> Temperatures in some locations from Philadelphia to Boston could be the hottest in any month in over a decade. Additional records could fall Wednesday and Thursday.
Boston here (home of decaying old red brick pizza oven buildings, not designed for modern summers).
This morning, as we enter a forecast high of 102F real temp, and heat index up to 110, my own old building is trying to get a 5-hour water shutdown of our entire building of ~100 residents, including elderly... postponed until after the scorching peak of the heat wave is over.
Not only do we have neither the architecture nor the acclimation for hot climate, but we don't even know what's ridiculously stupid behavior in such a climate.
I don't miss my old 3rd floor, top floor apartment in an old brick building with a black roof and no AC in Boston. I put up with that for a decade before I upgraded.
Yep, flat black roof. 20 years ago, I'd get through Boston summers fine without AC. On the hottest days, just put down the blinds for the afternoon. And about one week per summer, I used a small fan.
I'm ready to upgrade, as soon as I know what city I'll be moving/staying to, after new job/startup search (and what my budget will be).
> This morning, as we enter a forecast high of 102F real temp, and heat index up to 110..
ok that's hot. Being from Dallas, I usually poke fun at the NE when temps get warm there just like the NE pokes fun at the South when we get an inch of snow. However, 102 with humidity and heat index of 110 is hot no matter what. When it's that hot here i try to take off shoes/socks whenever possible and soak down my head and wash my face. A lot of heat is shed through your feet and head. But you reach a point where there's just no escape, once the concrete is heated up it takes weeks for it to cool back down. The feeling of a breeze only making it hotter instead of cooler is not pleasant, my sympathies.
edit: btw, i don't see how people in AZ survive, the temps in Phoenix and other places just seem incompatible with life. The usual reply is "low humidity" but the inside of your oven is low humidity too, i wouldn't want to live there either.
I actually sent that advice and a few other tips to people on my building's email list already.
Unfortunately, with ~100 people, and a general culture in the university neighborhood of non-cooperative, non-engaged, disconnected... there's a real chance that not everyone is going to do all the right things, and someone will get heat exhaustion or heat stroke.
I don't know what the purpose of the shutdown is, but filling up a bathtub would probably lead to way more usage than if they hadn't cut off the water supply.
It's also worth noting that reliable daily temperature records only go back to the late 1800s. The way you know this is that there are no record highs or lows in 1788 or even 1828. Most likely, at least some of the real records were set prior to the invention of temperature measurement.
On a related note, global population data before about 1800 or so is also unreliable because censuses hadn't been invented yet. During the Enlightenment, people actually debated if world population was increasing or decreasing. Many thought it had been constantly decreasing since the decline and fall of Rome. In general, reliable statistics for more or less anything are newer than the United States of America.
Even after that records are not really up to current standards (and I am sure even current standards are not perfect - things will always go wrong). What would have been the highest temperature recorded in the UK in the 20th century not counted in records because there were issues with its reliability:
>It's also worth noting that reliable daily temperature records only go back to the late 1800s. The way you know this is that there are no record highs or lows in 1788 or even 1828. Most likely, at least some of the real records were set prior to the invention of temperature measurement.
There's a whole meta-genre of academic papers that consist of taking unreliably measurement logs from prior centuries, comparing them to what the current best scientific understanding of the field is and then saying "aha, X wasn't mistaken about observing/measuring/concluding Y in conditions/location Z, his instrumentation was likely out of tune by a factor of N, if we re-do his math with the following error bars and plot the results you can see that what he reported is within the limits of our understanding of the subject today".
I'm not gonna say it's useful or useless science, but it sure is interesting to find out how close to modern understanding some of those guys back then were within their niches if you account for the quality of their equipment despite sometimes very unscientific conditions.
> The way you know this is that there are no record highs or lows in 1788 or even 1828.
This is not specific to weather, although one interesting example would be California in November 1861 - January 1862. Most people think of the gold rush, but there was also a 20 year drought that ended with the largest flood in recorded history. 10 feet of precipitation in California, in the form of rain and snow, over a period of 43 days. It was followed by a huge bloom in vegetation, and the rancho cattle population quadrupled. Then another drought in 1864, that wiped out most of the cattle. And a smallpox epidemic that wiped out 90% of the remaining native population.
Uhm, censuses are described in the Bible - in fact one has a central enough role that even a committed heathen like me is aware of it -, and existed many places on a similar timeline. I have no problem believing that they were imprecise, and not widespread enough to give good global numbers, but they had certainly been invented much earlier.
LA has perpetually incredible weather (but a quickly worsening water issue). The USA is an astonishingly large place. Weather in NYC means literally nothing about weather in Los Angeles.
Be aware that LA and NYC are about 2500 miles apart (or about 4,000 km). The weather patterns are very, very different. In general NY is harsher -- capable of being both hotter and colder than LA ever is.
This year's tournament is all over the US, including several stadia and training bases in the north east. Only one venue is in CA. Next year has a similar layout, and in both years the final is in NJ.
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Boston here (home of decaying old red brick pizza oven buildings, not designed for modern summers).
This morning, as we enter a forecast high of 102F real temp, and heat index up to 110, my own old building is trying to get a 5-hour water shutdown of our entire building of ~100 residents, including elderly... postponed until after the scorching peak of the heat wave is over.
Not only do we have neither the architecture nor the acclimation for hot climate, but we don't even know what's ridiculously stupid behavior in such a climate.
I'm ready to upgrade, as soon as I know what city I'll be moving/staying to, after new job/startup search (and what my budget will be).
ok that's hot. Being from Dallas, I usually poke fun at the NE when temps get warm there just like the NE pokes fun at the South when we get an inch of snow. However, 102 with humidity and heat index of 110 is hot no matter what. When it's that hot here i try to take off shoes/socks whenever possible and soak down my head and wash my face. A lot of heat is shed through your feet and head. But you reach a point where there's just no escape, once the concrete is heated up it takes weeks for it to cool back down. The feeling of a breeze only making it hotter instead of cooler is not pleasant, my sympathies.
edit: btw, i don't see how people in AZ survive, the temps in Phoenix and other places just seem incompatible with life. The usual reply is "low humidity" but the inside of your oven is low humidity too, i wouldn't want to live there either.
Unfortunately, with ~100 people, and a general culture in the university neighborhood of non-cooperative, non-engaged, disconnected... there's a real chance that not everyone is going to do all the right things, and someone will get heat exhaustion or heat stroke.
On a related note, global population data before about 1800 or so is also unreliable because censuses hadn't been invented yet. During the Enlightenment, people actually debated if world population was increasing or decreasing. Many thought it had been constantly decreasing since the decline and fall of Rome. In general, reliable statistics for more or less anything are newer than the United States of America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1911_United_Kingdom_heat_wave#...
There's a whole meta-genre of academic papers that consist of taking unreliably measurement logs from prior centuries, comparing them to what the current best scientific understanding of the field is and then saying "aha, X wasn't mistaken about observing/measuring/concluding Y in conditions/location Z, his instrumentation was likely out of tune by a factor of N, if we re-do his math with the following error bars and plot the results you can see that what he reported is within the limits of our understanding of the subject today".
I'm not gonna say it's useful or useless science, but it sure is interesting to find out how close to modern understanding some of those guys back then were within their niches if you account for the quality of their equipment despite sometimes very unscientific conditions.
This is not specific to weather, although one interesting example would be California in November 1861 - January 1862. Most people think of the gold rush, but there was also a 20 year drought that ended with the largest flood in recorded history. 10 feet of precipitation in California, in the form of rain and snow, over a period of 43 days. It was followed by a huge bloom in vegetation, and the rancho cattle population quadrupled. Then another drought in 1864, that wiped out most of the cattle. And a smallpox epidemic that wiped out 90% of the remaining native population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-06-13-nc-780-st...
Admittedly, this has only been characterized since 1969, but it has been in the news rather a lot since then.
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LA has perpetually incredible weather (but a quickly worsening water issue). The USA is an astonishingly large place. Weather in NYC means literally nothing about weather in Los Angeles.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/czdvllm9352o
This year's tournament is all over the US, including several stadia and training bases in the north east. Only one venue is in CA. Next year has a similar layout, and in both years the final is in NJ.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/czdvllm9352o