Be careful with your car’s AC
North Carolina ain’t Phoenix, but it’s still hot. Especially on the coastal plain. Probably where you are as well. CNN’s Alexandra Meeks issues a warning in her “5 Things” newsletter:
More than 140 million Americans from coast-to-coast are under heat alerts today. Parts of the Northeast will see their highest temperatures this year while temperatures in the Midwest will be up to 20 degrees above normal. The extreme weather has also gripped the country’s southern tier from Southern California to Florida since June. And Phoenix, one of the hardest-hit cities in this summer’s scorching heat, is in its fourth week in a row of temperatures over 110 degrees, smashing a previous record of 18 straight days. President Joe Biden is expected to announce actions to combat extreme weather in a briefing today as the heat wave expands across the US.
This was Phoenix in May:
Another toddler got burned the same way in Colorado this month.
Solar-heated hot tub
You thought Florida was too politically hot for trans people? It’s not too safe for wildlife either (NPR):
It’s so hot in Florida right now that the ocean temperature in one area just crossed into the triple digits.
On Monday, a water temperature sensor in Manatee Bay near Everglades National Park recorded a temperature of 101.1 degrees, according to a park spokesperson.
The startling data matched high water temperatures observed elsewhere in the Florida Bay recently, and the scorching conditions could pose a major risk to coral and other marine life, experts warn.
BBC:
NOAA this week raised its coral bleaching warning system in the Keys to Alert Level 2, its highest heat stress level.
“This is a hot tub. I like my hot tub around 100, 101, (37.8C, 38.3C) That’s what was recorded yesterday,” Yale Climate Connections meteorologist Jeff Masters told Associated News.
Hot tub makers recommend temperatures of 37C-40C (9F8-104F).
I have to wonder if the three Marines who died of carbon monoxide poisoning near North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune over the weekend were running the air conditioner in their parked Lexus to fight the heat:
Deputies from the Pender County Sheriff’s Office found the three men Sunday morning in a privately owned Lexus sedan parked outside a Speedway gas station in the coastal community of Hampstead. Autopsies performed Wednesday by the North Carolina medical examiner’s office determined that all three deaths were the result of carbon monoxide poisoning, according to the sheriff’s office.
It’s tragic. And it’s getting worse. Look again at the cartoon at the top and at the dinosaurs posing with the asteroid.
I literally walk off the morning’s bad news each day after posting and need to get done before temperatures reach the 80s. Today, that’s 10:30 EDT.