And Now, The Weather
Update: Accuweather reports that the humidity has dropped into the twenties, but it’s now an infernal 103 degrees. Whew. I guess things dry up when you’re in a danged kiln…..
Update II: It’s after 9:30 pm, and it’s “down” to 94, but with humidity up to 34%… six of one, and all. If I couldn’t make a fried egg on my computer, I could whip up a coddled one in about 10 seconds. Now I know why the PTB decided, for narrative purposes, that Hell would be hot. I can deal with cold. There are furs for that. This is something else entirely.
(Monday afternoon at CHNN weather bureau, below)
It’s 100 degrees in Portland at the moment, and more dreadfully, the humidity is like nothing I’ve ever experienced, as high as 50%, in my whole life here. (Accuweather, evidently not so aptly named, predicted between 40% and 84% in the Oregonian this morning, as though the two were mere rounding errors…)
We’re set to easily smash records set in 1965, when my mother was at Emanuel Hospital, giving birth to my little brother, Turd, 44 years ago tomorrow. (We’ll be the same age for eight days…) Luckily, he was born with a hole in his head, and during the extended stay that resulted, they let Mom visit him in the air-conditioned nursery a lot. Her private room, a luxury at the time, and probably the last one my Heelish Dad ever bought her, lacked that amenity. The Turd turned out fine, though, and now has only a small, oval-shaped bald spot to show for it, while the rest of us kids all ended up having many more significant quirks, despite our seemingly intact heads early on. Wish him well in comments, if you’re inclined. (or email him at klickitatstreet@comcast.net) His real name is Ted.
Temperatures are expected to increase even more tomorrow and Wednesday, accompanied by pollution warnings… quelle surprise. The two are invariably treated as though they were unrelated, natch. I was working in a basement today, (yeah!) installing tile (boo!) so I didn’t suffer too much, but what the hell does a person do when it’s 105, as it’s expected to be by Wednesday, and 50% humidity, as it was Sunday, besides suffer? I expect my productivity to be sorely compromised. The good news, though, is that since we started running around conquering previously unfamiliar countries willy-nilly, I’ve learned a few old-fashioned coping mechanisms, in this case from the Iraqis, who, I heard, sleep on the roof when home has become a little slice of un-air-conditioned Hell. Turns out that the Hag veranda makes a very fine sleeping porch, I’ve found. And so far, no drones or Blackwater contractors are bombing Park Avenue, to boot. That could change of course, if Cheney had his way, but in the meantime I’ve figured out a way to laugh at global warming, and not toss and turn in a puddle of sweat, at the same time.
More weather news later on this CHNN station, and on CHNN News overnight.
Happy number 44, Ted. And, many, many more.
Chin up, Hag. Surely that weather front will drift eastward. Ought to be in Colorado soon… I’ll enjoy our current 70 degrees until then, and happily send it on to Chicago.
Rebecca reported yesterday a comfortable mid 70′s in LA… And actually made that hideous place sound tempting.
NYC may miss 90°F for second time in history, so move to New York City.
Maybe Cincinnati?
Go east to Michigan young man!
PEORIA — That is the ticket!
These stories are world wide over the last few years. It is because the world temps stopped going up in ’98 even with the rigged temp stations all being on airport runways.
I lost more than half of my foxtail palms last winter. Here in Orlando! Day time highs should be high 90s at least this time of year and are only making it up to 90 or so.
Listen, Heru… I’m the last one to equate weather and climate, but I have almost 45 years of experience with the weather here, and it’s done nothing but get hotter. And the humidity, which I’ve never experienced, is something entirely new. You can cite all the aberrant data you want from other places, but I know what I know. From the bark beetles devastating our forests, to the record low snowpacks affecting our water supplies, this stuff is new, and I see it every day.
Besides, what deniers like yourself also like to point out, record cold, is just a part of drastically changing weather patterns resulting from humans f*cking up the climate. To what other variable would you point? We had a devastating snowstorm here last winter, also not seen since the 60′s, which clobbered a few of the myriad plants, heretofore unhardy here, which I’ve been planting for 20 years…. The funny, and scary, part isn’t that some died, but that many, most, of them lived, because they were able to establish themselves during an “unusual” 20-year warm spell. We’ve moved upward at least two climate zones, just during my career. You can lead a horticulture, and all that. The Sunset Garden Book doesn’t lie.
I have no doubt that your pals at API could point you to many other unusual cold snaps, but I join the rest of the reality based community in saying, “BS.”
I have no “pals” at API and had to google it. At first I thought you meant application programming interface.
Hag, I really think using “denier” is uncalled for. I have followed the science for decades and we are going to have another ice age; not fry to death. It takes a lot of “denying” to believe in the religion “man made global warming”.
Tell you what, someday when you have nothing better to do; I’ll debate you point by point on the issue. But, let do it someplace quiet where “showing off” is not part of it.
Or not. No real big deal to me. I hope you live another 20 years; cause then you will know it was a fraud.
As a tease, tell me why everyone wants to start the measurements from the very end of the little ice age rather than the end of the Medieval Climate Optimum. Just a coincidence?
It clearly isn’t worth arguing about this with you; I may as well be arguing with Sen. Inhofe, who is a wholly owned subsidiary of API, just like most of the “scientists” on his little list. I suppose Russia is trying to control the Arctic sea lanes, soon to be free of ice much of the year, just because they’re “religious,” too. And surely you understand that ice reflects heat, while water absorbs it, making another ice age quite unlikely….
No, the Bush Administration hid all those satellite photos showing the drastic reductions in ice only because they liked to hide things.
Well, just calling me names and saying that I am a tool for big corporations may seem like a tight argument to you, but I doubt you would accept that sort of thing from others.
I put just a couple of things on my blog just for you. Take a read. And as you read it, remember that I have read the real science and the fake science for over 30 years — unpaid for by any corporation. My best guess is that the Sun is a slightly variable star.
One more thing. Look up the medieval climate optimum and tell me why that period of much higher global temperatures did not destroy mankind.
I called you no names. But despite all your study, you’ve landed on the side of oil, coal, and the stupidest and most corrupt Republicans in the congress, along with some of the lamest shills in the Bush Administration.. For most people, that’s a red flag. Not very good scientific company, or personal company, for that matter. Did you see the satellite pictures Bush suppressed of sea ice near Barrow, Alaska, comparing 2006 and 2007?
I don’t think being a “denier” is a pejorative; I proudly wear that label when it comes to religion, creationism, and many other things I think are cuckoo, especially when embracing them hurts others.
Oops!
Happy 44 Turd!
It’s a balmy 92F in here Seattle, but it’s 99F in my living room. Good thing I have a bathtub.
In case you’re wondering, I’ve lately been applying copious supplemental hand watering of the garden.
Stay cool!
Even with the fan running? Open the dining room doors, and that window immediately to the left of the living room doors, which acts as a wind scoop, I noticed. I just took my fourth cold shower of the day, but I don’t really know how to take a bath. Last time I took one someone gave it to me, and worse, it was a housekeeper.
Glad you’re watering, Bob; the plants, given water, actually love the heat…. Could you do me a favor and not get shot until the heat subsides?
Any tomatoes yet?
I’m switching to Celsius… it makes the dramatic swings of Boston temperature seem more mild. It’s a muggy 27 at 11 am, with a predicted high of 32 (which is rivers-of-ball-sweat Fahrenheit) by mid-day.
I like fahrenheit better; I find that I’m able to detect minor gradations of temperature, click on Accuweather, and call the # on the button. Today is supposed to be 105, but I’m guessing 106…
It’s a coping mechanism; turning a heat wave into a parlor game….
I’m actually pretty good at that on the low end. I can tell a fifteen-degree (°F) morning from a seventeen-degree morning within a couple steps outside the door. My body is incapable of determining any level of variation once it passes the doing-nothing-makes-me-sweaty threshold, though.
I’m somewhat less sensitive at the low end, because here they never get very extreme, this year being a notable exception, and even then mid-teens were quite remarkable. It’s the highs I notice, because the one thing you live on the west coast for is nice summers, and they almost always are. Except now. I’m sitting by a fan that feels like an unusually powerful space heater. Two more days, they say….
Believe it or not, the much maligned Cleveland is having a very temperate, lovely summer. June was chilly and wet, but July has been paradise – temps in the 70s, low 80s tops, clear skies, the lake is calm, almost no annoying bugs, and no need to run the A/C at all.
Come to Cleveland, it’s absolutely perfect.
The current prediction is that we will be down to the comparatively tolerable 90′s before the weekend…. If not, I’m considering all options.
AZ is not an option. Trust me.
I never considered it. But at least it’s not humid; and doesn’t the desert cool off at night a bit?
During the monsoon (Roughly mid-July to the end of August) humidity jumps from around 12-15% to the 50% range, and although there are thunderstorms most afternoons, they’re very localized. It may rain five miles away every day, and you’ll never get a drop. On the other hand, if you’re under one, you could easily get three inches of rain dumped on you in an hour. Corporal Hicks might call it a dry heat, but nobody else would.
In my neck of the woods, 105 during the day means 75 at night — there’s a thirty degree drop, more or less, unless there’s cloud cover. In Phoenix – el infierno sin llamas – it’s more like twenty degrees, i.e. 115-95. One tends to either a) pay $1000 a month for electricity, or b) sleep in two inches of water in the spa. As long as you lay off the chardonnay, you’re generally safe that way from both heatstroke and drowning. Not always, but generally.
Fortunately, we usually only have about two episodes like this, lasting about a week, each summer, and when I was a kid, people just dealt with it. Over the years, air conditioning has become practically universal, and now the talk is about the overloaded grid. I’m sure all that hot air pumping out of every house and car only makes the larger problem worse, just like air-conditioning the subways turned the platforms into something from Dante. Looking out over the city, I can dimly perceive Mt Hood through a sky more whitish-yellow than blue. Reminds me of LA….
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, and all that.
Wouldn’t it be fun to have a little blackout atop the heat wave? That certainly would make for a memorable summer.
Yep, even with the fan running at full tilt and all windows open. Tomatoes are happy, but only a few cherry tomatoes are ready for harvest.
Better get them before those winged freeloaders do…. There actually were a few blackouts down here, but only in outlying areas; PGE/Enron is smarter than that, no?
Science: What we got here is a failure to communicate, by The Editorial Board, July 13, 2009.
——-
World Will Warm Faster Than Predicted in Next Five Years, Study Warns, by Duncan Clark, The Guardian/UK, July 27, 2009
New estimate based on the forthcoming upturn in solar activity and El Niño southern oscillation cycles is expected to silence global warming sceptics
Who you gonna believe — your sweaty carcass, or desperate politician LIARS4VOTES?
CH, by my calculations we have the same birthday. Different years. (The day after Obama’s.)
Which (for me) solves a musing mystery that’s been going on since I’ve been coming here.
Namely: Why am I here?
The entire attraction is your way with words the same way I think. That, and you’re a good speller. As much as you execrate Etta, and yet emulate her right down to the full-size hair rollers, still your grammar is good. Too.
I peeked at your astrology chart. Your Moon is in Cancer as you likely knew, (being born 2 days before New Moon), and the combination develops a refined raconteur, let’s say.
Other characteristics are also elegant, fabulous. Your finances are favored especially this year.
This annum completes my (first?) Chinese ‘cycle’ — each of the 12 beasts of each of the 5 elements. This year is (and mine was) earth ox. Your year was wood dragon.
Et cetera
Well, I always appreciate your comments, Meremark. For the record, I was born on August 5, 1964; a Gulf of Tonkin baby. As for the writing, I think it comes from all the reading. The summer I turned 4, I was with my mother at the PSU library, where she was studying to get her teaching certificate removed, and from across the room she heard and indignant little voice say to the librarian, “What do you mean you don’t have any children’s books?”
Same day.
Nearly August 4th: Obama’s (1961). Missed it by || this much. Quelle mirable, Michelle O.’s is Jan. 17, exact the same as ‘my’ lovely Lovey. These years, we feel ‘arrived.’
… the long and winding trail.
Come along boys and listen to my tell
I’ll tell you about my troubles on the old Chisholm Trail
Come a’ ty yi yippy yi yippy yi-yay
come a ty yi yippy yi-yay
Well the days are hot and the nights are cold
This cowboy life is gettin’ mighty old
Come a’ ty yi yippy yi yippy yi-yay
come a ty yi yippy yi-yay