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I live in a latitude about the same as Spain, Southern Italy, Greece and Turkey, but in my part of the U.S., it's been above 30 degrees Centigrade for a few wee
by bane 10y ago
I live in a latitude about the same as Spain, Southern Italy, Greece and Turkey, but in my part of the U.S., it's been above 30 degrees Centigrade for a few weeks, with high humidity. Our winters also get around 0 Centigrade (+- 8 or 9 degrees) pretty regularly, so we need to supply both heating and cooling.
Usually when it gets above 24/25 C we start to really put on the air conditioning. And below 20 C we put on the heat. A/C is generally important for not only cooling, but reducing humidity so your body's sweat actually does something useful.
I've lived in houses around here that didn't have A/C and it's pretty dreadful in the summer. You basically don't do anything during the day, and it's too hot to really sleep comfortably. Even fairly poor people usually end up with at least one room with A/C.
This isn't true for all of the U.S., the Pacific Northwest (e.g. Seattle) and Northern California tends to not have air conditioners because it doesn't usually get hot enough.
Quite a bit of the U.S. is at the same latitude as North Africa or the Middle East, the northern-most bits get maybe to Belgium? So even with the temperature gradients that ocean currents and global air movement affords, we get total sun that's more like areas of the world people associate with being "hot".
Having been to Europe numerous times, I notice most public areas, cars, buses, trains and offices seem to have A/C. So I'm sure you spend more time in it than you may realize.
- arethuza 10y ago"And below 20 C we put on the heat." I'm pretty sure we don't put our heating on here in Edinburgh until October when nights are probably getting to be well below 10C. Mind you for me 10C is "comfortable", 15C is "warm", 20C is "hot" and 30C means I'm on holiday somewhere hot where I can go capsizing to stay cool.
- bane 10y agoThere's definitely an element of being locally acclimatized. I remember spending some time in the desert, finally got used to the hot temperature when December rolled around. I was freezing all the time and finally checked the thermostat, 19 C.
- arethuza 10y agoI had a situation like that when I first went to university. My parents house in the north of Scotland was rather old and rather ramshackle with no central heating - I can remember going to have a bath once and finding 2" of ice in the bath. However, I don't remember feeling cold as a kid. However, I went to university and stayed in centrally heated halls of residence, which I didn't find warm. However, when I returned home for Xmas it felt like I had been shipped to Siberia - I was dying of cold! I remember being pinned to the bed by a pile of blankets as I desperately tried to stay warm at night.
- gambiting 10y agoI'm in Newcastle and I'll probably have heating on next month - basically the lowest I let my home temperature drop to naturally is ~17C, then I put the heating on, set to 19C.
- arethuza 10y agoIsn't that because Geordies are famous for never wearing warm clothes? :-) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/7892733.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/7892733.stm