WEATHER II: Hell on Earth

[Büge]

We're in the middle of a stretch of about ten days non-stop rain (barring one clear day two days ago), fairly heavy at that.

For Toronto, this is insane. We don't (didn't?) have a monsoon season. Obviously there's flooding etc.

Coming up next: frost.

[Silversong]

At 7:30 am it was already so hot and muggy that walking to work was laboriously breathing soup while becoming drenched in sweat. And it's not even technically summer yet.

[Grath]

At 7:30 am it was already so hot and muggy that walking to work was laboriously breathing soup while becoming drenched in sweat. And it's not even technically summer yet.

Oh but don't worry, climate change is a Chinese hoax.

It's been high-90s here, but thankfully that's supposed to break at least some and go down to a high of 71 on Friday.

[Brantly B.]

Sooooo uh how's it feel to get hit with the Light of Judgment, Thad?

I made the intelligent choice to plan a drive to Vegas this weekend but fortunately by then the worst of it will have passed (and it will simply be "very bad").

[MarsDragon]

We're getting a heatwave here over the weekend. It might even hit 90F.

....I'm so glad I moved here.

[Silversong]

Woke up to sun-derstorms this morning, which was crazy. Also we're having a surprisingly mild weekend in the low 70s! Party at my place!

[beatbandito]

Twenty degree split all day every day. I need to design a system that drops heavier blankets on me throughout the night.

[Grath]

Woke up to sun-derstorms this morning, which was crazy. Also we're having a surprisingly mild weekend in the low 70s! Party at my place!

Tsunderestorms? It's not like it wanted to rain on you...

[Thad]

Sooooo uh how's it feel to get hit with the Light of Judgment, Thad?

I made the intelligent choice to plan a drive to Vegas this weekend but fortunately by then the worst of it will have passed (and it will simply be "very bad").

And I made the intelligent choice to take a vacation in Flagstaff this week.

Had it planned for weeks, actually (my first paid vacation in 10 years!); lucked into it coinciding with the aforementioned Light of Judgement. (Though it wound up not being as bad as the forecasts said. Tuesday was projected to tie the all-time record of 122 degrees; instead it was "only" 119.)

Flagstaff was hot for Flagstaff. It was in the 90s. (Flagstaff's all-time high is 97; it got as high as 92 this week.) I have never been in Flagstaff on a 90-degree day before, and now I've been there on four.

But our first day there, it did what it always used to do every afternoon in August when I'd move up there for the year: there was a light shower, followed by absolutely beautiful 70-degree weather for the rest of the day.

I fucking love Flagstaff. (Though I expect I would love it significantly less if I'd owned a car when I lived there, because driving around town there is terrible.)

Home now. Turned the AC down from 85 to 77 when we got in around 7 PM; it is now 10 and it's only gotten down to 81. (According to azcentral.com, it is currently 110 degrees out, but hey, it feels like it's only 106!) Also there was a fire right at the fucking Phoenix city limits that closed the I-17 and turned the 3-hour drive home into a 5-hour drive home.

But hey, we missed the 119-degree day. Tomorrow's forecast is 112, so...yay?

[Caithness]

Woke up to sun-derstorms this morning, which was crazy. Also we're having a surprisingly mild weekend in the low 70s! Party at my place!

I was driving through some of those to my cousin's graduation in western NY. The sunlight makes visibility even worse!

[Silversong]

Thad and Brentai, is that "dry heat" I've heard so much about really so much more tolerable at insanely high temperatures? I've never really experienced it-- it got above 100 here one summer in memory, but it was also like 70% humidity.

[Brantly B.]

As far as comfort goes, yes. Since you cool yourself by sweating and letting the sweat evaporate (ideally), your body is able to cool itself more effectively when there isn't much other moisture in the air. As a bonus, in very dry climates like the Mojave your sweat evaporates so quickly that you barely have time to feel it, meaning that you can stand right outside in 110+ heat and not feel drenched or anything at any point. Most people can acclimate to the actual raw heat once they get over the initial temperature differential, meaning they'll stand outside happily feeling boss as they act unconcerned about the actual fever temperatures around them.

Now, does this mean dry heat is better? HELL no. Thing about cooling yourself by sweating that fast is that it dehydrates your body REALLY quickly, and you need to stay hydrated to... well, to do practically everything your body does. Unfortunately human beings are really poor at determining their own hydration levels - the only cue we have that we're losing moisture to sweat is when we become covered with it, which as I mentioned doesn't actually happen in dry heat so you end up not actually aware that you're sweating. But you ARE sweating - very, very quickly.

Assuming you're adequately hydrated beforehand, in the current heat if you go stand outside in the Mojave and don't drink any water, you will start to feel the first effects of dehydration - a pounding headache - in about 15 minutes. I don't have a timeline for the rest but basically you need to get the hell inside very quickly before the next symptoms occur - nausea, vomiting (which causes WAY MORE dehydration), and then passing out right there in the sun. Sometimes people skip the first three and go right to the fourth, meaning you get no warning at all before you wind up on your knees.

Even if you don't get dehydration sickness, becoming even mildly dehydrated is just very tiring. People in Las Vegas are exhausted all the damned time, and unfortunately there are just so many reasons to be exhausted here that they tend not to pay as much attention to dehydration as a major factor, so they go ahead and drink a bunch of coffee and alcohol and aggravate the situation. I assume people who live in other desert cities are a LITTLE bit smarter about it, but in general people who are used to this are up against the problem of "Your body isn't properly telling you why it's so fucked up at almost every moment."

So, tl;dr: Dry heat is less immediately uncomfortable and potentially less immediately dangerous (very high heat + very high humidity will cause instant heat stroke, so fortunately we don't get that), but it can screw you over in ways you don't see coming if you don't know about them, and even inside shelter and air conditioning the problem doesn't really go away. It's shittier than muggy heat but you won't know why until it's too late.

I'm gonna drink some water now.

[Brantly B.]

Oh hey it'll be 95F/75% when I get back to California today.

Guess I'll have a chance to compare. Whee!

[nosimpleway]

Having moved from Nashville, where the mosquitoes swim, to Denver, where the primary geological feature is that big-ass rain shadow immediately to the west:

It is 500% more comfortable but there is a reason everyone here carries a water bottle. Brentai's essay is that reason.

[Yoji]

So to survive in the Southwest, everyone learns Flash Sweat?

[Silversong]

For the past week or so here, the weather has been ~just right~.

[Rico]

People in Las Vegas are exhausted all the damned time, and unfortunately there are just so many reasons to be exhausted here that they tend not to pay as much attention to dehydration as a major factor, so they go ahead and drink a bunch of coffee and alcohol and aggravate the situation.

I don't live in Vegas, but as I sit here in the coffee capitol sipping this 7.2% beer in lieu of the water sitting right next to it, I'm going to use popular Internet phrase "It me".

[Büge]

Apparently it's so hot in Arizona that plastic is literally melting in the sun.

[Thad]

Hey, that was LAST week.

We're back down to 108 now.

[Yoji]