If photosynthesis stops at 105F What\'s up in AZ ?
Phoenix in the Grip of Unrelenting Heat
By FERNANDA SANTOS Published: August 14, 2012 - NYTimes.com
It is too hot here for anyone to laugh at jokes about rattlesnakes battling humans for the littlest piece of shade, too hot for spicy Mexican food in the barrio, too hot for the lone protester who has been camping out in front of the county courthouse to maintain his vigil past 5 p.m.
“That’s when I pack up and go home,” the protester, Chet Molandis, who was born in Texas and raised in Arizona, said at high noon on Monday before taking a drink of water from the canteen he keeps close by. “There’s no outlasting this heat.”
The temperature rises cruelly here as the day goes on — hot in the morning, very hot by midday and still hot late at night. While that is not uncommon for August, when the mercury breaches the triple digits practically every day, it has been particularly vicious of late as the same routine has played out day after day.
The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning on Aug. 6 and has extended it all the way through 8 p.m. on Wednesday. Ken Waters, the agency’s warning-coordination meteorologist in Phoenix, spoke cautiously, though, saying there is “a little bit of relief” in sight, but “not much, really,” just “a bit of a drop in temperatures.”
Another sign it is hot? The tone of resignation in a meteorologist’s forecast.
The proof is in the numbers.
The last time the temperature dipped below 90 degrees in Phoenix was at 6 a.m. on Aug. 6. Two days later came the hottest day of the current heat wave — “I guess we can call it that,” Mr. Waters conceded — and the hottest Aug. 8 ever in Phoenix, when the high reached 116. (The record of 122 degrees was reached on June 26, 1990.)
As of Monday, the average August temperature was 100.2 degrees, or 6.2 degrees higher than normal, Mr. Waters said. By Tuesday, the temperature had reached 110 degrees for nine consecutive days; last year, the longest stretch where temperatures reached or surpassed 110 degrees was six days. Tuesday was also the 31st consecutive day the mercury hit 100 degrees.
“People can handle maybe a couple of days of extreme heat, but when you start getting into so many days in a row, their bodies don’t have a chance to recover,” he said.
Playgrounds are busy at 7 a.m., and in most schools, children do not get to play outside after 10 a.m. Hotels’ bustling business is selling day passes for their pools to locals who do not have a pool of their own.
Streets are deserted, even in the city’s downtown business district. People walk at a pace somewhere between a stroll and a quickstep — not too fast, but fast enough to get them inside as fast as they can.
The heat is so intense it feels as if it is searing the exposed skin. Cracking the front door feels like opening the oven to check the cookies. To enter a car that has been parked in the sun for some time is like stepping inside a wood-burning stove; steering wheels are so hot sometimes they might burn a driver’s fingers. Parents take to draping child seats with sun shades, like the ones they use on windshields.
In Maricopa County, which encompasses Phoenix, health officials have been paying close attention to men in their 20s — “They’re tough, they’re young and they don’t think the heat affects them,” said Jeanene Fowler, a spokeswoman for the county’s health services department. At Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, workers are instructed to keep an eye on one another, looking for signs of heat exhaustion. (Heat does not affect airport operations, but haboobs, the dust storms that are a common occurrence this time of the year, do, as they affect visibility, said Deborah Ostreicher, a deputy aviation director.)
Marcus Freeman, a maintenance worker for the City of Phoenix who was cleaning the windows at the Orpheum Theater downtown on Tuesday afternoon, had his own weather wishes and advice.
“If it rains,” said Mr. Freeman, who has lived here all his life, “hope that it rains hard so there’s no moisture left to make a hot day humid. Because that’s just misery.”
And, he went on, “if you’ve got to be outside, find a piece of shade, any shade, and plant yourself on it.”
-------------------------
Submitted by Bob Wulkowicz
Phoenix in the Grip of Unrelenting Heat
By FERNANDA SANTOS Published: August 14, 2012 - NYTimes.com
It is too hot here for anyone to laugh at jokes about rattlesnakes battling humans for the littlest piece of shade, too hot for spicy Mexican food in the barrio, too hot for the lone protester who has been camping out in front of the county courthouse to maintain his vigil past 5 p.m.
“That’s when I pack up and go home,” the protester, Chet Molandis, who was born in Texas and raised in Arizona, said at high noon on Monday before taking a drink of water from the canteen he keeps close by. “There’s no outlasting this heat.”
The temperature rises cruelly here as the day goes on — hot in the morning, very hot by midday and still hot late at night. While that is not uncommon for August, when the mercury breaches the triple digits practically every day, it has been particularly vicious of late as the same routine has played out day after day.
The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning on Aug. 6 and has extended it all the way through 8 p.m. on Wednesday. Ken Waters, the agency’s warning-coordination meteorologist in Phoenix, spoke cautiously, though, saying there is “a little bit of relief” in sight, but “not much, really,” just “a bit of a drop in temperatures.”
Another sign it is hot? The tone of resignation in a meteorologist’s forecast.
The proof is in the numbers.
The last time the temperature dipped below 90 degrees in Phoenix was at 6 a.m. on Aug. 6. Two days later came the hottest day of the current heat wave — “I guess we can call it that,” Mr. Waters conceded — and the hottest Aug. 8 ever in Phoenix, when the high reached 116. (The record of 122 degrees was reached on June 26, 1990.)
As of Monday, the average August temperature was 100.2 degrees, or 6.2 degrees higher than normal, Mr. Waters said. By Tuesday, the temperature had reached 110 degrees for nine consecutive days; last year, the longest stretch where temperatures reached or surpassed 110 degrees was six days. Tuesday was also the 31st consecutive day the mercury hit 100 degrees.
“People can handle maybe a couple of days of extreme heat, but when you start getting into so many days in a row, their bodies don’t have a chance to recover,” he said.
Playgrounds are busy at 7 a.m., and in most schools, children do not get to play outside after 10 a.m. Hotels’ bustling business is selling day passes for their pools to locals who do not have a pool of their own.
Streets are deserted, even in the city’s downtown business district. People walk at a pace somewhere between a stroll and a quickstep — not too fast, but fast enough to get them inside as fast as they can.
The heat is so intense it feels as if it is searing the exposed skin. Cracking the front door feels like opening the oven to check the cookies. To enter a car that has been parked in the sun for some time is like stepping inside a wood-burning stove; steering wheels are so hot sometimes they might burn a driver’s fingers. Parents take to draping child seats with sun shades, like the ones they use on windshields.
In Maricopa County, which encompasses Phoenix, health officials have been paying close attention to men in their 20s — “They’re tough, they’re young and they don’t think the heat affects them,” said Jeanene Fowler, a spokeswoman for the county’s health services department. At Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, workers are instructed to keep an eye on one another, looking for signs of heat exhaustion. (Heat does not affect airport operations, but haboobs, the dust storms that are a common occurrence this time of the year, do, as they affect visibility, said Deborah Ostreicher, a deputy aviation director.)
Marcus Freeman, a maintenance worker for the City of Phoenix who was cleaning the windows at the Orpheum Theater downtown on Tuesday afternoon, had his own weather wishes and advice.
“If it rains,” said Mr. Freeman, who has lived here all his life, “hope that it rains hard so there’s no moisture left to make a hot day humid. Because that’s just misery.”
And, he went on, “if you’ve got to be outside, find a piece of shade, any shade, and plant yourself on it.”
-------------------------
Submitted by Bob Wulkowicz
