too effing hot

I don't understand the heat index or wind chill. Well, I sorta of do. It has something to do with how well your body does or does not deal with sweat and moisture, right? Like, it'll be 95, but your body will have trouble sweating efficiently (or something) so it will "feel" like it's 110? Or, it's 20, but it will feel like 0, because the wind will wick away moisture faster?

heat index has to do with humidity in that when the air's really moist already, evaporation takes place more slowly or not at all --- so the cooling effect of perspiration evaporating off your skin is gone. you still sweat just as much.

Gotcha, thanks. Yeah, I knew it had something to do with that. You get soggy with no benefits.

I stepped out for coffee this morning, and it does hit you like a truck. The temperature's just around 30, but it feels like there's no air.

Pssh, I say there's *too much* air!!!

Pitchfork Fest gonna be a blast.

Basking in the bliss of the temperature and humidity having fallen to levels allowing for some kind of regular functioning.

No AC here (UK) and we're on an upper floor with southern facing windows and a flat roof. If it ever went over 38° C outside there would be genuine danger inside.

Two fires at power substations here, no one has power downtown, all the traffic lights out. Fun!
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/thousands-without-power-downtown-following-explosion-fires-at-mge-transmission/article_89ebfcd0-8a8c-5278-91bc-988ef36fd8ba.html

xpost, looks like it could get very toasty from mid-week.

We appear to have fairly strong agreement on 850hPa temps nearing or reaching the 20°C mark for at least 2 days next week across the south, with no strong negative factors at the surface (i.e a strong wind) or cloud, there's no reason we shouldn't nudge a mid 30's in London/SE pic.twitter.com/5NBldWgj7u

— Official Weather UK (@Official_WXUK) July 19, 2019

fukkkin 39C next week here, canicule alerts, nique mon identité

It wasn't until I moved to AZ, after 35 yrs of life, that I 1st experienced sweating actually cooling me off. "Ohhh THIS is why we sweat! Neat."

Two fires at power substations here, no one has power downtown, all the traffic lights out. Fun!

Stayin' cool by blowing through intersections at 50mph with the windows rolled down

summer music fests sure to fall by the wayside in many regions over the next decade

Heatwave after heatwave in different parts of the world and Lisbon has steered clear of them all. We hit 31C next week and we had a couple of 30+ C days in May, but other than that Northern Russia has been hotter for nearly 2 months.

Tomorrow we're the same temperature as Norilsk

The stat I just heard was that 90% of the population of America will be enveloped in 90-plus weather over the next two days.

93F and 56% humidity, fucking great

4 of the last 5 days here we hit 100F/38C, my sister's Eurokids visited and expected we would walk everywhere (having only visited Texas in December before now) but the heat + humidity just demolished them.

we've deforested pretty much everywhere, we don't have a night-market or after-dark social culture

This is my dream, that my office will let me work a second shift during summer, and retail/dining/etc establishments will extend their hours to accommodate evening/night workers... I would bike far more in Austin if I could do stuff at night when it's "only" 85-90 degrees outside, and no punishing sunlight. But it would need a whole constellation of changes to social practices.

my sister's Eurokids

Briefly misread this as Ewoks.

91f / 33c in ottawa seems pretty crazy

deforestation is sure to effect the ewoks though.

they are kind of muppety! especially when they're being theatrically exhausted.

When I lived in San Antonio it seemed like a relatively unusual number of businesses were open 24 hours. Bars still closed at 2am but they were regularly packed after midnight. It was a pretty night-oriented place ime

also wonder how feasible continuous shade structures for bike lanes would be. would keep the rain off, too. I've never seen one, so I'm guessing it's not practical for some reason. but it's not like roads in general are practical either.

we have those on bike trails. they're called trees, though

well, we cut all those down here

LA should put elevated trains down all the major boulevards for the shade.

this is excellent btw https://placesjournal.org/article/shade-an-urban-design-mandate/

especially as the palm trees are due to die in the next decade or so iirc?

they offer almost no shade now so them dying off is no great loss

I meant more that they can give way to elevated train tracks

ah. word. of course it's not going to happen. there is actually a transit plan that is a good start (saner downtown rail lines, 405 transit, LAX link, etc.), thanks to the otherwise terrible olympics, but the main problem here right now is a ridership death spiral https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bus-ridership-falling-los-angeles-la-metro-20190627-story.html. we may not make it 2028 with a solvent metro. elevated rail would be a nice problem to have in this setting!

also good https://www.curbed.com/2019/7/10/20687762/trees-in-cities-climate-change-health-benefits

Angelenos will always choose cars over mass transit until it gets too painful to do so (cost or travel time).

poor saps

When I lived in San Antonio it seemed like a relatively unusual number of businesses were open 24 hours. Bars still closed at 2am but they were regularly packed after midnight. It was a pretty night-oriented place ime

Houston was like that too. But after the combo fuel crunch/economic downturn a lot of once 24-hour places cut back to just doing so on weekends or not at all. Even though things have since (theoretically) improved, a lot of businesses have relished saving money/not paying people, so the wild days of 3:00 AM hangs in Whataburger dining rooms haven't quite returned.

it will be 100 here both saturday and sunday this weekend. the air conditioning at my job has been broken all summer and has now completely failed so we closed early today. i was out doing something else when the announcement was made and had other office things to try to do before leaving. it was just unbearable, felt like 90 at least in my office, and it's not like i get any less work to do because of this. i don't have remote access to computer stuff. great!

there is apparently no a/c on rikers island (nyc's main jail). which is fucked up

the main problem here right now is a ridership death spiral

ime the two things that would immediately increase bus usage in LA are

1) make the buses run every 5 or 10 minutes, not three times an hour

2) universal health care

that LA times article i linked covers the main reasons. it's headways and reliability. the solution for that is bus lanes (these are super practical in LA because all the streets are so horribly wide.)

there's also class/cultural baggage and racism that keeps rich white people away (9 times out of 10 i'm the only white guy on the bus), but that's a tougher problem and right now we're losing poor non-white riders at a rate that puts the solvency of the transit system at risk, so let's start with some dang bus lanes.

one more thing: while the fact that white people don't ride the bus is not of itself a problem for the solvency of metro or for climate change (because there aren't that many white people in LA county), it is a big problem because people who don't ride the bus tend to be opposed the measures that make the bus better for people who do. check out this BULLshit, for example https://laist.com/2019/07/16/eagle_rock_metro_rapid_bus_route_noho_to_pasadena.php.

solution for that is bus lanes

In my scenario as soon as you commit to making the buses run reliably, you realise that bus lanes make this feasible

(these are super practical in LA because all the streets are so horribly wide.)

otm


there's also class/cultural baggage and racism that keeps rich white people away

My second point is connected to this: LA is the only American city that I’ve gotten around in via bus which sometimes vaguely justifies the otherwise bonkers American prejudice that buses have smelly and crazy ppl on them. Universal healthcare reduces the number of folks whose mental health situations lead them to shout or threaten the air on buses, and more non-smelly ppl on buses reduces the already-tiny proportion of smelly ppl to statistically insignificant.

I got nothing re racism though.

(I did read the LAT article!)

lol fire these NIMBYs into the sun

“We don't want to ride the buses," another speaker said, calling them "dirty and unsafe."

One woman had a suggestion for residents who don't take the bus: try it out sometime and make an effort to meet people different than yourself. That was met with a fair share of boos.

"How dare you come to our community and try to destroy it," one resident said to Metro staff at the front of the room. "Colorado [Blvd.] is not for sale."

love when the fact-checkin cuzzes get together (seriously)

My second point is connected to this: LA is the only American city that I’ve gotten around in via bus which sometimes vaguely justifies the otherwise bonkers American prejudice that buses have smelly and crazy ppl on them

No shade on Seattle, which admirably makes buses free (!) in the city center, but I have somewhat experienced that there as well on hot days.

Just looked it up, and apparently that policy ended in 2012 after a 40-year run. I guess it shows it's been a while since I've taken the bus in Seattle.

we're working on it from a different angle now: some free fare cards for public housing residents, 50 cents for youth this summer

Free buses ended in 2012 ftr, probably to encourage uptake of tap-on transit cards

and there's started to be more policy talk about figuring out how to make it free for everyone (i mean, through a tax, but you get what I'm sayin)

also https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/10/how-seattle-bucked-a-national-trend-and-got-more-people-to-ride-the-bus/542958/

If you’re afraid of the occasional smelly crazy person then move to the fucking exurbs and stay there

Urban amateurs wear my patience out like nothing else

xposts, sorry! I’m at a bus stop