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Thousands without power during record-breaking heat
- fogihujy 5y agohttps://archive.is/bJ0jN https://archive.is/bJ0jN
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- Animats 5y agoThe Portland weather forecast shows a high of 114° F today and a high of 118°F tomorrow. Today was an all-time record high, by one degree, and tomorrow will be hotter.
- gtvwill 5y agoDatlyum that's like 48c? Getting up on the peak of tolerable temperatures for work that is. Worst I've copped was around that with 53 measured in some areas on-site due to additional plant equipment radiated heat. Toasty af, keep your hydration up. Don't be surprised if you go through a liter an hour and still don't piss.
- ajnin 5y agoThat's highly dependent on humidity. If it's dry your body has means to cool itself through perspiration, but if the air is saturated in water vapor, temperatures as low as 35 or 36C can be deadly.
- jandrewrogers 5y agoFortunately, we are not on the east coast. I don't know about Portland but Seattle's humidity is < 50%, which means normal human cooling systems will be efficient assuming you drink prodigious amounts of water to replace the evaporative losses. Also some electrolytes. It reminds me a bit of when I would go on expeditions in the southwest deserts. I am constantly drinking prodigious quantities of water throughout the day but rarely need to urinate. But with more sweat than the southwest deserts, which have extremely dry air (you mostly don't sweat at all because it has no liquid phase). As long as people drink enough fluid, they should be fine.
- jfengel 5y agoI grew up on the east coast, and was always baffled by the notion that sweat kept you cool. In my experience, sweat just made you slimy. I knew the physics of it, but it just didn't seem to work. Then I visited the southwest, and noticed that I was perfectly comfortable on 100F days. Then I noticed that I wasn't slimy, either. And then it all clicked into place: the basic physics explanation doesn't apply if the air is already saturated.
- Genego 5y agoAlmost 45c-48c! I already have trouble functioning at 35c with an A/C. I couldn't imagine +10c and no power, crazy.
- phendrenad2 5y agoReminder that everything from power lines to levees is built to withstand "100-year events" and nothing more. Given the number of things designed this way, something will always be experiencing a 100-year event, at this moment. (Japan made the mistake of building Fukushima to withstand 100-year events and it bit them pretty much immediately) Obviously not everything needs to be over-provisioned, but when life is on the line it's best to take dismissals as a "freak occurrence" with a grain of salt.
- is_dang_erect5 5y agoIn some places maybe. Places that aren’t Texas.
- adrianN 5y agoIt doesn't help that we're having "100 year heat" every other year in the past decade.
- arduinomancer 5y agoDumb question but are heat waves like this caused by global warming or are they the result of local weather systems that just happen to line up in a way that results in especially high temps?
- raincom 5y agoThere is a third question, which is mixture of both of your questions: are local weather systems impacted by global warming?
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- thnujmikkk 5y agoLocal weather systems are a part of the globe, so yes
- nemothekid 5y agoI don't think heat waves are caused by global warming - I think they happen more often as a result of global warming. For example, a heat wave that would normally happen every once in 100 years now happens once every 10 years.
- jandrewrogers 5y agoNot a dumb question. It is hard to say. There was a similar spate of temperatures a century ago, though this appears to be topping those. Even Seattle, which is robustly protected by its geography, is suffering anomalously high temperatures. Few people have air conditioning because most days rarely exceed 25°C. We are looking at 45°C on Monday, which is a once or twice per century occurrence.
- ehnto 5y agoI would love someone more knowledgeable to chime in, but my experience in Australia has taught me that we don't build for long term heat waves. My house can handle a day at 45c, but a week? Everything gets heat soaked, even the cold water tap is hot. Australians rarely have basements, but I wonder if this could be part of the solution long term. I have seen homes in the desert with huge concrete slabs inteded to operate as heatsinks/regulators, perhaps a concrete basement could do the same thing.
- bserge 5y agoThis is a news website, right? What are they doing that makes them non-compliance with GDPR? Is it just the cookies?
- speedgoose 5y agoThey rather block all European visitors than ask for consent to track them. I am guessing that they used to have very few visitors from Europe so they couldn't justify the development cost of producing a website respectful to their visitors privacy.
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- reshie 5y agothis is pretty normal in the nevada regen the summer heat that is.
- seattle_spring 5y agoSo is air conditioning.
- csours 5y agoIt's hotter in Oregon than it's gotten all year in Texas. What a weird year.
- pm90 5y agoWe desperately need to invest in climate proofing all the states that might be materially affected by climate change.
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- seattle_spring 5y agoWouldn't that be all of them? Or is that your point?
- nyokodo 5y agoAll will be effected but some way more than others. The warm states should prepare for arctic blasts. The temperate states should prepare for more extremes. States that already deal with extremes will only need to prepare for degree not kind.
- themodelplumber 5y agoIs it still the case that AC is a ridiculous option nobody ever buys in cars up there? I grew up near Seattle and lived in Portland and in both cases all that mattered was the working heater, and windows that could roll down maybe for a few weeks in the summer. I can't imagine this plus the normal area humidity though. Hope it's a bit more of a dry heat.
- seattle_spring 5y agoI'm almost certain that you haven't been able to buy a car without AC for more than a decade, enthusiast cars not-withstanding. Homes, however, are often without AC. Seattle has the lowest per-capita AC installations for US metro areas, something like 40% last I checked.
- failwhaleshark 5y agoRemember that in Palo Alto, CA, most homes were built without A/C like Portland too. The summers were sweltering in PA in recent memory (2012-2018). Wichita Falls, TX used to be "the tornado capital of the world", but now it's Berkshire, Greater London, UK. https://www.weather.gov/oun/tornadodata-city-tx-wichita_falls https://www.weather.gov/oun/tornadodata-city-tx-wichita_fall... https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/weird-news/tornado-capital-world-revealed-experts-5887044 https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/weird-news/tornado-capital-w... France: 15k heatwave deaths in 2003 due its unexpected nature, 1.5k in 2019 -- The underlying issue is increasing weather variability. It is a symptom of a lack of latitudinal stability in jet-stream patterns. This is caused by the climate change warming (increased absorbed system energy) of the Arctic. There will be a blue ocean event there very soon since ice is already <5k km^3 in the summers. What this means is wilder weather (and storms) everywhere.
- dgeiser13 5y agoRIP recent memory (2012-2018)