For those living in the desert, the heat comes as no surprise, but for those of us that live in a wonderful climate community the summer heat can be too much. For that matter, the summer heat can be too much for anyone no matter what part of the globe they live on.
Temperatures climbed so high across much of the West on Thursday that authorities warned residents of Nevada, California and Arizona that outdoor activities could be dangerous except during the cooler early morning hours. Phoenix reached 115 degrees (their temperatures are taking in the shade, so true temperature is not posted); Baker, Calif., reached 125 degrees.
Last night the family gathered together to spent the last evening of my aunt’s visit before she traveled back to southern California today. As we were sitting around the dinner table my dad asked my nephew, who recently turned 11, what he did during the day. My nephew’s response was, “well, do the poor air quality today being dangerous we didn’t do much but stay inside.” Those of us sitting at the table sat in shock at first, then all burst out laughing because we didn’t expect to hear an 11 year old say “poor air quality being dangerous”, but rather something like, “it was too hot, so we stayed inside”. We all agreed we were going to try and use Anthony’s words the next time we wanted a day off from work. :-)
When my sister-in-law first walked in the door to my parents last night, I could see in her eyes something wasn’t right, but she always keeps a smile on her face so to those that don’t read people’s body language you wouldn’t detect anything as wrong. I asked her when we hugged if she was ok, and she said that she was, but that she was hot. Well, as the evening went on we learned that their swamp cooler’s (which by the way really stinks as a form of cooling) pump broke that day. With the temperature setting around 110 degrees and no pump to make the swamp cooler work, her house became like a sauna and the temperature indoors became seemingly hotter than outside. She took 4 or 5 showers throughout the day to try and cool off, and she was drinking lots of water to keep hydrated, but was still miserably hot. My brother was teaching a Haz-mat class that day at work, so wasn’t able to do anything about the cooler’s pump until he got home late that afternoon. By then, she was hot, mad, and dripping wet from the heat.
She was explaining this whole day to me, how hot she was and couldn’t take the heat. She told me at first my brother’s response was, “well, we’ll just go get blocks of ice from the store and put in our air-conditioner in our camper”. I looked at my brother and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me”. “ You are going to sleep in your camper which is parked in front of you house?” He and his friend just laughed, while I could see my sister-in-law was getting worked up again. My brother seeing this took the opportunity to get her more worked up. He said, “You know it’s real simple – when you’re hot open a window and when you’re cold close a window.” Of course, we knew he was saying this to push her buttons, but still I couldn’t help but say, “You’re such a jerk”.
Anyway, long story short they fixed the pump and as of last night the house was cooling off. Poor thing!
