Just How Hot Is It?
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe Strange, Desperate Things Americans Are Doing in This Heat, Hot enough to crash a grid, fry an egg, and force Americans into some strange and desperate acts., Extreme heat in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and beyond: It’s hot, and Americans are doing som
Americans are used to heat waves, but it’s hard to imagine anyone becoming accustomed to this.
Record temperatures have pummeled much of the country this summer, and August could be just as brutal. People are dying in the heat. Phoenix has had temperatures over 110 degrees for three weeks. Grids are straining. And people are behaving in ways—some desperate, some whimsical—that they almost certainly would not under more typical conditions.
How hot is it?
• It is so hot that Texans are preheating their pans in direct sunlight and then frying eggs.
• It is so hot that Los Angeles went and hired a ‘heat officer.’ Marta Segura is coordinating mass media campaigns throughout the city and county to direct people to cooling centers, distribute information about labor conditions in the heat, and encourage people to hydrate and avoid direct exposure to the sun.
• It is so hot that local governments are paying people to use less water in some Arizona cities, in order to avoid a catastrophic shortage. Hard to blame thirsty, sweaty Arizonans when it’s 117 degrees!
• It is so, so hot, and yet Denver has no clear timeline to repair public restrooms and water fountains that are damaged and out of service. As of now, 13 of the city’s 30 outdoor public restrooms are closed.
• It is so ludicrously hot that in Arizona, a local news outlet left a tray of assorted snacks out in the sun to see how fast they’d melt. If you have an hour of mind-numbing free time, you can still watch the recorded Thursday livestream to see whether Red Vines, butter, marshmallows, and some random children’s toys melted first.
• It is so hot that apparently some brains have preemptively liquified. Death Valley is set to reach century-old records of nearly 130 degrees this week, so of course tourists are flocking to the national park to be there when that happens.
• It is so hot that dolphins are turning pink—although this is apparently normal summertime dolphin behavior.
• It is so devastatingly hot that public irrigation systems are the new water parks. Albuquerque, New Mexico, has initiated and extended a ‘sprinkler play’ program in its public parks in the early afternoon each day this week so that kids and their parents can experience the childlike wonder of running through sprinklers—but only under conditions of daily highs above 100.
• It is so hot that a UPS strike has become that much more likely. Motivated in part by the extreme heat, 340,000 UPS workers are on the cusp of a historic work stoppage over the delivery company’s failure to provide better wages, full-time work, and heat protection. Negotiations resume next week.
• It is so hot that people are going into debt and restructuring their finances to stay alive. In Phoenix, people are understandably using their A/C no matter the cost. Residents are trying to run air conditioners during off-peak hours to save money, but the truth is that without cooling air running the majority of the time, it can be incredibly dangerous for people, pets, and marriages.
• It is so hot that even rodents need some relief. I don’t think I’ve ever felt bad for a squirrel before?
• It is so hot that trash is being picked up earlier. Albuquerque is attempting to avoid New York City’s signature summer hot-trash smell and protect waste management and collection workers from the late afternoon’s scorch, shifting its hours to a 5 a.m. start.
Unfortunately, even adjusting trash collection times will not change the fact that all this heat plain stinks.
Ref: slate
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