It is a great resort destination! Right now the entire city is a bit messy though because they’re working on a massive metro project.
But seriously, it’s only this hot in the summer, where if you’re coming to the region you’re better off probably in Egypt in Alexandria or Sharm El Sheikh or Hurghada, but in the winter the weather’s perfect here, and that’s when they host the Dubai Shopping Festival which is actually pretty great overall.
There’s a really interesting book about the Chicago heat wave of 1995 called Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago that talks about everything that goes into the dying during a heat wave. Generally, of course, the primary causes are poverty and age, but these manifest themselves in surprising ways. During previous heat waves, people would sleep outside on their stoops or porches, but in 1995, the neighborhoods (where there were significant deaths) had gotten a lot worse, so these old folks would be closed up in their apartments (windows closed, doors closed, etc) for fear of crime and the heat just overwhelmed them.
And there were problems with slow government response and a lot of other individually trivial things that snowballed (ha!) to cause bunches of heat wave deaths.
Bah this heat totally sucks. 115 outside and the pool is 93 fucking degrees! It’s so warm inside that I can’t even keep my overclocked CPU overclocked without it locking up or rebooting on me. Oh well I’ve been using the time to reread Dune to figure out a way to make my own stillsuit.
It will cool down around Seattle tomorrow. THANK GOODNESS. I have to sleep during the day and my new house has no AC, so I have been getting a whopping 3 hours or so.
My little weather widget on my ibook tells me that it will drop down to 29C tomorrow and way down to 25 by Friday. I never thought I’d be looking forward to the day when Vancouver is only 29C.
Yesterday Concord (where I live, east of Berkeley) had record high temperature of 112 degrees F. Our power blacked out at 3 pm, came back on briefly at 5:30 pm, out again at 6 pm, then back on at 8:30 pm. It was 85 degrees inside, almost 30 degrees hotter outside.
The record wasn’t very meaningful for Concord since records only started recently. But a record was also set in Livermore, just south of us – 113 degrees, beating the 1906 record of 109 degrees.
Any fucking moron who still doesn’t think global warming is happening deserves to get heatstroke and die.
We’re going to move out of this area, probably in early 2008. The trend here is not sustainable. I expect major northwards migrations to start probably in the 2020 timeframe, and we’re going to beat the rush. (Unless cooling and power technology take some major leaps, which is certainly possible… but not something I want to bank my family’s security on, and this is becoming a major basic health issue.)
You spoke too soon. They revised the forecast overnight and it’s now supposed to be over 90 again today. Four straight days over 90 is pretty rare for this area.
Heh, I once had a 12 hour stopover in Bahrain. Air conditioned airport, air conditioned shuttlebus to air conditioned 4 star hotel… I showered, took the elevator down and left the hotel… pow! 50C and humid as hell and since this wasn’t an expected opportunity I was in a black tee and black levis with all my spare clothes checked in… but I only had about 15 hours in a plane ahead.
Here it’s about 30C but since this country is supposed to have two seasons - white winter and green winter - it’s against the law to complain about the heat if you’re not a farmer (they can freely change between the words heat and humidity and prattle on as they always do).
Jesus. I’m glad I wasn’t in Sac last week. Northern Nevada has been at a comparitively balmey 90ish.
I rented a room at a motel for my last day here, cranked that bitch to high-speed cooling and all the way down. First time I’ve gotten 8 hours in a week now. Friend’s house at which I was staying = no AC. :(
News is reporting we might get rolling blackouts later this afternoon. I hope the neighbors won’t mind me playing in the sprinklers with their kids.
sooooo hot
Does anyone else find in california find the flex power thing interesting? It seems like at least half the population ignores the ‘don’t use appliances until after 7’ rule, as the washer/dryers in my complex are still running non-stop, and every single business has the AC cranked to around 70, when it should be 78. (And a good portion of those businesses leave the damned doors open, which is even more wasteful )
We had our record nighttime high of 70 degrees last night in the Seattle area. Yeah, I know, 70 is nothing to most of you, but four days straight of 90 degree temperatures BLOWS. I hate summer.
California apparently avoided stage 3 today partly because at least a few people actually got a fucking clue and cut back on the ol’ power consumption.
Including us… we set the thermo up to 85, covered the skylights with tinfoil, kept all the drapes closed all afternoon, and haven’t done laundry in a few days. And we only had 30 minutes of blackout today, versus five total hours yesterday. Hopefully we’re through the worst of it…
Dude fuck that shit I pay for the power and I expect to use it. Just because these bitches wont build more Nucluar ( or how ever that douche says it) power plants aint my problem… I mean shit this isn’t the first time in so many years we have had power problems.
Dude fuck that shit I pay for the power and I expect to use it. Just because these bitches wont build more Nucluar ( or how ever that douche says it) power plants aint my problem… I mean shit this isn’t the first time in so many years we have had power problems.
Man, people here expect and respect that we have to save on water (like no watering of lawns) because drinkable water is a limited natural resource, but if somebody told us we couldn’t use our appliances as much as we wanted?!?
The only thing limiting your consumption should be the size of your wallet and conscience - if I had the money or inclination to run my AC all day, and the power company told me I couldn’t…
I don’t get it. Free market, capitalism, Arnold et al - why are these guys still in business?
The problem is, power companies usually don’t own all of their own generating sources. They have to buy their power from other companies (remember enron?) and if they can’t get enough power purchased, they can’t provide all the power to the people.
On another heat related subject - getting sick when it’s this hot is terrible. I’ve had some sort of food poisoning that is doing a number on my body, and the heat added to it has made me literally want to just lie down and die. :(
Sure man, you pay for the power and by Christ it’s your goddamn right to use it. Rock on. You da man. (Men, I guess.)
My wife and I, on the other hand, are happily gonna keep working on using LESS energy. Why? 1) Saves us money. 2) Reduces stress on the grid – I’d rather have SOME power than NO power. 3) Means the whole fucking planet stays cooler.
But all y’all “I can use as much energy as I can afford, because I’m special, I deserve it” types can go on burning as much fuel as you like. Enjoy your SUVs and shit, too, while you’re at it. Turn your thermostats down to 55, why the fuck not? (My wife overheard a woman complaining about the heat today, and talking about doing just that.)
And when the Big Blackout comes, during the 140 degree heat wave of 2015, you can sit there and go “What the fuck, yo??? I PAID MY MONEY!!!” right up until you die of heatstroke. IT’LL BE FUN!!!
Wow. Way to redirect.