It’s hot here in New England
And humid. Ugh!
Until now we’ve had a really good summer, though. The extreme heat is supposed to let up on Monday.
ADDENDUM: I just saw this article on the wonderful invention of air conditioning.
Today I am especially thankful for it. I can well remember the days when it was highly unusual. When I was a child, AC wasn’t in my house; it first appeared in my parents’ bedroom when I was eight or so. After that, on certain especially sultry nights, my brother and I were allowed to drag mattresses in there to sleep. But till them, we sweltered in our rooms, where neither fans nor open windows helped more than a teeny tiny bit.
And cars! We once traveled through the Mohave desert in the summer in a car without air-conditioning, circa 1960. Memorable. And awful.
I live in “Hotlanta,” known for its bestial, oppressive summers. (I don’t know how Scarlett O’Hara with her layers of clothing ever survived without air conditioning.) But the summer heat used to be more tolerable; or at least I feel it was. When I first moved here nearly every summer afternoon or early evening, the intense heat would be lessened a little by monsoon-like downpours that would cool things off a little. Those clockwork monsoons seem to be a thing of the past. I can’t tell you if that’s because of climate change or what.
I don’t know the dates, and can’t give specifics, but somewhere some time, I read or heard that the growth in both industry and population in the south – both east and west – mushroomed in conjunction with the development of air conditioning.
I believe it.
One hundred in Omaha, but not that humid.
Try central Florida (or West Coast Florida), when the temperature is 98 F and the relative humidity is also 98%.
And, oh, I forgot to mention the gnats —- those little guys who like to fly into your eyes, ears and nose.
But Air Conditioning is sexist and racist and also NOT GREEN. So turn it off and swelter in your virtue signaling.
Don’t forget to use a single sheet of toilet paper when you poop — to save the Canadian forests.
CO here, N of Denver. We had 3 100 degree days last week. And humid. Cooling down some now.
Don’t remember when house was A/C. I do remember that my Dad put A/C in the car. I fitted under the dash. Helped a bit, but not in the backseat where my Brother and I were.
You do know that some environmentalists want to ban A/C. And some CA town just banned Natural Gas. Idjits.
Hasn’t been above mid 70s in western Washington in weeks and often much lower than that. Worst summer so far I have seen here.
Living here my entire life have never had air conditioning. At most it is needed 5-10 times a summer and so you tough it out.
The benefit of this climate is from approx. May through mid October there is no need for A/C or heat so utility bills are rock bottom for months.
I’m also in New England. No A/C. Although I do have it in my car, so that’s nice. It was lovely this morning going to the hardware store (to get another fan for upstairs!), cool on the drive, cool inside the store. We’re spending a lot of time sitting in front of the fan, drinking ice water. Cool showers help a lot; wallowing in a cool bath, even better. As you say, it’s nice that we’re only getting a couple of days of this, I can remember summers when it extended for a week or so. If the house doesn’t cool down at night, it gets pretty uncomfortable.
My dad installed AC in our house when I was a teenager, first in the bedrooms, and then a few years later, the rest of the house. He did the work himself up in the yucky attic. My sister and I survived the hot, humid summers playing in our basement; nice and cool down there. My handyman father hadn’t put up any partitions at that time and we roller-skated around and around and around. Fun times. Now, I rarely see kids outside, no matter what season.
“CO here, N of Denver. We had 3 100 degree days last week. And humid.”
Is that the Denver definition of “humidty”? 🙂 I’m a native Denverite, but have lived in New England for almost 40 years. It always amuses me to hear my family back in Colorado talk about humid days of 20-30%. I’ve adjusted well to the east. Now when in Denver in the summer I don’t like it as it feels like I’m shriveling up in the more normal 5-10% humidty range.
Malibu station wagon, no air conditioning, no rear windows, a small plugin fan, circa 1985, when summer temperatures were routinely above the new normal, today’s [catastrophic] normal.
Living in SW Oklahoma when I was a young kid we had a sleeping porch on one corner of the house. When I was five my folks closed it in and installed an attic fan which actually worked rather well sleeping next to an open window with a breeze coming in. Later they tried swamp coolers which worked sometimes, water dripping over excelsior pads, great for New Mexico and AZ, not so much if there is humidity. Then window actual A/C and after I went off to college central air. A whole history of dealing with hot summers.
I lived in the Dallas area a good deal of my life where the heat really builds up, right now it is 99 degrees and here in the Texas Hill Country we are a pleasant 91 I have no idea how that works being five hours South of Dallas and alway cooler but I like it. Heck, it’s summer and as long as I stay hydrated my old bones don’t mind sitting out in a mild low 90’s evening as things start to cool off.
For you Colorado people my son lives between Gunnison and Crested Butte without A/C and they are currently 61 degrees getting down in the 40’s at night when he opens every window in his house to catch all the cold air to last through the next day. He used to live in Denver and moved back out to the mountains where he went to college and loves not paying a high electric bill like the rest of us in the summer.
But till them, we sweltered in our rooms, where neither fans nor open windows helped more than a teeny tiny bit.
In addition, you were in NYC. I recall going to NYC during summer heat waves. Upon leaving NYC in the grip of a heat wave, I often found out that temperatures were 20 degrees cooler outside the city. Similarly, I found out that in the winter, the tall buildings resulted in wind tunnels that made it VERY cold on NYC streets.
I recall two weeks of 90 degree weather a year while growing up in southern NE. Fortunately, it cooled down a lot at night- a lot more than it does in TX. We had no AC. Which meant that by the time I moved to TX, I was accustomed to living without AC.
After experiencing three plus months of 100+ degrees during the drought circa 2011- in a twelve month span we got 11 inches of rain while it is not unknown to get that much in a 24 hour span- I am not complaining about TX summers. Just stay in the shade. Inside, without AC, the downstairs is 80 degrees and well above 95 outside. Upstairs, very hot this time of day. Fortunately,hot air rises, so the downstairs stays cool.
And cars! We once traveled through the Mohave desert in the summer in a car without air-conditioning, circa 1960. Memorable. And awful.
In the summer 1955, NE relatives took a trip out west to see an aunt and uncle in Arizona.In Arizona,they saw people driving comfortably with the windows closed. So, they decided to try closing the windows. Within a very short time they found out that their car without AC with windows closed wasn’t as comfortable as cars with AC. My cousin recently told me that at a gas station in Arizona, his father found a portable swamp cooler- essentially a burlap bag filled with water- that they put in an open window, which made traveling in the heat more bearable.
This from MSNBC “Heat waves fall hardest on poor and elderly, experts say”.
Well, please pity the sweltering New Englanders.
Hah.
I grew up in South Texas where summer temps routinely exceed 100 degrees, then and now, for two months or more, not the two weeks which Yankees are now loudly suffering, and we never had A/C. My summer bed was an Army cot, just canvas stretched on a wood frame, so cooler than a mattress.
And we played outside, all the time. The nearest swimming hole was in New Braunfels, 30 miles away.
Indoors, where ceilings were high up to the tin-metal roof, we had only a couple of tabletop fans.
We salted our watermelons before eating; everyone did, to replace sweated-away sodium.
Complained then? To what purpose?
Americans are just not made the way they once were.
Cicero:
Oh, pul-eaze. Spare me.
I said “ugh.” That was the extent of my complaining about this particular heat wave.
Summer in a car in the Mohave Desert, on the other hand—now, that’s a dangerous kind of heat.
And it partly depends on what one is used to. Texans would be bitching about our winters.
And people have always complained about extreme heat or cold.
You remind me very much of this:
A/C will be effectively un-invented (for most people) if the Left is successful in crippling America’s energy infrastructure and driving electricity prices out of sight.
My post ‘Freezing in the Dark’ applies just about as much if you exchange ‘Sweltering’ for ‘Freezing.’
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/59310.html
I grew up in Phoenix. We played outside all summer. Friends had houses with no AC; but swamp coolers made it reasonably comfortable. In those days, the humidity was really low, before so many people put in swimming pools.
In about 1977, some Wisconsin cousins came to visit us, driving through the Mohave on their way home from California. We TOLD them to carry water. Their car overheated, and they didn’t carry water, and they arrived late and pretty badly dehydrated.
It’s a cliche to say that it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. But it’s so true! Here in southwestern PA, we rarely get the 72 degree sunny/low humidity temps that I love. Tomorrow I’m driving my daughter to Brooklyn, dropping her off, and getting the heck out of the 100 degree concrete jungle. The one bright spot is that I’ll probably find a parking spot, since so many New Yorkers flee the city on blistering hot summer weekends like this one.
An interesting post about the zoning-out of *shade*…
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/a-plea-for-shade/
Ahhh, the 1960 family road trip across the country in an unairconditioned Rambler station wagon. 3 adults, 4 kids. From Georgia to Oregon in 10 days and back again. Daddy drove like there was no speed limit. We traveled across Death Valley in 110+ heat. Stopped at a service station in the middle of nowhere for water for the radiator and got Nehi Orange sodas that were warm right from the cooler. Hot, oh yes, but irreplaceable memories!
Traveling thru the Mojave without AC was like having a hair dryer blasting me in my face for four hours. Bleh. I remember humid summer nights in Boston, too! People dozed off sitting on their front steps – the only place with any hope for fresh air at night. Remember getting into work early, with alacrity, in order to get some AC! Now I live in SF. Can’t seem to shake the prove but at least the weather and the scenery are gorgeous.
Living in SW Oklahoma when I was a young kid we had a sleeping porch on one corner of the house.
President Taft had one built on the roof of the White House. Bet it didn’t help much, though. D.C. summers are the worst.
A little advice for any who are not familiar with driving across the desert southwest in the heat of the summer.
If your car fails you, stay in it. Do not attempt to walk in the heat of the day without protective clothing and plenty of water — even if you see a gas station on the horizon. You will not make it. You dehydrate swiftly and heat stroke strikes suddenly. You will die.
Stay in the car in the shade. It will be painful, but shielding from the direct sun will save your life.
Years ago, before engine cooling systems and coolent were improved, the wise traveled at night and had a bag of water strapped to the car to replace that which was lost when the radiator boiled over.
Oh yeah sure…Air conditioning, so great.
(Also in New England) So instead of saying &^%# THIS, going down the the river, (pond/ ocean) jumping in, and gawking at all the scantily clad women jumping around…OR just hopping in an inner tube, with another “stocked” one in tow, and crashing the BBQs along the river beaches with “barter”, OR loitering around the beer garden/ ice cream shop, and harassing my fellow vote eligible peers abut pending local and State legislation….I can sit here in comfort at my desk and pay bills with checks (I’m old school).
Far cry from lower east side of the concrete and asphalt of Manhattan, in an unconditioned “brick shoebox” , welding, wearing leather protective gear and a fume mask, in July,
while visions of quitin’ time- and ICE COLD BEER in the AC of the corner bar- danced in my head
Actually, I felt bad for the auto body repair guys across the street. THEY had clouds of paint solvent fumes, and bondo dust, to contend with as well.
City hydrant “sprinkler heads” ……for the children?
For the kids LIKE HELL, I had NO problem pushing a kid or two out of the way for a walk by.
I was in Sacramento in the summertime, two years ago, and I noticed that a lot of the parking lots had shade trees. You learn immediately to seek them out!
I was in Phoenix in July once for about 5 days. It was something like 113 degrees; don’t remember exactly. But they had a wonderful thing on the sidewalks in the main part of the city—every so many feet the pedestrian would receive a wonderful cold spray of water. It dried almost instantaneously, though. But it felt so good for a moment!
Ahh, Neo, the commentators, of which I am one, are pretty uniform in what summers in really hot places were like before A/C.
TX falls and winters can have ugly episodes, like the so-called “Blue Northers”.
The top of the TX panhandle is only 100 miles from the CO border. One forgets that.
Never hit the road in the desert SW without agua. Too many wide open spaces. Or a huge traffic stall on an Interstate that lasts for hours
A few years ago I watched a drilling crew work 14+hours a day in west Texas. It was around 115+. I am still in awe.
It’s a measly 102 right now in Fredericksburg.
Funny when it was 100 in Scottsbluff, NE it was comfortable-no humidity, one just remembered to walk slow as a precaution against heat stroke.
And I was advised to always have survival gear, especially extra water, in the car just in case one hit a deer at night somewhere between Chugwater and LaGrange. No cell phone coverage you see.
This summer in North East Texas has been relatively mild compared to most summers. A lot more rain than normal. Trust me, I am aware of the weather as most of my work is outside doing things like painting and repairing houses, fences, and occasionally assisting my father in his farmer’s
market garden, etc. And the ac in my 1994 truck has not worked since the 90s….
I don’t mind heat and I don’t complain about it.
Because I hate winter. Absolutely hate it. I don’t mind snow in and of itself though I hate shoveling and snow-blowing. I hate subzero temperatures and wind chills and having to wear layers. I hate leaving for work in the dark and coming home in the dark.
As hot as it gets, I can still sit on my porch with an iced tea or a beer. I can wear a t-shirt and shorts. I can go swimming in the lake. I can start a hike at 5am in the sun and finish at 9pm while the sun is setting.
Living in eastern WA, July and August high temps are often 105, but low humidity, and being a runner I thought summer in the Mojave (Victorville) wouldn’t be that much different. Wrong. 110 – 115 was a lot (exponentially?) harder to deal with. Step outside of the AC for a noon run on a Victorville work day and, “wow, this is seriously dangerous, don’t get too far away from shade and water” or so I remember.
When I was young, I live in an apartment building with no AC. Now I lived in Bed-Stuy, but this was before crime became epidemic and there were bars on all the windows. We used to sleep on the fire escapes