We're Having A Heat Wave
No, this isn't about showtunes and pop singles, but what is happening outside in real time.
So, how are you holding up?
Here in Los Angeles, right now, Sunday at almost 5pm, it is 80 degrees F, which AccuWeather says has a “RealFeel” rating of 85 degrees outside.
I am lucky, as I live in a microclimate within Los Angeles named Edendale, which encompasses Silverlake and Echo Park.
My friends less than 5 miles from me on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains in Burbank are having it a little rougher at 85 degrees. My friends in Woodland Hills, on the western side of the San Fernando Valley, have 96 degrees, with a RealFeel that seems to bop back and forth between 98 degrees and 100.
Have I mentioned that all of us are within 25 miles of the Pacific Ocean? We are feeling it the least in Southern California currently.
In the aptly named Death Valley, California, which is nowhere near the Pacific Ocean, it is currently 126 degrees F.. Tonight they will cool down to 100 degrees F, before they try to break the World’s Record for the planet again tomorrow by hoping for 130 degrees F or above, without the RealFeels.
Currently there are a group of tourists out there in Death Valley, because weather tourism is now a thing. Instead of trying to avoid the vicious heat, you drive your fossil fuel vehicle to it, so you can “experience” it, because your local volcano wasn’t spewing any molten lava for you to bathe in today, I presume. Anyway, these tourists were on DW German TV news, because of course they were. The Germans are already bored with Trump, so let’s show the stupid Americans go to a place named Death to rejoice in their own demise.
Oh, and there was one very lonely dude out there protesting Climate Change and fossil fuel burning, and I know this because DW German TV will show this, because unlike our major networks here in the USA, they are not beholden to the fossil fuel industry.
Prepper channels on YouTube are urging people to grow their own food, and build hydroponic vertical gardens in their homes, which isn’t a bad idea since crops are failing, or burning, or being flooded by all the extreme weather we humans choose to ignore.
People are taking Revenge Vacations to get even with the COVID shutdown because they can, getting on crowded fossil fuel burning overstuffed cruise ships, as that did not cause any problems in the past. Did I mention Japan is having a COVID problem right now?
Look, this isn’t my normal, fact based, science plain speaking article, and I know it.
I just wish people would just stop hitting the snooze button when it comes to our environment.
Oh, and the science that Al Gore and others have been talking about forever it seems? That was the conservative estimate, not the worst case scenario.
Wake up, and let me know how you are doing in the comments below.
I live in Tucson. 108 degrees here today. Not upset I could live in that LA Knockoff named Phoenix.
There is an idiom here that it is a dry heat. When I hear it, I reply that because of its mythic location; hell is a dry heat.
I remember the old advice for the 60’s “be cool.” That wisdom seems more profound today.