Hot Hot Hot

Welp. it's official: 95-100 is too hot for me. Brooklyn, along with lots of other places this weekend, is cooking.

Meanwhile, while nobody is looking...
Satellite Images Show Vast Swaths of the Arctic On Fire

My daughter has expressed her displeasure with current Brooklyn weather.
Just this morning, in fact.

Con Ed has managed to piss off a lot of people.

Con Ed Intentionally Cut Power To Swaths Of Brooklyn Amid Heat Wave

I wasn't on that list, but our power has been running at about 100 volts (instead of 120) for the past couple of days. That screws with a variety of equipment. The elevator got turned off because it stopped working (trapping a guy inside). People are finding that their ovens don't work, because the electronic ignition isn't getting enough juice. My cable modem periodically reboots itself, as the power dips a little and makes it think it's been turned off. And some people lost AC because of it. All in all, it could be worse (see above), but they aren't getting any gold stars.

Yeah. You wouldn't think it would cause any problems at all when you stick eight and a half million people on a tiny island that's less than 2,000 times the size of the lot my house sits on (with two people).

It's not like it's a new problem. It gets hot here every summer, and there's been quite a few people here for quite a while.

For a change, the weather in Brooklyn is actually quite nice. Meanwhile...

It Hit 80 Degrees in the Arctic This Week

Note that this is distinctly warmer than Brooklyn.

It's 97 here right now. Will warm up a little tomorrow.

Supposed to be high nineties here this weekend, maybe break three digits. Broke records Monday and Tuesday with 90 both days.

Too hot for my Viking blood.

95.8º here Saturday, 97.8º here today.  I thought that was HOT and sent my thermometer screen to a couple of local friends.



103.8º in Snohomish, north of here.



104.4º in Seattle.

Seattle just topped out.

Tomorrow may be worse.


19 degrees above the all-time record?

One unexpected result of the heat wave: I slept all night. Didn't get up to pee even once.

I had to set up a sprinkler and lay on the lawn.

This damn heat wave / high pressure dome thing is supposed to break overnight, giving us much more moderate temps the rest of the week. The city and county and many facilities like libraries and health clubs have opened their doors as "heat relief centers" but have seen only a handful of takers.

Temps near 100 are uncomfortable, but hardly life threatening. A wet towel, a cold beverage and a fan can provide adequate comfort. I bought a kiddie pool for the dogs, but they refuse to enter on their own power. They're relieved to be carried into it, and doused with cold water, but jump out again as soon as you let them go. And go back to panting.

So, it's only June. A couple days into the official summer. Seattle usually doesn't get high temps until mid-July & August. Not sure what to expect this year. Was this an anomaly, or a harbinger? We've always been the moderate section of the country, being surrounded by lots of water and getting a lot of wind off the ocean.

Hopefully we're done. But the rest of the country may find 2021 deadly hot.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Hopefully we're done.  

On reflection, I decided it would be unwise to assume that this once-in-a-lifetime heat wave won't recur. And soon....

So I ordered a portable A/C unit with built in dehumidifier, 10,000 BTU. Highly rated.

Cheaper than a heat pump, which we priced 2 months ago when we had our furnace replaced. And surprisingly, still in stock.

I had to trim down some doors. Heat caused them to expand.

OK, it was more of a village than a town, but still, it just burst into flames...

Wildfire Devastates Canadian Town That's Been Suffering Through 121 Degree Heat

Quote :

“It took a whole 15 minutes from the first sign of smoke to, all of a sudden, there being fire everywhere,” the mayor of Lytton, Jan Polderman, told CBC News late Wednesday.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I ordered a portable A/C unit with built in dehumidifier, 10,000 BTU.

A/C unit came right on time, and looks to be exactly what we need.  Easily stowable in the furnace room when not needed, but we can roll it out quickly next time it's needed.

The Fed-Ex driver said his truck was FULL of air conditioners.

It vents through a dryer hose-like arrangement, mounted in an adjustable panel meant to be wedged into a slider window.

That's fine for the bedroom, but our living room has casement (hinged) windows.

Looking on YouTube for various homebuilt solutions -- surprisingly there apparently isn't a manufactured solution to this very common issue -- I think I found the best way to prevent the hot exhaust from coming back in the open window.

Now just have to find somebody to router an oval hole in a piece of polycarbonate.

Tap Plastics wrote:

Any one of our WA stores can make that for you. Currently they are making a record number of vent windows so contact your nearest store Monday morning.

Quote :

Death Valley in southeastern California’s Mojave Desert reached 53 degrees Celsius (127F) on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service’s reading at Furnace Creek.  If confirmed as accurate, the 54C reading would be the highest recorded there since July 1913, when Furnace Creek desert hit 57C (135F), considered the highest measured temperature on Earth.

Our mountains lost 30% of their snow pack, over 100 inches of snow, during the 5-day heat wave.  Temps up there got up to 65-70 degrees, where it usually remains below freezing even in the summertime.

People reported hearing avalanches 100 miles away.  Our rivers are cresting.

Tap Plastics knew exactly what I wanted when I showed up with the oval template. The guy said every day since the heat wave at least one customer has ordered a "vent window" from them. I didn't even have to leave my example -- they already had an oval AC vent template in the fab shop....

Rather than one 59" x 29" sheet of polycarbonate, I'm having them cut two squares 29x29, with one of them having the oval hole, off-center. That way I can orient the hole whichever way turns out to be most convenient, and I think two squares will be easier to store than one large panel and less fragile.