'It's like walking around in a fever,' I thought. 'And I will never, ever complain about a snowstorm ever again.'
BC is currently under a 'prolonged heat dome,' with crazy-high temperatures. And this is just the beginning, isn't it?
We are also hitting record highs in the northeast. Not like in the west, but 96 is a lot in Portsmouth, NH. It beat the old record by 3 degrees.
Most of us (at least in Seattle) are fine - it's simply way too fucking hot. We aren't having massive infrastructure failure of the kind seen in Texas in February. I'm glad my company has opened up the offices downtown - otherwise I doubt I would have been able to work from my un-air conditioned apartment today. A few friends have bought AC units and a few others have retreated to hotels. Mainly, I'm concerned about heatstroke hitting the homeless population hard.
I just got back to said non-air conditioned apartment after using the heat as an excuse to hit the bars downtown on a Monday and am confronted with some vegetables and black beans I need to cook before they go bad and I go to Los Angeles (first flight since pandemic started) on Thursday for the 4th. Thoughts and prayers as I deal with stove heat.
3: As a native Seattleite whose relatives are all in the South or Southwest this is how I felt on every family trip I had as a kid, ever. My brother and I would get exhausted and enervated after maybe thirty minutes of playing outside while all the other cousins were going strong in the summer heat. I can only imagine that BC kids felt the same way visiting their families back in Ontario or wherever.
They have pinto beans, which are better.
I was surprised to see the Chipotle downtown open at all. Pike Place Market was basically shut down all day because of the heat.
Now I want Chipotle, but it's too late here.
It is very hot. I don't have AC, and my work doesn't have AC. But the last couple of days we have been spending time with a cousin who has a heat pump, and that's been a relief.
I also don't do well with heat -- I usually say that over 80 makes me feel like I have a mild illness. But we're through the worst of it. Tonight will be hot, but starting tomorrow it's shifting from crazy hot to just normal hot.
11: Not having AC at home, I understand. St work, though? That seems crazy. Unless temperatures in the 80's are already such a huge shift from the norm.
I thought 6 was proposing a new restaurant concept where you bring in ingredients you need to use up and they come up with a recipe, but I don't think they pay Chipotle employees enough to deal with that.
Semi-topical bleg. Which gives better thermal insulation: still air or still water?
Heatwave (and drought) contributed to rolling blackouts a few weeks ago (trivial by the standards of third-world countries like Mossheimat or Texas, but treated as a national crisis). I've been soft-lockdowned with AC for weeks and am terrified of having to emerge in-person into midsummer.
I've been in the mid 40s (C) in Greece and in Turkey in the summer. In Turkey I was OK, but in Greece, I had one or two days when I felt really quite unwell from the heat. After a day or two, it was OK.*
I remember walking around https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messene at about mid-day on a day with over 40C and it just being unbelievably hot. When I soaked my hat and t-shirt in cold water from a stand-pipe to cool down, it was dry within a couple of minutes. Luckily there was plenty of water around.
* ironically, I hate the heat and sun, and my wife loves it, but after a few days of feeling ill and adjusting, I was actually more able to function in the heat than she was. Maybe just in virtue of sweating a lot more.
14,15: For reducing heat conduction I believe it is confined air* better than water better than glass (less sure on water vs. glass but in general gas>liquid>water). Hence double-paned windows. Some gases better than air, and for any gas the insulation increases as density drops (as the confining space becomes a partial vacuum). What water has going for it is a high specific (and latent) heat which comes into play if the insulating element is connected to a much larger reservoir (and in those applications it almost always circulates).
*Unconfined air does not remain still when heated.
I felt the first breath of not/hot air last night at 9:00. They say it's 64 degrees now, but that seems low (but my room is normally hotter than the surrounding area.) The highest temp reported was 116, don't know exactly where. Walking outside was like working in a blast furnace.
Water came out of the taps cold at the hottest point. Mains And most feeders are underground, and the reservoir is higher up, and shaded from the sun and hot winds (I think). In any case it would take awhile to heat a huge reservoir.
I took a number of cool baths, but cold tap water was too cold for me and I mixed it. Even after hours at 90+ the water was still cool.
22: Better than just tap water.
21: In my previous apartment, water was never cool in summer, even at 04:00. 09:00-17:00, it could burn you.
20: Thanks, figured.
Alcohol is dehydrating, even when fairly dilute. I don't know the threshold, but I watered my 5% beer down by 50% with water or quinine water. This approximates shandy, a weak beer traditionally used by workers out in the hot sun.
NOTE: it's amazing how useless autocorrect and autofill succeed in being. Performance like that doesn't come cheap.
I accidentally drank shandy recently and it was almost good enough to make up for containing beer. Also wiki says it was invented 100 years ago to rip off cyclists.
13 I thought 6 was proposing a new restaurant concept where you bring in ingredients you need to use up and they come up with a recipe
It's amazing that the PNW is hotter than Arrakis now. (Arrakis will get still hotter in a couple of weeks but we have AC everywhere.)
It's hot in NYC, but normal summer hot. Somehow, though, the PNW heat wave is the first climate change thing that has viscerally frightened me. I've been intellectually worried about the planet and refugees and society for ages, but I've always felt as if I, personally, was probably going to just fine. 116 degrees in Oregon feels like something that might kill me.
Arrakis will get still hotter but because you have AC everywhere.
Yeah, 116F is fairly normal for Arrakis in July and August with highs of around 120-122F. I'm kind of used to it by now, that same temp in the PNW is terrifying.
A friend in Brazil relayed a story saying that Portland was hotter than anywhere but the Sahara, the Persian Gulf, and Death Valley. Some say this item is bogus. some say it's valid, who is to say? But I'll keep telling the story.
31:
Portland broke the record twice - 108°F (42°C) on Saturday 112°F (44.4°C) on Sunday
With temperatures surpassing the 45 degrees Celsius-mark across several parts in north India, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Sunday issued a "red" warning for Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Rajasthan for the next two days. The IMD has also issued an orange warning for heatwave for east Uttar Pradesh, said Kuldeep Srivastava, the head of IMD's Regional Meteorological Centre. He cautioned that temperatures could soar up to 47 degrees Celsius in some parts over the next 2-3 days.
Seattle has returned to merely very hot for us, but Spokane is still in the cooker, with worse overnights.
My house was OK without AC because we have a little basement, and trees, and heavy walls, and could get it just enough cooled down at night -- but that's because we could open the windows because it isn't smoke season yet, and we aren't under water restrictions because the snowpack hasn't melted yet. But the dome was over the snowpack. Fuck, this is going to get bad.
Half the Olympic Peninsula went well over 100F, too. Nowhere is safe.
I guess that's why they had to delay some of the Olympic trials.
It's an opportunity to practice on fake snow, just like the fake snow in the Gobi they won't have to perform on when the Olympics are boycotted.
I was wondering where the line went between "high enough up on the mountains for the weather to be nice" vs. "high enough on the mountain that it's too snowy to camp."
I am enjoying the relative novelty of a heat wave on the west coast that isn't right over my town. I know it is just a matter of time, but dodging one of them is surprising and new.
Last year when it got to 120 in the San Fernando Valley, my brother and I took a walk around the block in it. My conclusion was that anything over 108 feels the same. But when we got back into air conditioning, I didn't stop sweating for half an hour.
You can't go up in the mountains for it to cool down; that's where the fires happen.
Useful thread on what kind of weather conditions actually kill people and how - finally explaining, for me at least, why the 2003 Europe heat wave killed tens of thousands despite being temperatures that, dry, are perfectly livable (and not just lack of AC).
36: The dry adiabatic lapse rates is ~5.4°F/1000 ft. This is the change in temperature per 1000 ft. when the air is dry which is probably a pretty good bet under a high pressure dome like the one that has been affecting the Pacific NW (I saw a satellite pic where it was noted that it was the rare time when you could basically see all of the Cascades with no cloud cover). There are other complicating factors such as up slope winds and increased insolation at higher elevations which tend to lessen the differential somewhat. It looks like Paradise Inn at 5400 ft. on Rainier has had highs in the upper 80s.
Typically the temperature differential between the Cascades and the Puget Sound area is smaller because the air becomes saturated at some point and the moist adiabatic lapse rates is lower at ~3.3°F/1000 ft. But since a lot of it rains/snows out going over the mountains it is pretty typical of the differential with places like Yakima. Also why there is a rain shadow.
Looks like they still have some snow on the ground there: https://www.nps.gov/media/webcam/view.htm?id=81B46307-1DD8-B71B-0B72918A4B2EB790
I'm a little confused this site seems to say two feet of snow on the ground near there, but the image seems to be quite a bit less than that: https://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/snow/snowplot.cgi?AFSW1
38: I'm going to assume it's mostly using electric fans in enclosed spaces.
38: I think he's somewhat incorrect about the 2003 heatwave. The wet-bulb temperature was not that high then. My understanding is that it was due to dry-bulb temperatures much higher than he says--over 100F, multiple days in a row--combined with hot nights meaning heat-retaining European buildings didn't have any chance to cool down. Still, as that NOAA article argues, he's right that we should be worried about it and it'll become much more common. (Although I wish he wouldn't refer to "an event where the wet-bulb temperature is too high for human survival" as "a wet-bulb temperature.")
37.1: heh. That makes sense.
One of my feelings this week has been guilt about the many times that I've read stories about extreme weather somewhere and just shrugged and gone on with my life. I mean there's not much to _do_ about somewhere else's weather (in the short term), but living through it is a good reminder to have more empathy for whatever parts of the globe are seeing their weather go haywire next month.
Separately, I am very worried about the wildfire season this year. Seems like it could be bad.
43: I tried, but I could not eat that much spicy, pickled, cabbage.
NickS, you are a good person. My empathy for weather extremes is exhausted. I felt like Cassandra for a decade and now I figure people must want this outcome because they sure worked hard enough to bring it about. If I have a chance to influence an outcome, I'll do what I can. But sending empathy out into the world? I'm done.
(Heh. Some of you may believe that I never had that much empathy to start with. Possibly, but I did used to care about environmental outcomes.)
I think these days people say that compassion is better than empathy, so you're off the hook!
I can't be empathetic because the clothes are too tight.
Not sure I have that either. I think I do still have an intellectual decision to do right by the environment and some people. Barely.
I mean, I'm not above feeling good that I live in an area that is low on the list of places likely to suffer from climate change.
I'm not trying to claim any moral high ground, just noting that I have much more frequently read about extreme weather elsewhere than experienced it myself.
The Intermountain/Southwest just came out of a bad heat dome but we are so screwed. Water levels locally look like late August. And, of course, it's a feedback loop. The Great Salt Lake causes lake-effect snow to drop on the mountains that replenish the lake. When the lake is low, the storms in the winter miss us, so then the lake is lower....
A few years ago the legislature made it illegal for communities to ban fireworks for a solid two weeks in July (because freedumb) and so now under a historic drought cities are really having to get creative to keep the morons from burning down the state. My town seems to have figured out a way around it: they're allowed to ban fireworks if there is vegetation at risk of fire (e.g., the neighborhoods up against the mountain), and, hey, they asked us all to let our lawns go dormont, so now we have a townwide ban.
Hopefully they had ordered no lawn watering independently of the fireworks issue, for water reasons? It would be a little weird to create fire risk in order to mitigate it.
51 is staggering except I live with similar morons in Texas.
53: Ha, yes! We are going to run out of water by mid-August without the restrictions.
54: Apparently the ONLY way to be patriotic is to let people set off fireworks with NO restrictions between July 2 and 7th. And then again on Pioneer Day (July 24th). There was no rash of commies restricting celebrations that prompted this, just a moment of grandstanding out of (iirc) Orem. I shouldn't be surprised that right wing patriotism is indistinguishable from a teenaged temper tantrum at this point, but here we are. A new apartment complex burned to the ground a couple of miles from here a few nights ago (no injuries, fortunately) so maybe the silver lining is that it will be a wake-up call? Or maybe when we're out of water the fire will just take the whole town.
38 is interesting, and reading a little more, I'm confused. Like, I don't understand if wet-bulb-temperature ought to have it's own units? They say "wet bulb temperature of 79° F" and I can't tell if they mean it was actually 79 with a dangerously high humidity, or if they mean a modified 79, the way we say a wind chill temperature or a heat index temperature. Or do they mean that wet bulb temperature is just a notch that occurs on a thermometer, and depends on location and context? It must be that.
37: I had similar thoughts; it's rare that the Central Valley isn't baking -- though 104 today is plenty warm, we do all have air conditioners, since we expect 100+ (40C+) for months every year. I'm very sympathetic to the people who have houses built for holding in heat that are enduring this weather without A/C.
42 to 56. You're correct, it's the last one. You basically take a thermometer and put a wet rag on it and see what it reads. If it isn't too humid, it'll be able to cool by evaporative cooling and so it'll read a lower number than a dry-bulb (regular) thermometer. If it's too humid, that doesn't work and so the temperature will be closer to the dry-bulb temperature. This is relevant because evaporative cooling is also the main way we cool. If the wet-bulb temperature is above 97.8F, then people are completely hosed because they won't be able to pump their excess heat back into the atmosphere via sweat. And that's just a bound, since the process isn't immediate nor perfect. So that's why wet-bulb temperatures in the 80s Fahrenheit are killer.
they asked us all to let our lawns go dormont
They should have the lawns go Mount Lebanon, the schools are better there.
[S]evere thunderstorms occurring at present are indeed pyro-convective events: wildfire-generated severe storms, complete with abundant lightning and strong winds.
In British Columbia.
https://twitter.com/Weather_West/status/1410391512907542530
58: I believe the wet bulb is supposed to have air blowing past it as well (removing from the immediate vicinity of the thermometer the more saturated air that results from the evaporation). Also why fans help keep you cool even when they are just circulating the same temperature air (and can be critical in preventing heat deaths in extreme situations). Temperature (also called dry bulb temperature in this context) is greater than the dewpoint which is greater than the wet bulb temperature. Drier the air, the bigger the gap betwixt them (in saturated air 9fog) all three are the same value.
Here are some extensive charts showing dry bulb, wet bulb, dewpoint and relative humidity. They are elevation-dependent as pressure plays a role in the thermodynamics of evaporation. (And apparently latitude-dependent in some way(?) as the elevation ranges are different for Alaska than the rest of the US.
The charts illustrate phenomenon ITIHMHB which is the ability of things to freeze when the regular (dry-bulb) temperature is above freezing (and by a decent amount). Classic example is wet clothing out to dry, especially on a windy day. But more consequentially bridge surfaces (also more of a problem when there is wind).
We learned this in 8th grade earth science. There's a device called a sling psychrometer that is a regular thermometer and a second thermometer wrapped in wet cloth and you spin it around to cause evaporation on the wet thermometer bulb. Then you can compare the two readings and use a chart like the one above to determine dew point and %RH.
Sounds like a great way to break glass.
Warning: Bridge Freezes Before Road For Same Reason You Use A Fan When It's Hot.
65: That's part of it, but it is probably more salient that the bridge surface is more responsive to ambient air temperature in general than other road surface by way of its being surrounded by the air, and not directly underlain by the big thermal reservoir of the ground (which in most borderline freezing scenarios is warmer--although not always, for instance during spring in very cold climates, In conclusion the real treasure was the black ice we didn't see along the way.)