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

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 813 points –
Phoenix breaks heat record as city hits 110F for the 54th consecutive day
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.

157

110F = 43.33C if anyone else was wondering.

Jesus fuck that's brutal even for a desert.

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.

So you're saying it's relevant for basically nothing but the weather. It's not a very good argument.

To be fair, that's all it's used for. No one uses Fahrenheit for science in the US.

Is also incredibly subjective. What's comfortable for one person might not be for another. I'm pretty sure an Inuit and a Ghanan have pretty different ideas of what's cold or hot. Same for Floridan and Minnesotan speaking of the US

I get your point "but because I was brought up with this system I'm going to make an argument as why it makes sense to me"

25 Celsius is a nice summer day

0 Celsius you better take a jacket and it's probably going to snow

43 Celsius damn hot

60-80 Celsius a very nice sauna

It's not that hard burgerman

burgerman

Hey, we didn't come up with the shit in the first place. The Imperial System is a British invention.

Once upon a time I was going trough some hardships, sometimes I couldn't afford a meal, I'm not proud to admit that one time I took paper towels, wet them in a bowl and eat them, and you know what? Still had more flavor than br**ish food.

If it requires this much explanation, it's not very sensible.

In Celsius 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling. It's so simple. "Comfortable" is anywhere from like 15-30 (my Canadian standards, very subjective I know) and we don't need decimals.

Here you go. Pretty simply, really.

"Fairly cold"? I've been in 0c a few times in my life and every time it was freezing!

Isn't 100f the temperature your blood is meant to be?

98.6°F is body temperature. The .6 is funny because it's only there because someone picked a nice round number in °C then converted it. There's a name for that in math but I can't remember what it is... something about more precise than accurate...

It's honestly really intuitive for weather if you grew up with it. We still use metric for science because it makes the most sense there, like you say.

But it's not that simple. 100 boiling is only true at sea level. At 530 (~1750 feet) it's 98c. At 1500m (~5000ft) it's down to 95c. At 3000m (10k feet) it's just under 90c. Ocean water freezes at -2c. Fully saturated salt water freezes at -21c.

Fahrenheit doesn't have this issue?

Fahrenheit and Celsius both have the exact same issues. Which is why there isn't much reason to switch.

Temperatures can be given more accurately in Fahrenheit with whole numbers

That's an approximation. Celsius is no longer defined in terms of water boiling and freezing, and they are no longer exactly 0 and 100.

The modern definition of Celsius is based on absolute zero and the triple point of water. And those are also the basis for the modern definition of Fahrenheit.

1 more...

Any usefulness of Fahrenheit is purely accidental, how is water freezing at 32F useful? I'll grant that the finer resolution can be seen as a positive, I don't see how Fahrenheit is better for human comfort, my personal optimal comfort zone is 22-24C°, and I have no need for decimals for that. 73F is pretty close to 23C, I don't see much difference regarding comfort in either.

The huge problem with Fahrenheit, is that it is impractical in many situations, it has basically no merit to justify its existence, and only a minority of countries continue to use it.

Of course Americans can do whatever they want, but they are looking stupider for each year they keep using "Freedom Units".

Of course Americans switch to metric for mostly anything scientific, for example NASA use Metric.

The SI unit of temperature is kelvin, not Celsius.

If people don't want to use kelvin, does that mean they are stupid?

True, but Kelvin is based on Celsius, only difference is that zero is moved from freezing water to absolute zero. Celsius however is more practical for everyday life.

Celsius is only practical if you measure the temperature of water more often than the temperature of air.

But most people never measure the temperature of water, and frequently measure the temperature of air. For them, Celsius offers no advantage.

Why? As I see it, it's quite practical for air too, epecially when considering humidity.

A scale that typically goes from -20 to 40 is less practical than a scale that typically goes from 0 to 100.

Humidity is irrelevant. Celsius is useful only when measuring the liquid phase of water.

0 means any water outside will most likely start freezing, 100 means any water outside will be boiling. Makes sense to me. What temp do things start freezing in F? 30? 40? Doesn't make sense at all. What temp does water boil? 160? I dunno, none of it is rational in any way.

0/32/64/96 are somewhat reasonable breakpoints in F, and make dividing the space between them in half repeatedly on a thermometer simple. Fahrenheit was literally made up by Big Thermometer for this exact reason.

Salt water freezes at 0F. Normal water at 32 F. Normal water boils at 212 F. Human body at 100 F (which is wrong, but also has been changing.) Below 10 F snot in nose freezes. 20 F is time to switch to long pants.

they are all arbitrary numbers. Originally C actually had water freeze at 0 and boil at -100

Water freezes at an obvious 32°F at sea level and of course boils at 212°F. What's so confusing about that? /s

Water boils at 99.9839 Celsius, not 100. What so confusing about that?

1 more...

but how often does knowing how to convert water weight to volume come up? Same with the energy to heat water.

The water/weight comes up all the time. Filling a 10L bucket, I know that is going to weigh 10kg. I know I can lift it and my kid can't.

The energy one, I'm not even sure is right. We don't use calories, we use kilojoules. A joule is used to lift 1kg 1m. It's not something I ever use. I use kilojoules for tracking food I ate today, that's about it.

Yeah i dont really use energy unless i want explain kwh to gallons of gasoline.

But fir water buckets i just see the bycket and have enough experience to know if i can

Weight to volume is extremely common when I cook, because often things are measured in volume, but I prefer to use the weight.

½ a liter water or milk or almost any fluid without extra dish-washing? Easy you just put it on the weight, select tara, and pour 500 grams. Voila you just saved both kitchen space and extra work. because 1g = 1ml with water and most fluids.

It's equally easy if the number given isn't in liter, ml or milliliter of course converts directly to grams, and dl or deciliter = 100 g. 1 liter of course being 1000 ml and in water 1000 g or 1 kg. It's consistent all the way through.

I guess if you are used to Freedom units, this may sound like science fiction, but this has been reality in many countries for a long time already.

One pint of water or milk without extra dish-washing? Easy you just put it on the scale and pour one pound.

OK Imperial is not something I'm used to use, but according to Wikipedia, a pint is 569.6 ml and a pound is 0.4535 kg.

So you'd be off by 116,1 g or a whopping 25%!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units

That would ruin many great recipes.

The American pint is 473 mL.

The Imperial pint used to be that much too, hence the old saying "A pint is a pound the world around". Then the Imperial pint was increased by 25%, but Americans kept the old amount.

How should I know which you use, AFAIK freedom units are American.

You don't need to know anything about American units. But rest assured that those who do use them still haven't found a good reason to switch to French units.

That would make more dishes. If i need flour water and milk i just use the same cup. And i have scale to wash off.

Their phrasing isn't perfect, but I believe they're saying,

  1. Put the whole mixing bowl or pot or whatever you're preparing in,.
  2. Press the zero out button
  3. Add your 500g of ingredient
  4. If you have more things to add, press the zero button again and repeat.

No measuring cups needed at all.

ok that makes a little more sense. It still laves them with a scale to clean cup for me to clean.

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.

Request granted! My European thermostat that is about 30 years old now, has a display accuracy of 0.5 degrees, so I'd expect more modern systems to be at least as accurate. I'm not going to speak of the actual accuracy, but the display at least is 0.5 🙂

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.

How is using F a better tool for pool temperaturs? I have never heard of a European having problems with that using Celsius.

In what scenario is Fahrenheit more intuitive to someone who grew up with neither of the two systems?

Knowing nothing?! I think Fahrenheit clearly wins as it's normalized against your own perception and experiences. If you ever have direct contact with 100C, it will be less pleasant than 100F.

But my point was that both systems have their uses and I just code switch between them depending on the task. But if you have to have only one, it should be Celsius. I won't disagree with that.

But if you have to have only one, it should be Celsius. I won't disagree with that.

Oh no... Kelvin is that.

Kelvin is clearly superior to Celsius for scientific purposes.

I'm always amused when those who urge Americans to switch to Celsius because it's "more scientific" are simultaneously unwilling to switch to kelvin because it's not worth the effort.

Fahrenheit is no better than Celsius to plan your day, but it's very useful to have just one scale to do both science and your day planning (and everything in between).

If they tell me it's close to zero (C) then I know it's time to change from shorts to pants. If it's close to zero F and you're still in shorts then you're probably dead.

2 more...

Thanks I had to scroll way too far. Please upvote this guy

4 more...

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.

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.

3 more...

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 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

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

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.

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.

Ah yes, except it's made more complicated than it has to be. The thing is to get salt. Sodium is a basic element not a salt. Also you don't have to drink it, usually it's easier and cheaper to find in foods.

If 2 liters pushes you into hyponaiteremia then you were already low.

Yes, or low weight or both. Fact of the matter is, it happened.

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?

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.

I wonder if covering walking paths with solar panels would help?

Edit: also maybe zoning that allowed things to exist closer together instead of promoting car use

For one, the zoning should be altered to build everything close together and make walking more feasible. [(NINJA) EDIT:] Now I think about it, a number of buildings built before mechanised cooling in warmer climates were built with their ground floor entrance set back from the rest of the floors above, creating a covered, shaded walkway. Perhaps such a feature on hypothetical buildings in walkable areas in Arizona and New Mexico could work? [/edit]

For two, solar panels are but one option. Much easier would be to simply rig the place up with tarps over the streets to create shade. Hell, there's a town in Spain where those tarps are a local cultural phenomenon

I'm aware of the tarps, the country I live in had them and still has in some places but they have started to copy the car centric ideology (to my disdain)

I only suggested panels because they can become net negative and help offset the coal generation of electricity that's still common in a lot of places.

Also, for zoning, that's what I was thinking too, things built by as close as possible

10 more...

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 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.

Least bloodthirsty democrat

1 more...
1 more...

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.

3 more...

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.

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.

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 get to be the first person I blocked on this site who didn't say something to me first.

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 was more about pointing out that there is reason why it set that and why it was popular

OK, I can see it may have been practical at the time.

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.

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.

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.

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. 🤣🤣🤣

You do understand that it was invented by a German/Polish physicist right? Like it's stupidly designed but they came out at the same time roughly 300 years ago and anglo countries all loved fahrenheit until literally the 1960s when sentiment changed and we are pushing towards Celsius. It hasn't been that long and it takes a lot of effort to change everything to a new system.

Ask a Canadian to set their oven or ask any older UK citizen the temp and you have a good (for the ovens 100%) chance of getting those dumb "freedom units"

Have gates open for people getting better and working towards stuff. We all start somewhere and being a cunt about things doesn't inspire change.

I'm just pointing it out, in a way I hope people get. Metric is way superior and allows for easy calculations between energy, weight, distance and temperature.

Freedom units are not even consistent within one system, weights are all over the place, with ounces pounds stones, length is just as bad, with inches, feet and miles. There is not even some kind of internal consistency.

What I guess I wish for a start, is that articles stop using Imperial exclusively. Then over time transition away from Imperial will be easier.

I'm sorry if some people choose to be offended, there is no way any individual person is responsible for this, so it is quite illogical to be offended about it.

Celsius and Fahrenheit have nearly identical definitions.

In Fahrenheit, 0 is the temp of a mixture of ice and a particular brine. In Celsius, it's the temp of a mixture of ice and water.

In Fahrenheit, there's 180 degrees between boiling and freezing. In Celsius, it's 100.

It's not like distance, where mile comes from the Latin "mille passus", "thousand paces". Originally, Roman legions would place mile markers on roads by literally counting out their steps and placing them appropriately.

Meanwhile, a kilometer is a thousand meters, where a meter was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle.

Mile and kilometer are defined based on competely different things - a human step vs the circumference of the earth.

All that may be true, but doesn't account for the way metric allows for easy calculations between energy, weight, distance and temperature.

Freedom units are not even consistent within one system, weights are all over the place, with ounces pounds stones, length is just as bad, with inches, feet and miles. Where none of it makes any sense.

Metric is quite simply a way superior system to freedom units, that work as well as if it was made completely random. No actually it's probably worth, because NOTHING works in freedom units, if they were random, there might actually have been a case or two where they did by accident.

All that may be true, but doesn’t account for the way metric allows for easy calculations between energy, weight, distance and temperature.

How often do you do conversions like that.

Once in a while, probably because it's easy, I think if I was using imperial I wouldn't because it's impossible without tools.

Edit:

No now that I think about it, I do it all the time in the kitchen, where volume to weight is extremely common when I cook, because often things are measured in volume, but I prefer to use the weight.

½ a liter water or milk or almost any fluid without extra dish-washing? Easy you just put it on the weight, select tara, and pour 500 grams. Voila you just saved both kitchen space and extra work. because 1g = 1ml with water and most fluids.

I guess if you are used to Freedom units, this may sound like science fiction, but this has been reality in many countries for a long time already.

this may sound like science fiction

I laughed..

Thank you. Not everybody can see the joke. Most science fiction use metric, even though it is American made, and I'm a huge fan of Science Fiction. 😀

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.

Don't you trample on my freedumbs!

Sorry, but freedom Units are just too hilarious to not make fun of.