2y ago

Phoenix breaks heat record as city hits 110F for the 54th consecutive day

www.theguardian.com

Saturday’s temperature had triggered an excessive heat warning across Arizona as lows were expected to range between 80F and 86F

On Saturday afternoon, the National Weather Service announced that the temperature at Phoenix Sky Harbor international airport reached 110F, making it the 54th day this year with temperatures of at least 110F.

Saturday’s temperature breaks the previous record of 53 days that was set in 2020. From 1991 to 2020, the average consecutive days of 110F or above is 21 days, the NWS said.

An excessive heat warning has been issued for south central and south-west Arizona until 8pm on Sunday as weekend highs are expected to range between 108F and 114F. Meanwhile, lows are expected to range between 80F to 86F.

163 comments

110F = 43.33C if anyone else was wondering.
- Jesus fuck that's brutal even for a desert.
- Good bot, that's hot
- Metric: 1 calorie heats 1 gram of water 1 C°, 1 gram is equal to 1cm³. Water boils at 100 C° and freezes at zero.
  Imperial: 1 calorie heats 1 something by ?? F equal to ???, and 0F and 100F are completely irrelevant to everyday life and tasks.
  
  I get your point, but disagree with your thesis. Fahrenheit makes a lot of sense for human comfort ranges. 0 and 100 are some of the most extreme natural temperatures most people in F-using countries ever see. 0 means cold as fuck and 100 means hot as fuck. And there’s a single-digit useful precision to it as well. 72 and 73 are close, but noticeably different. Celsius requires decimals for that kind of difference. And 0 means “it’s kinda cold outside, I guess” and 100 means “you were dead a long time ago”, so it’s not nearly as useful in every day life with natural living temperatures.
  
  but how often does knowing how to convert water weight to volume come up? Same with the energy to heat water.
  
  I'm a fan of the metric system, but understand that Fahrenheit is pretty convenient for regular human temperatures. For one, the vast majority of climate temperatures that we experience in the US on a regular basis land between 0°F & 100°F except for deserts & recent climate change impacts. For another, Farenheit is a bit more precise as whole numbers since differences between degrees are smaller, so I can be more precise with my a/c thermostat.
  Still, I would prefer that we change to metric across the board in the US because it is more congruent across dimensions and decimals are easier to manipulate than fractions for me. For the latter, if I had a recipe that required I calculate 1/3 cup plus 1/2 cup, I have to switch to 2/6 & 3/6, which equals 5/6, then I'm stuck estimating that anyway since most measuring cups aren't labeled to the 6th precision. It gets even more confusing when we have to consider teaspoons, tablespoons, & pints. Using liters would be so much more convenient for me. Another area where I get confused is when measurements for food are presented as ounces versus fluid ounces. I understand the difference, but it's still something I have to think extra about.
  My one request in switching over to metric would be that weather and thermostat temperatures are presented at least to the .5°C precision level so that 75°F would be 24.0°C and 74°F would be 23.5°C. Yes, I'm this picky about my thermostat settings and can notice a difference between 75°F/24.0°C and 74°F/23.5°C.
  
  Use the right tool for the right job. Fahrenheit helps plan your day, with weather or pool temperatures or whatever. Celsius is for science and engineering. This argument sounds a little like driving a nail with a torque wrench.
  I can ballpark C to F. But pressure is never going to happen. Like what's 30psi? 547000 Pa or something? Who the fuck knows. Or you could use bar, with a scale of 1 to 5, lol.
- Thank you!
- Thanks I had to scroll way too far. Please upvote this guy
- It's also getting towards the end of the summer there when it gets humid.
  
  I’m curious to see what the rains are like during El Niño with this heat
- We need a bot for that.
- Thank you and Erk!
- No one was wondering
  
  I was
I believe the headline is wrong. It's not 54 consecutive days, it's 54 days this year total.
In July, Phoenix broke it's previous record of consecutive days above 110F with a 31-day streak. Previous record was 18 straight days 1974.
- Can confirm this headline is incorrect.
- Yeah seriously we had a few days of weather in the 80s when it rained not too long ago.
  How do I report a title as inaccurate?
- So what you're saying is that there were one or maybe a few days in there that fell slightly short of being record-breakingly hot. Yay?
  
  I understand your sentiment but factually inaccurate is factually inaccurate and a disservice to the reader.
  
  That's life in PHX...
If there's anyone here living in the region, remember to drink water! The best method to prevent heat exhaustion or worse is to drink small amounts of water frequently, like roughly once every 30 minutes or every time you feel thirsty (whichever happens first). When all said and done, the best indicator is the color of your urine. It should be a light yellow color.
If you're working outside, make sure you're also drinking something with sodium electrolytes like liquid iv or Gatorade (other drinks like Prime aren't suitable, they pad their electrolyte count will potassium).
If at all possible, take a cold shower at the peak of the heat around noon to regulate your temperature and comfort. If you get heat exhaustion, STOP WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING AND GET INDOORS. Heat exhaustion is the first step towards heat stroke and death. You will die in heat like this if you don't take care of yourself. Do not "tough it out" or wait "5 more minutes".
Stay safe out there
- take a cold shower
  Well umm, that's kinda the trick. In Phoenix in summertime, "cold" water is cold in name only. It's more tepid than anything. That's just another part of what makes it so oppressive living there in summer.
  
  I’m convinced that the H and C knobs are Hot and Caliente. 😅
  
  I haven't used the hot water knob in the shower since May. Looks like it's going to be at least another month till I do.
  
  I have to put ice in my babies bathwater to cool it down to 98, it literally comes out at 103 degrees when it's 115 out. FML
  
  Yea, backyard pools are the norm in large swaths of the valley (Phoenix+). It's the best way to avoid your kids burning to death if they don't wanna go outside at midnight.
  
  That's fair. I live in the Midwest, so I've never had that problem and don't have any solutions. These are things I learned while doing work like mowing, picking ragweed and rock, moving grain bins, and stuff like that
- Also remember to eat something salty. Drinking a lot of water, drains the body salts, and lacking salt can be very bad too.
  If you drink 2 liters of water quickly, it can be lethal because it pushes your salt levels out of whack.
  
  They mentioned that in paragraph 2.
  
  If 2 liters pushes you into hyponaiteremia then you were already low.
- Man this summer we were out and about, my eldest started talking like a zombie and I noticed she wasn't sweating. Oh boy stage 1. Ok AC right now, no negotiations, no waiting.
- What if I get fired if I take a break and face complete homelessness if I don't keep my income
The important question is why put a city there?
- Testament to mankind's arrogance
  
  And the power of air conditioning
- Follow-up question: why make that city a car-dependent hellhole of McMansion suburbs larping as a city, seemingly designed to be as energy-intensive as possible?
  
  I'm not arguing for it, but as someone from Florida, I can understand why it's car-dependent. It is too hot to walk to a bus/tram stop, wait, get on a relatively freezing bus/tram with wet clothes, get off, walk in the sweltering heat, and arrive at your destination drenched in sweat to freeze in a/c again.
  For mass transit to work, there would have to be lots of stops very near locations, high frequency of transport vehicles, and the culture would have to be okay with people being sweaty. Maybe people could travel with a change of clothes and a towel, but then locations would need to have changing rooms.
  I think Americans are too used to the luxury of not being sweaty, so it would be hard to accept and use a mass transit system in really hot places.
- It attracts older folks because dry heat feels good for aches and pains, arthritis, etc.
  Yeah summer sucks but the spring, fall, and winter is incredibly mild with many using neither heat nor AC. Arguably heat generation is more wasteful in places with even moderate to harsh winters.
  Phoenix sprung up because it's actually a pretty stable location. No wild fires. No earthquakes. No tornados, hurricanes, etc. Good hub to the east / west, too.
  
  Honestly this heat wave just makes me want to live there even more.
- https://i.postimg.cc/pdmYnkz9/phoenix.jpg
If any city can survive this, it's Phoenix. From this oppressive heat, they will rise once again from the smoldering ashes. Not like the phoenix after which they were named, but like any non-mythical bird. They will smolder and scatter like the ashes of an unplucked pigeon that got caught in the chimney, causing the homeowners to ask "what on earth is that smell? Did something die?"
- As a wise man once said, “I feel like a phoenix; Rising up from Arizona!”
HVAC companies and car repair shops are thriving
- And exacerbating the problem simultaneously!
  
  Just make peace with it. The problem is just going to get worse so the best thing you can do is figure out what you are going to do for yourself. I invest heavily in air conditioner manufacturers and geared my career for infrastructure and automation. The world is going to be on fire and there is nothing I can do to stop it, but I can make sure that I will still have a job when we are all living in some subterranean bunkers.
- One of our local HVAC shops has a massive warehouse filled to the ceiling with equipment, all paid for and waiting to install.
Nothing to see here folks, just more of the China hoax on climate change.
Believe what I tell you, not what you see.
I've been living in my car in PHX right now and I can confirm it's fucking hot here.
- Why are you living in your car in phx? Can you move north?
  
  Bad breakup stuff, can't move RN cuz my kids are here. I still have a job, I just need to pay some stuff off and put together a deposit is all
Every time someone says Phenix is hot I remember this clip
- a monument to mans arrogance
I am going to need to see a breakdown on deaths by political affiliation to gauge how to feel about this.
- Haha, let’s dehumanize people we disagree with!
  
  On the other hand, conservatives (in the US, maybe elsewhere) are so consistently and universally wrong, if they all died we'd be better off.
  The disagreement isn't like "Should we get pizza or tacos". It's like "Should gay people exist?" "Is climate change a thing?" "Is slavery good, actually?"
  Pretty much every problem we have is made worse by conservatives fighting to keep the status quo or reverse progress.
  Fuck them. We would be better off if they were dead.
- I’m sure deaths by age group will help you feel something.
- Well, Maricopa county (and Arizona as a whole) was pretty much evenly split last election, and in the end it came out as blue, so I think it’s not that much of a leopards situation.
I don't think so. We had that "hurricane" in Calif that was mostly in Arizona. I have multiple friends there and I know the temps dropped that time a couple weeks ago. So it may have been 54 days this year, but not consecutive.
- Yeah, that's strange. I'm not trying to pretend to be a weather expert, but a quick Google shows it's been less than 110 a week ago.
  https://www.localconditions.com/weather-phoenix-arizona/85001/past.php
  https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/phoenix/historic
Im chilling with 50 C here.
- I got heat stroke just reading this.
But who cares about the climate change? Today we have a new iPhone release, isn't it?
More cameras? More battery life? More workers rights?
No! Just more greed of those old men sitting behind their desks and playing with our world as their little toy as Bob Dylan said in his song.
In other news, heat islands in the desert are hot.
F stands for Flaffenfeit, and is a deprecated measurement system the world doesn't use anymore, except some backwards parts of the world. 110F is equal to about 2.85 feet or 7.13 ounces if I remember correctly. For sure It's a very clever system invented by an ancient master jokester, where nothing relates to anything in any sensible way.
- Imagine your personality revolving around making fun of a measurement system
  
  Ah yes, it's the easy life, because Freedom units are making fun of themselves, just being what they are.
- You were close, but your math was a bit off. 110 Flaffenheit actually comes out to 2.87 feet and 7.47 ounces. It’s easy to make that mistake though. Not everyone understands Flaffenheit Freedom Units.
  
  You are both correct, since 110 Flaffenheit equals both 7.13 urinal ounces and 7.47 stool ounces, as well as exactly 11 southern-hemisphere-unleaded-petrol-ounces. The latter is only incidental, though, since the conversion factor isn't 10 but 8.97 with an added conversion constant of 11.33 Flaffenheit.
  
  Ah yes, if you use the Freedom Units revised version the feet and ounces are smaller. I think those were measured after a new president to make him look more impressive on paper.
  Sorry to use the older scale, my mistake.
- it was based on mercury actually, and caught on because it came very precise instruction on how to build and test a F thermometer
  
  OK so maybe it had an advantage centuries ago, how is that relevant today?
- It makes sense if you think about it as a thermometer manufacturer. Dividing things in half with lines is easy to do, so the gap between freezing and quite hot is an exact power of 2. (32 -> 96). as is the gap between 0 and freezing
  
  Actually, Fahrenheit uses a 180 degree gap between water boiling (32) and freezing (212).
  Anyone familiar with geometry knows that 180 degrees is much easier to divide than 100 degrees. That's why we rarely measure angles in gradians.
  
  Yes because dividing the scale equally, is the biggest challenge of making a thermometer. Who came up with that lame argument?
  Oh I forgot, maybe using freedom units it is. 🤣🤣🤣
- C stands for Celsius, which is a deprecated measurement system that was replaced by kelvin in the SI (metric) system.
  Water boils at 99.9839 Celsius. Water does not freeze at zero, but actually slightly below zero. It was once considered clever, but scientists recognized the problem with negative numbers in a temperature scale and have since moved on.
  Celsius is still in use among those who are not quite as scientific as they think they are.
  
  Haha nice try.😋
- Don't you trample on my freedumbs!
  
  Sorry, but freedom Units are just too hilarious to not make fun of.

163 comments