Meltdown: London's hottest day ever brought on madness that far exceeded the temperature

[marmar]

Meltdown
London’s hottest day ever brought on madness that far exceeded the temperature.

BY IMOGEN WEST-KNIGHTS
JULY 20, 20224:32 PM


(Slate) It is very hot in Britain. At midday on Tuesday, the U.K. recorded its highest-ever temperature of 40.3 degrees Celsius, or 104.5 Farenheit.

Before people who live in Death Valley get angry with me, let me explain why that does in fact count as “very hot” here in London. Our summers used to involve a couple of weeks in the early 20s (around 70 Fahrenheit for Americans), a good bit of rain, and complaints that summer “never really came this year.” No longer. Now, you can bank on weather in the 20s, yes, but also one week where it becomes impossible to remain sane as temperatures and tempers skyrocket. We live in homes originally built for shivering chimney sweeps or something, and so on the whole, homes are built to keep heat in. I have never been in a home in this country that had air conditioning. Most of us didn’t even know how to keep a house cool until a few years ago when this first started happening consistently, blithely leaving our windows open and saying “I’ll just buy a fan if it gets hot” every day for a month until they sell out when it does in fact get hot.

How are we dealing with it? Not well. There is nothing like a weather event to short fuse the collective consciousness of the United Kingdom at the best of times. Temperatures in double digits Celsius are enough to guarantee that there will be British people out in the parks sunbathing. So instead of hearing 40 degrees Celsius and thinking “batten down the hatches, it’s time for a cold bath,” they think “tops off lads, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime tanning opportunity.” We can’t, as a nation, get our head around what it means to live in that heat. I went out to buy some food, battling headwinds that felt like standing in front of an oven, and found myself reading car number plates and not quite being able to remember how the shapes of the letters connect to the sounds you make when you say them.

And all our infrastructure was built with lower temperatures in mind. Chaos has reigned. There were train tracks on fire, roads and airport runways melting, police smashing car windows to rescue boiling dogs, forest fires, suburban houses all over London burning down, Beefeaters being given bottles of water to suckle from like baby goats, surgeries cancelled because operating theatres were too hot, ambulances being called out left right and center to treat heat exposure, people’s leather sofas and rubbish bins and fences going up in flames. Every lush green park in the south of England looked like New Mexico overnight. ..........(more)

https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/07/europe-heat-wave-london-record-advice-madness.html

[3Hotdogs]

1. Why would houses catch fire because of exterior heat?

[Stuart G]

2. K & R. Thanks for posting ...Global Warming hit London! Seems to Me.

[scipan]

3. I love British humor.

Read the whole thing.