"Rare, Dangerous" Heat Headed To Parts Of The Western U.S

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- It's a dry heat, Phoenix residents like to say about Arizona's hot weather. That bravado may vanish as the thermometer flirts with 120 degrees this weekend.

Phoenix won't be alone in the oven. A strengthening ridge of high pressure lifting out of Mexico is on course to also scorch other parts of Arizona and southeast California, bringing potentially record-shattering temperatures.

Though accustomed to triple digits, the upcoming heat spell is a rarity in Phoenix, a desert metropolis of 1.5 million people, raising concerns of heat stroke.

Temperatures are predicted to hit 118 degrees in Phoenix on Sunday and peak at 119 degrees Monday. Such heat is "rare, dangerous and deadly," according to a National Weather Service warning.

"This is extreme even for our standards," said Matthew Hirsch, a weather service meteorologist in Phoenix.

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_EXTREME_HEAT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-06-17-02-25-45

[eastwestdem]

1. Bad news for the firefighters in Southern California. Stay safe!! nt

[orwell]

2. Rare climate extremes...

...except that they seem to be happening all the time.

[HubertHeaver]

3. And my air conditioner is broke

[Fumesucker]

6. I picked up a 9,000 BTU portable AC at a yard sale for $25 a couple of weeks ago..

One similar to this...



I'm going to put it in my bedroom after a remodel so I can turn off my whole house AC at night and still sleep cool while saving energy.

[Dhantesvz]

8. those work great

I have one of those for my room in Southern California and it works great during summertime, though it only tends to cool to about 70-75 degrees which may not be cool enough for some people. One problem I have with it is that it does tend to cause my breakers to trip and for me to have to go reset them on hot days. But it sure saves a ton of money I never run my air condition.

[L. Coyote]

14. The AC standard in AZ is to set the temp to 78°

Anything lower is just a waste of energy in most homes anyway, but also 78° seems really cool when it is over 110 outside.

[dbackjon]

32. 68

[L. Coyote]

33. That's the winter heat setting.

And you're the reason we had to put covers on thermostats on campus....

[Hortensis]

36. 78 here in soupy-humid Georgia,

with a ceiling fan running nearby, is comfortable for me, and I have developed heat intolerance as a medical condition. Getting too warm brings on disabling flares of an autoimmune disorder, and overheating's become increasingly easy.

I've read that whereas cold can kill anyone, heat tends to "temporally displace" mortality -- i.e., it mostly takes out frail people, usually the old and ill, who just die somewhat sooner than they would have. It seems likely, though, that a lot more people are dying these days from being unable to shelter from extreme heat the same as cold. Like young, healthy people in India trying to work through their summer the way they always had.

The desert's so beautiful and I've always loved it, though. Best wishes to all out there, and hope everyone has a fallback plan just in case the worst happens and power goes down and stays down. Plenty of water on hand, including in a topped-up car.

[CelticWarrior1]

10. I used to have a similar model

I live in PA near a river and the humidity can get pretty bad here. Those types of AC's act as a dehumidifier. I used to put an oscillating fan in front of the blower as well, it really helped cool my bedroom down.

[HubertHeaver]

13. Thanks for the suggestion.

I will be getting my unit repaired today, I hope.
I could use just such unit in case of breakdown.

[jtuck004]

4. Cool Yourself Without Air Conditioning

and others: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=ways+to+cool+without+air+conditioning&ia=web

1 - Sleep cooler. If the heat is keeping you from resting at night, try these ideas:
Get a fan for your room...
2 - Just add water. The relief is almost immediate, and will last for up to one hour or more.
Drink water frequently. ...
3 - Dress appropriately. There are several strategies to dress (or undress) for the heat, depending on your situation:
Wear nothing... (my note: inside, anyway - not outside)
4 - Alter your diet. What you eat and drink can help keep you cool as well.
Stock your freezer with flavored ice treats...


More at link: http://www.wikihow.com/Cool-Yourself-Without-Air-Conditioning


Any ideas?

[diane in sf]

5. Get a portable swamp cooler, they use less power than AC.

If you can't do that, park a big bowl of ice water in front of a fan. Wear woven cotton or linen, not knits.

[NNadir]

11. If one uses one's own freezer to generate the ice, one will have a thermodynamic nightmare.

I used to do this when I was a child, put a swamp cooler filled with ice in my window. (My parents were not educated, and thought this was a good idea.) Later, when I grew up and became a scientist, I realized why I was always sweltering as a child no matter how much ice I put in the cooler. My room was over the kitchen where the ice was made in the freezer. A refrigerator/freezer is a heat pump, and discharges heat, actually more heat than the heat content of the water, since an electric motor drives the pump and also discharges heat.

Under the right circumstances, one is actually heating one's home by doing this.

If one has cool nights, and one freezes the water at night, the situation is different, of course, but I doubt that 120F days are going to lead to 70F nights.

An air conditioner is also a heat pump, but is designed to pump the heat outside. The use of air conditioners actually makes the outdoors hotter, and is one factor in the existence of urban "heat islands."

[HubertHeaver]

15. These are great suggestions.

It is always good to have strategy to deal with emergency

[jtuck004]

21. It is gonna get deadly hot, and how is the time to get ready. n/t

[haele]

18. Make your own AC unit...

http://www.thegoodsurvivalist.com/5-easy-to-make-homemade-air-conditioners-that-will-save-you-200-per-month-on-your-ac-bill-and-keep-you-frosty-cool-all-summer/

We did something similar when we were renting a 1940's house with no A/C when the temperature got up to the high 90's/low 100's. A 5-gallon Styrofoam cooler, a small desk fan, a 90 degree plumber's tube, and a couple trays with either frozen 2 liter bottles or a small bit of dry ice that would last 8 hours. We set it up in the middle of the front room (west facing) to keep that part of the house cool during the heat of the day so we wouldn't bake in the evening. The back of the house usually remained pretty cool, but there were also nights we moved the set-up into the hallway so both bedrooms could get a blast of cold air when it was time to go to bed with the doors and windows open.
Warning - be careful using dry ice with home-made AC units; the house had transom and dual sash windows where one could open the upper portion of the windows to get cross-flow throughout the house to help push the rising heat out of the house, so using a small portion of dry ice wan't that much of an issue during the morning and afternoon, but remember you need a lot of ventilation in the house if you want to use dry ice.
Both frozen 2 liter bottles and the dry ice kept the house around 70 - 72 degrees, which when there is a breeze off the ocean, can be very comfortable.
It also helped that the house was on a 2 ft. raised foundation rather than a slab.

Haele

[pansypoo53219]

7. meanwhile in milwaukee it barely got to 70f today,

[BlueMTexpat]

9. Wish that I could send the arid West

some of the rain we've been having here lately.

As someone who was raised in a dry-land farming area, I have always appreciated the rainfall. But still ....

[Scientific]

12. Republican denial of climate chaos remains the ultimate, stupid danger...

...to everyone, including them and their children.

S T U P I D P A R T Y (R)

[L. Coyote]

16. So, we'll need to generate more power and that means more pollution and more global warming

and the positive feedback loop just intensifies, ... the warmer it gets the more we heat up the atmosphere.

How many degrees of the urban heat sink outside temperature is the heat from air conditioners running non-stop in every home and business?

[brett_jv]

41. I think that 'heat' is negligible ...

I realize that 'using electricity' by definition means 'heat is generated' due to the laws of thermodynamics, but even in Phoenix w/everyone's AC running, we're talking about a TINY fraction of the overall heat in the area. Heck the car engines on the road are almost certainly contributing substantially more than home AC's ... but even those amounts are likely negligible in terms of what they add to the 'total', as a %.

And at least it's lower-carbon fuel sources for our juice down here like Hydro, Nuclear, and I think some natural gas (and some are wise enough to have rooftop solar).

So just because, yeah, it's HOT ... and we're all running our AC's ... doesn't mean we're adding THAT much carbon to the atmosphere as a result. The fact that the temps outside are .1% higher on average in the Valley due to our AC's running vs. what it would be like if we weren't here ... isn't particularly important in the grand scheme of things. That heat will eventually dissipate.

All the blacktop down here probably contributes more towards raising the average temp than either the cars or the AC's I'd bet.

[L. Coyote]

45. I was hoping for more than a guess.

[dhill926]

17. a VERY good time to live on the coast...

probably only get to 80 or so. Beaches will be crowded...20 miles away it will be in triple digits...

[Adrahil]

19. Not so rare in the coming years, I'm afraid.... NT

[sofa king]

22. Yep

Let's remember the days when we could walk above ground in the summer in Arizona, and the conservatives told their idiot goats that climate change was a myth.

[PasadenaTrudy]

20. Expecting 105 in Pasadena CA

I'll just stay in. These are late summer and fall temps.

[24601]

23. Bull - Miami is out of the playoffs and hasn't been dangerous since LeBron returned to Cleveland

[PasadenaTrudy]

27. Hee hee...

[SaintLouisBlues]

24. Phoenix 1.5 million? Try 4.2 million. As if they need more of a heat island.

Wiki:


As for the 2010 Census, the two-county metropolitan area was reported to have a population of 4,192,887. Metro Phoenix grew by 941,011 people from April 2000 to April 2010, making it one of the fastest growing metro areas in the country.

[dbackjon]

31. City of Phoenix is 1.5 million

[B2G]

25. Not really all that rare.

Phoenix has a hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification BWh), typical of the Sonoran Desert in which it lies. Phoenix has long, very hot summers and short, mild winters. The climate is arid, with plenty of sunshine and clear skies. Average high temperatures in summer are the hottest of any major city in the United States, and the city has more days when the temperature exceeds 100 °F (38 °C) than any other city in the United States.[84] On average (1981–2010), there were 107 days annually with a high of at least 100 °F (38 °C),[85] including most days from late May through early October. Highs top 110 °F (43 °C) an average of 18 days during the year.[86] Every day from June 10 through August 24, 1993, the temperature in Phoenix reached 100 °F (38 °C) or more, the longest continuous number of days (76) in the city's history. Officially, the number of days with a high of at least 100 °F (38 °C) has historically ranged from 48 in 1913 to 143 in 1989. For comparison, From 1870 through 2012, New York City has seen a temperature of 100 °F (38 °C) or more a total of only 61 days.[87] On June 26, 1990, the temperature reached an all-time recorded high of 122 °F (50 °C).[88] However, despite Phoenix's claim to the most extreme temperatures, it does not have the highest average temperature. In that respect it comes in second to Miami, with an average daily temperature of 75 °F (24 °C), compared to Miami's 77 °F (25 °C).[84]

[Warpy]

26. No, it's not. June is the hottest month here in the desert southwest

and the next several days will be in the triple digits, even where I live at high altitude.

Once we survive June, we're usually OK out here. The monsoons provide cloud cover and cool wind even when the rains miss us.

It just sucks until they get here in mid July.

[PasadenaTrudy]

28. I love Oct. in the 505

I'll be there for 2 weeks this year.

[Warpy]

29. My first trip out here was last week of September, first week of October

When I got back to Boston, I was smacked in the face with 40 degree drizzle.

Two years later, I moved here permanently.

[brett_jv]

42. Technically not quite true ...

Phoenix Temps by Month

July is the hottest month in Phoenix, 2nd place is August and June which are tied for AVG, with August having a slightly higher MIN temp.

The years we get a good monsoon those months can 'feel' a LITTLE 'cooler' because we get occasional breaks that we don't get in (esp. the 2nd half of) June, where it clouds over and dumps rain for like an hour or two, sometimes every couple days ... and temps sometimes plummet as low as the 80's during these afternoon storms. We get some GREAT light shows in the sky sometimes too.

Damn now you got me REALLY looking forward to the damn monsoons ... as we stare down 118 for tomorrow. At least it's nice outside right now at 4AM ... feels like it's only around 78F.

That's cause it's still only June.

In July/Aug, unless the monsoons are in effect, it very often doesn't get under 90F all night long, esp. during heat waves.

[mike_c]

30. I spent the past week camping in the Mojave at low elevation...

...and on Sunday my partner and I are heading to southern Arizona. We'll be camping there during the first half of the week, then heading back to California for a few more days in the desert. Bad timing, but I'd already scheduled the trip to visit my mother in Phoenix. Hopefully the temperature will drop somewhat at night, when we're sleeping outside.

Tonight I'm in a hotel in San Diego, enjoying air conditioning, showers, a toilet, and the internet!

I was at Furnace Creek in Death Valley last Wednesday, and that was the hottest temperature that I can ever recall experiencing. The southern California desert was very windy this past week, and at Furnace Creek the hot wind sucked the moisture right out of you. The campground at Stovepipe Wells was closed to all but RVs with full hookups, presumably because it isn't safe without air conditioning. I didn't even inquire at Furnace Creek, but rather left the park and put a couple of thousand feet of elevation between me and sea level. I don't care for national park campgrounds anyway. I cannot imagine what conditions will be like at ultralow elevation on Monday.

[Hortensis]

37. Would love to hear about it.

I miss the desert, but with the kind of temperatures forecast, the nights may not be able to cool down so beautifully.

One summer night we camped not far enough from California's Salton Sea and surrounding agriculture, and air movement brought humidity our way so that sleeping was impossible. We tossed and turned for hours, finally decided it must be near dawn and we'd pull out, only to discover it wasn't even midnight yet.

Furnace Creek in summer! No longer possible for me, but we once toured Death Valley in summer. I remember standing in a scrap of shade in the trapped heat of a fold of a barren canyon wall in the heat, trying to imagine what it would have been like to try to cross it just 100 years before. When my husband was young, the National Forest Service used to close down completely in summer. He knew that because he was young and stupid and thought nothing of traveling its completely empty roads by himself. As long as he had enough beer...

[womanofthehills]

34. We have 2 large fires going on now in NM

and the humidity is 10% - hot and scary. One fire is south of me and one north so I'm getting the smoke. The Dog Head fire has already taken 24 homes plus 21 other types of buildings and is 0 contained. It's burning in a rural area where people have lots of livestock so people are bringing their horses, cows, goats, chickens, dogs, cats, etc to the state fairgrounds in Albuquerque and Estancia. I can see the smoke big time off my deck - it's about 25 miles from me. No rain in immediate forecast and in the 90's all week.

[Hortensis]

38. You're relatively high in elevation, I imagine.

Is 90s high for late June? I remember living in Nevada with a distant view out over the valley, and we'd watch it fill with smoke traveling through from big wildfires in California and the states to the south.

[Night Watchman]

35. "It's a Dry Heat"

Yes. So is fire!

[L. Coyote]

39. Has anyone calculated how much heat the air conditioning of Phoenix Metro produces?

When it is really hot, they produce a lot more heat outside to cool everything inside, thus requiring even more energy to counter the heat produced countering the heat.

[brett_jv]

43. As I mentioned above, it's likely not that much ...

Electrical appliances like AC units generally have a pretty high efficiency rating, and thus don't produce all that much waste heat. Esp. not in comparison to how much heat the damn sun is dumping on us, all that the blacktop is accumulating and releasing, and the car engines burning fossil fuels at like 60% efficiency are.

[former9thward]

40. The heat in Phoenix is not rare.

The last two weeks of June are always our most hottest weather historically. Our hottest recorded temperature, 122, which occurred in 1990, was in late June.

[adigal]

44. Please check on your neighbor's animals, that they aren't tied outside

Or left in cars, even for a minute.

[Purveyor]

47. There are two houses in our rural area that I always keep an eye on both in the summer and winter.

I've more than once 'dropped a dime' on them when I think their dogs are being neglected (which is everyday imo).

[adigal]

48. Thank goodness you do! People can be so cruel. Nt

[riversedge]

46. Severe heat wave in WI last few days also