4616

Jesus, 12.6 inches?

4617

And again:

At the moment, not a cloud to be seen, though the sky is pretty hazy. “Only” 33 degrees so far.

4618

Youch. Is air conditioning common there at all or are most people without?

4619

In residential, it’s virtually unheard of, though most offices have it these days. I paid a lot of money to get it installed in my flat a couple years back, thankfully. Seems to be paying off.

4620

Investing for the future for sure, sadly. :) Glad you have a way of keeping cool!

4621

It’s kind of dumb, as I’m making the climate situation worse by using it, though I am at least on a green energy tariff. Moreover, I wouldn’t have such a need for aircon if my flat wasn’t so well insulated. It’s labelled as energy efficient, because I basically don’t need to turn the heating on in winter, but I’m spending far more on electricity now than I ever did on heating. It’s not like London ever gets really cold.

4622

The irony is that as more people need AC, the worse the greenhouse emissions get unless there’s some monstrous leap in green energy.

4623

I remember standing by the outdoor AC unit as a kid, noticing it was blowing hot air around. I asked my dad “The air conditioner is blowing cold air inside but it’s blowing hot air outside, are we making outside hotter so we need more air conditioning?”. He laughed and said no, that’s not how it works.

Funny how I was actually kinda right, albeit in a very different way that my kid-logic was thinking. :)

4624

I’m at the point where, even though I’ve got central AC for the house, I only use it in extreme heat. It’s all about window fans and strategically switching them from blowing cold air in or hot air out, and maintaining a draft throughout the entire house.

4625

“Extreme heat” for me is pretty much between May-September, unfortunately (we were at 106 degrees the other day). I have been a lot more conservative on what the thermostat is set to, though, and compensate with more use of fans, etc. We also made sure to buy a house that is well-shaded by trees to the west, so we avoid most of the afternoon sunblasting!

4626

Looks like reality slightly undershot the forecasts. Heathrow peaked at a positively chilly 36.3 C, so only the hottest August day since 2003.

4627

I imagine it’s quit humid as well, so that sounds positively awful. I can handle baking in 43+ C if it’s dry but throw a little humidity in there and I pretty much want to kill myself.

4628

Apparently not so much today. 23%, which is as low as it’s been for weeks.

4629

I rent in an old historic neighborhood, so a lot of the trees are bigger than the house. This helps a lot! (Though you risk damage when the big trees/branches fall during a storm.)

4630

Having experienced a Derecho - it’s not something you want to be out and about

4631

I can’t remember 100mph winds in the Midwest in 30 years.

4632

So that’s what it is. Those winds are really messing up the farms around Cedar Rapids, including that of my in-laws. Trees down, roofs blown off buildings, etc…

4633

Coming up on twelve hours without power. This is fun! Tomorrow is save-the-chest-freezer-contents day if we’re still down. ComEd says they’ve restored to 250k/750k hookups and the other 500k will take days, but I’m optimistic because a stop light and a church near us are lit, and there’s a crew working on a bunch of lines that fell on the road next to the stop light.

4634

Yesterday was brutal. That sucked, haha.

I ended up with some damage to a fence but the house seems sound yet, just a ton of debris and tree limbs all over the place I had to pick up, which took a deal of time. My neighbor had two full grown, healthy trees topple into his yard, with lots of folks having no power for about 6 hours (and no cell phone coverage until I woke up this morning, while the internet is still out for me at the house as of when I type this from the office) due to down power lines from trees being flung over. Thankfully my sump pump ran for the full 6 hours on battery, which was nice but stressful. We got a LOT of rain in a very short time, it was biblical.

You just never expect a hurricane in Iowa.

4635

I’ve never heard of a derecho before. We get some really intense canyon winds when there’s a high pressure on one side and low pressure on the other, but it’s very localized (my previous house was in such a zone). Travel 20 miles away from the mouth of the canyon and you might just have a breeze. No tornados, hurricanes, or derechos here, thankyouverymuch.

Hope you all are okay and you get power back, etc!