My computer tells me that it’s 100 degrees outside and that we will be having a high temperature of 104 degrees today. I don’t remember it ever being 104 degrees before in this part of the country. It has only reached 100 degrees on a small handful of occasions. This weather is totally aberrant. And it’s dangerous. We have friends who had to take their three-week old infant to the children’s hospital in Philadelphia because they became overheated during a visit to the doctor. We are hoping beyond anything that everything will be okay, but this kind of heat is a major stress on newborns and the elderly. It’s not some kind of joke.
Yes, this particular heat wave has hit us close to home, and it’s stupid to cite every extreme weather event as some kind of proof of climate change. All I know is that I’ve been around for nearly a half-century and I’ve never seen weather this hot. It’s also ridiculous how little it has rained in the last two months. The only upside is that the lack of standing water fixed our mosquito problem. Yet, when I water my garden it is instantly overrun with stinging insects desperate for some water.
Our consumption of energy is causing these extreme changes in climate and, yet, our response is to use record amounts of energy.
Indeed it is. Although it’s not so much the heat as the humidity. I let the dogs out and I could barely breath when I went outside. The air is that thick. But the heat index here is 113 right now.
It does seem unusual in the sense that the extreme heat covers such a large area. The experience during my lifetime isn’t enough to draw any conclusions, though. I’m 10 years or so older than you and I remember hotter and drier spells than the current one around here. It certainly has been a year of extremes for us. A very cold winter with a lot of snow which stayed on the ground a long time. Unprecedented rains during a very cold spring which has sidelined a lot of local farmers and now this heat wave and dry spell.
Of course, the actual historic weather data will tell the tale. But in today’s political climate, we all know that actual quantified data has a severe liberal bias. As a result, it has no credibility in the argument.
I’m old enough to remember when science was respected and their findings actually meant something. Will we ever get back to those days??
Current heat index = 115º
Taking the dog out to pee = nearly lethal to an old woman
We are fortunate to have a well to water our garden so it’s only the pump electricity that costs us to keep it going in the drought BUT that means we have to go outside to harvest our blueberries, okra, squash, tomatoes and corn, etc. I’ve taken to getting up a 5am because waiting till near dark doesn’t cool the air that’s been heated all day. Even at 5:30am, when there’s enough light to see and be warned of the presence of the neighborhood bear, it is unGAWDly hot and I don’t last long. My husband has snake blood so he goes out in the evening for 30 or so minutes. He brought in some tomatoes yesterday evening and, I swear, they were already cooked–stewed on the vine!
What has become a glaring fact is that we as families are not, nor can we be, prepared for these extremes. Likewise, our govt’s from top to bottom are ill prepared to offer anything but bandaid infrastructure aid and whether it’s Limbaugh crowing that this is normal and indeed a liberal govt conspiracy telling us it’s more humid/hotter than it really is, or Jim Imhoff declaring that it is all a hoax, the reality of this year’s weather; regardless of whether it relates to climate, is so severe that govt needs to address it immediately.
The heat is literally killing people here in Dayton. One man was found out in the street, disoriented and confused. He was taken to the hospital, where his core body temperture was 108 degrees. He died there.
We’ve had the ghastly high temps in the 90’s with heat indices over a hundred for several days now; almost a week. Our grass looks like shredded wheat biscuits. It’s not supposed to ease up until Tuesday.
I predicted a hot, dry summer after our cold, rainy spring. We no longer have the four seasons I remember; spring is an afterthought of winter and autumn is a week between hot and cold weather.
From the National Climatic Data Center
Yep, Rush is right. It’s all in your head.
Or what I said here:
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2011/7/18/124854/519/3#3
Or what I said here:
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2011/7/18/124854/519/3#3
Damn double post. Sorry. I think the only thing we can do politically is to continue talking about the issue and never let up. We were making some headway and then Obama got elected and we shut up about it compared to what had gone on before. That was our mistake. If you don’t constantly talk about something the public forgets.
rookies
Yes, but yours is a dry heat. 😉
Meanwhile, in the forgotten Pacific NW, it’s 65 today. We’ve yet to have an 80 degree day this year, and today is one of the few sunny days in what are normally cloud- and rain-free summers in these parts. It was the coldest spring on record here, and on pace to be the same for summer. Extreme in the other direction.
We’d rather have our anomaly than yours, but it’s still an anomaly. A major one.
It’s 82 degrees here and so very humid at 1 a.m.