owlice wrote:Why bystander is on vacation
According to my iPod Touch weather app, the high temperatures for Oklahoma City are forecast to be:
Hard to blame the guy for leaving town when it's going to be that hot!
- Saturday: 105°F
Sunday: 102°F
Monday: 104°F
Tuesday: 104°F
Wednesday: 105°F
Thursday: 106°F
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/desert-all-star-game-means-hot-time-for-baseball-fans-in-phoenix/2011/07/08/gIQAQXn93H_story.html wrote:
Desert All-Star game means hot time for baseball fans in Phoenix
By Associated Press, Published: July 9
PHOENIX — For thousands of fans arriving in Phoenix this weekend for the All-Star Game there’s no sugarcoating reality.
It’s July. It’s the desert Southwest. It will be hot, hot, hot.<<Organizers of the annual showcase of Major League Baseball’s top talent know all about it, and the five-day celebration that began Friday has been tweaked accordingly. The All-Star FanFest is being held inside the air-conditioned Phoenix Convention Center, which is across the street from the domed and cooled Chase Field ballpark. The hospitality area, where guests of MLB and the Arizona Diamondbacks will party after Monday’s Home Run Derby and before Tuesday’s game, is in another convention center building.
Misters are reflected in a doorway as they stand under
water misters, Friday, July 8, 2011, in downtown Phoenix.
And for those brief walks between venues, misting stations and water handouts are plentiful. Spring training on the lawn in the desert this isn’t. A summer afternoon at an open-air ball park in Arizona is just out of the question. But forecasters are not predicting a repeat of the record-breaking 118-degree temperature posted in Phoenix on July 2. Instead, the National Weather Service expects a more normal (for Phoenix) 106 degrees when the first pitch is thrown Tuesday.
“Thank goodness! Not to say anything, but 105, even though I know that sometimes you feel it is humid, your 105 humid in the desert is very different than 90 in the Northeast and humid,” said Marla Miller, MLB’s senior vice president for special events. “It’s actually more comfortable.”
The only major outdoor event is the parade featuring the All-Stars, who will ride in pickup trucks and convertibles at noon Tuesday along a route cut to 3/10 of a mile. No sweat here. Those lining the route might perspire a little, but again, there will be cooling stations and free water aplenty. Public health officials say the biggest danger for summer visitors isn’t necessarily hanging around downtown, where air-conditioned spaces abound. It’s folks who think they can exercise as usual outside during the hottest month of the year.
“When you live here, you know that this is a rough month, you know that you’re going to be doing inside activities, and you limit your time outside,” said Dr. Cara Christ, chief medical officer for the state health department. “But it’s beautiful here. So we do get a lot of visitors who come and think that they can hike, they can go out running, and just are not prepared for how quickly you can get dehydrated and sick.”
Outside physical exertion during the hottest part of the day — about 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. — should be avoided, and light clothing, a hat, sunglasses and plenty of water are recommended to avoid problems, she said.
Diamondbacks President Derrick Hall acknowledged that the heat is his biggest challenge and concern. But he said the team and the city are prepared. And he predicted that the game, Monday’s Home Run Derby and Sunday’s All-Star futures game will come off better for fans than in other cities. “I’ve been to most of the All-Star games, and I can remember it being very hot in Philadelphia, in Atlanta, in Houston, really all the venues,” Hall said. “Here it’s going to be much different because it’s all indoors and all within close proximity. “A different experience with the roof closed, but that’s part of our ballpark, that’s part of who we are, and fans should also remember we do this all summer long and it’s never an issue with any of our fans or our players,” he said.
Summer is normally the state’s low season for tourism because of the sizzling temperatures, so the Arizona Hotel & Lodging Association is hailing the event as a boon for the industry. “If you ever wanted to go see a major league All-Star game, this is the best opportunity you have to come and make it affordable,” spokeswoman Kristen Jarnagin said. “You can stay at five-star resorts for more than 50 percent off what they would be during the peak season. You can golf at a world-class golf course for a fraction of the cost, you can get a two-for-one spa special around the valley at a lot of the different properties. There’s great dining specials everywhere you do.”>>
Ouch. When it gets to 70°F I shut down. That's my limit for doing any physical activity... and high humidity here is 20%! We've had a few days around 80°F, which is miserable. Luckily, the monsoons have started, which can create a 30° temperature drop in 10 minutes during the afternoon. But otherwise, I'm already looking forward to the return of winter.owlice wrote:Hard to blame the guy for leaving town when it's going to be that hot!
- Saturday: 105°F
Sunday: 102°F
Monday: 104°F
Tuesday: 104°F
Wednesday: 105°F
Thursday: 106°F
Chris Peterson wrote:
When it gets to 70°F I shut down. That's my limit for doing any physical activity... and high humidity here is 20%! We've had a few days around 80°F, which is miserable. Luckily, the monsoons have started, which can create a 30° temperature drop in 10 minutes during the afternoon. But otherwise, I'm already looking forward to the return of winter.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=51270 wrote:<<In July 2011, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center updated the U.S. Climate Normals: three-decade averages of weather observations, including temperature. The new annual normal temperatures for the United States reflect a warming world.
Following procedures set by the World Meteorological Organization, normals shift each decade, rather than each year. As of July 2011, the climate normals span 1981–2010, dropping the 1970s, which were unusually cool. Last year, the normals included 1971–2000, leaving out the warmest decade on record (2001–2010).
The maps above show the differences between the old normals and the new normals. The top image shows July maximum temperatures, and the bottom shows the January minimum temperatures. Positive temperature changes appear in orange and red, and negative temperature changes appear in blue.
On average, the contiguous United States experiences the lowest temperatures on January nights, and the highest temperatures on July days. Both January minimum temperatures and July maximum temperatures changed, but not by equal amounts.
Parts of the Great Plains, Mississippi Valley, and the Northeast experienced slightly cooler July maximums from 1981–2010 compared to 1971–2000 (top map). A much more striking difference, however, appears in the January minimums (bottom map). Nighttime temperatures in January were higher everywhere except the Southeast. Warmer nights were especially pronounced in the northern plains through the northern Rocky Mountains—about 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) warmer in some places.
Comparing average temperatures year round, every state experienced warmer temperatures in 1981–2010 compared to 1971–2000.
Although warmer temperatures can have benefits, they pose hazards to some plants. For instance, higher nighttime temperatures enable some pests—such as the pine bark beetle and wooly adelgid—to thrive in places where they previously froze.>>
Confirmed. Chris is actually the elusive yeti.Chris Peterson wrote:Ouch. When it gets to 70°F I shut down. That's my limit for doing any physical activity... and high humidity here is 20%! We've had a few days around 80°F, which is miserable. Luckily, the monsoons have started, which can create a 30° temperature drop in 10 minutes during the afternoon. But otherwise, I'm already looking forward to the return of winter.owlice wrote:Hard to blame the guy for leaving town when it's going to be that hot!
- Saturday: 105°F
Sunday: 102°F
Monday: 104°F
Tuesday: 104°F
Wednesday: 105°F
Thursday: 106°F
Gotta love sonoma county weather currently 52°Fowlice wrote:It is 109°F in Oklahoma City right now...
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=51419 wrote: <<By July in a typical year, the snow that covers the slopes of the Rocky Mountains has given way to grasses and wildflowers, leaving only the peaks capped in white. But 2011 has not been a typical year. As this image of the Uinta Mountains in northeast Utah shows, winter’s snow is lingering into summer. On June 26, the snowpack on the southern face of the range was 849 percent above average. The northern face had 892 percent more snow than average.
The image was taken by the Landsat 5 satellite on July 15, 2011. The lower image, also from the Landsat 5 satellite, shows more representative conditions on July 9, 2003. In the lower image, snow snakes along the high ridgelines, while the slopes are bare. Snow is a much more dominant part of the scene in 2011.
The Uintas are typical of conditions throughout the northern Rockies and northwestern United States. From Montana to California, the extent of lingering snow is “exceptionally unusual,” said the National Climate and Water Center, who reports that snowmelt is usually complete by July.
A cool spring is part of the reason that the western mountains still hold snow in July. Washington and Oregon experienced the coldest April to June on record, and other western states experienced temperatures below or much below normal. With low temperatures, mountain snow didn’t melt quickly.
The other reason the snowpack is lasting into summer is that there was more snow to melt. The winter and spring of 2010-2011 brought far more snow than average, leading to a record mountain snowpack in at least five states. A healthy snowpack is a boon to western states most of time. Snow stores water for use in the dry summer months. However, if the snow melts quickly, the runoff could cause floods. Already, melting snow contributed to flooding in the Missouri River basin. As the snow melts in other basins, it could swell rivers with unseasonal floods.
Despite the record snow in some western states, the snow extent in North America as a whole was below average in the spring (March to May) for the eighth year in a row. The extent was low because less snow fell in central and northwestern Canada and Alaska than average.>>
As the heat wave spread across the country and tormented millions of people with blasts of 100-degree temperatures and bog-like humidity, many reader’s took the opportunity to send us photos of how they were coping with the heat.
Emphasis mine.bystander wrote:As the heat wave spread across the country and tormented millions of people with blasts of 100-degree temperatures and bog-like humidity, many reader’s took the opportunity to send us photos of how they were coping with the heat.
Not content to just invent the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell went on to invent other useful things, like a primitive air conditioner that blows air over blocks of ice to cool down the room. “The invention is what, for want of a better name, has been termed an ‘ice stove.’”
That’s the gist of the article, which is a pretty good read.
How novelNew York Times Sunday Magazine | 1911 July 30 wrote:
Not content to just invent the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell went on to invent other useful things, like a primitive air conditioner that blows air over blocks of ice to cool down the room. “The invention is what, for want of a better name, has been termed an ‘ice stove.’”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_conditioning wrote:
<<The concept of air conditioning is known to have been applied in Ancient Rome, where aqueduct water was circulated through the walls of certain houses to cool them. Similar techniques in medieval Persia involved the use of cisterns and wind towers to cool buildings during the hot season. Modern air conditioning emerged from advances in chemistry during the 19th century, and the first large-scale electrical air conditioning was invented and used in 1902 by Willis Haviland Carrier.
The 2nd century Chinese inventor Ding Huane (fl. 180) of the Han Dynasty invented a rotary fan for air conditioning, with seven wheels 3 m (9.8 ft) in diameter and manually powered. In 747, Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712–762) of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) had the Cool Hall (Liang Tian) built in the imperial palace, which the Tang Yulin describes as having water-powered fan wheels for air conditioning as well as rising jet streams of water from fountains. During the subsequent Song Dynasty (960–1279), written sources mentioned the air conditioning rotary fan as even more widely used.
In the 17th century Cornelius Drebbel demonstrated "turning Summer into Winter" for James I of England by adding salt to water.
In 1758, Benjamin Franklin and John Hadley, a chemistry professor at Cambridge University, conducted an experiment to explore the principle of evaporation as a means to rapidly cool an object. Franklin and Hadley confirmed that evaporation of highly volatile liquids such as alcohol and ether could be used to drive down the temperature of an object past the freezing point of water. They conducted their experiment with the bulb of a mercury thermometer as their object and with a bellows used to "quicken" the evaporation; they lowered the temperature of the thermometer bulb down to 7°F while the ambient temperature was 65°F. Franklin noted that soon after they passed the freezing point of water a thin film of ice formed on the surface of the thermometer's bulb and that the ice mass was about a quarter inch thick when they stopped the experiment upon reaching 7°F. Franklin concluded, "From this experiment, one may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer's day".
In 1820, British scientist and inventor Michael Faraday discovered that compressing and liquefying ammonia could chill air when the liquefied ammonia was allowed to evaporate. In 1842, Florida physician John Gorrie used compressor technology to create ice, which he used to cool air for his patients in his hospital in Apalachicola, Florida. He hoped eventually to use his ice-making machine to regulate the temperature of buildings. He even envisioned centralized air conditioning that could cool entire cities. Though his prototype leaked and performed irregularly, Gorrie was granted a patent in 1851 for his ice-making machine. His hopes for its success vanished soon afterwards when his chief financial backer died; Gorrie did not get the money he needed to develop the machine. According to his biographer, Vivian M. Sherlock, he blamed the "Ice King", Frederic Tudor, for his failure, suspecting that Tudor had launched a smear campaign against his invention. Dr. Gorrie died impoverished in 1855 and the idea of air conditioning faded away for 50 years.
In 1902, the first modern electrical air conditioning unit was invented by Willis Haviland Carrier in Buffalo, New York. After graduating from Cornell University, Carrier, a native of Angola, New York, found a job at the Buffalo Forge Company. While there, Carrier began experimentation with air conditioning as a way to solve an application problem for the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing and Publishing Company in Brooklyn, New York, and the first "air conditioner", designed and built in Buffalo by Carrier, began working on 17 July 1902.
Designed to improve manufacturing process control in a printing plant, Carrier's invention controlled not only temperature but also humidity. Carrier used his knowledge of the heating of objects with steam and reversed the process. Instead of sending air through hot coils, he sent it through cold coils (ones filled with cold water). The air blowing over the cold coils cooled the air, and one could thereby control the amount of moisture the colder air could hold. In turn, the humidity in the room could be controlled. The low heat and humidity were to help maintain consistent paper dimensions and ink alignment. Later, Carrier's technology was applied to increase productivity in the workplace, and The Carrier Air Conditioning Company of America was formed to meet rising demand. Over time, air conditioning came to be used to improve comfort in homes and automobiles as well. Residential sales expanded dramatically in the 1950s.
In 1906, Stuart W. Cramer of Charlotte, North Carolina was exploring ways to add moisture to the air in his textile mill. Cramer coined the term "air conditioning", using it in a patent claim he filed that year as an analogue to "water conditioning", then a well-known process for making textiles easier to process. He combined moisture with ventilation to "condition" and change the air in the factories, controlling the humidity so necessary in textile plants. Willis Carrier adopted the term and incorporated it into the name of his company. This evaporation of water in air, to provide a cooling effect, is now known as evaporative cooling.
The first air conditioners and refrigerators employed toxic or flammable gases, such as ammonia, methyl chloride, and propane, that could result in fatal accidents when they leaked. Thomas Midgley, Jr. created the first chlorofluorocarbon gas, Freon, in 1928.
And we all know the 'hole' story of what great heights it rose to.neufer wrote:Thomas Midgley, Jr. created the first chlorofluorocarbon gas, Freon, in 1928.
As the temperatures have risen across the United States this summer, weather records have fallen left and right.
The horrible July heat wave, lasting weeks in some cities, the entire month in others, has affected nearly 200 million people in the United States at some point.
Plenty of records were set for highest temperatures. For the month of July, 1,479 daily records have been broken for highest temperature, according to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).
Needless to say; for a while our street looked like a little river. Maybe I should have tried fishing! 
