The Heat Wave

Yeah, yeah, we're wimps about the heat. So say the good folks from Arizona. Or Florida. Or Wherever. Sort of like we're wimps about snow, according to the good folks from Massachusetts or Colorado. But we are the least air-conditioned metro area in the United States. Our usual temperature range in late June goes to about the mid-80s (Fahrenheit) at the highest, not 108. Portland OR is even worse right now.

What people who smugly point and laugh at Seattleites (or Portlanders, or Vancouverites, just to be inclusive) don't seem to understand (or possibly don't care about) is that these extremes of heat are not normal for us. They're more frequent than they used to be, of course, but I suspect that the Venn Diagram of those who point and laugh and those who are climate change deniers has a lot of overlap.

Evidently, people are blaming the strangest things rather than admit it might be climate change. A facebook friend posted this lovely anecdote today, as an example:

I just witnessed a woman in her late fifties to early sixties cornering a young produce employee at the grocery store to insist that this heat wave didn't make logical sense because and I quote:

"A. I have relatives in Cincinnati and it's not nearly this hot, so it's not coming from the East. B. Hawaii is in the Pacific, and it's cooler there and the ocean is cold, so it's not coming from there. I'm just saying it seems awfully strange that we hit 70% vaccinated and then this *AIR QUOTES* heatwave hits. Seems too convenient, doesn't it?"

Which tells me that the amount companies pay customer service employees and how much we fund public education isn't near enough.

Wow. Just wow. Doesn't all the cognitive dissonance hurt? It sure would me! And the Facebook friend who witnessed this is also in the Seattle area, so it's not like the speaker does not have access to accurate information. I mean, I can understand not wanting to believe in climate change; it's scary and hard. But to twist that somehow so it's the fault of a vaccine for a virus? That's fairly over the top. Although I suppose it matches up really well with the 5G Causes Autism set.

Anyway, the point is that we're literally melting over here because we haven't got the infrastructure to deal with this kind of extreme heat. They're saying the power might go out - it has in a few places - because we are simply not equipped to run so many air conditioning units and fans at the same time. In fact this morning I had a jolt of panic because the fan in my room stopped... but that turned out to be because I had set the thermostat on it to 75. My bedroom finally dropped to that temperature at 5:36AM.

And that's just those of us who have the wherewithal (or in my case, lovely friends and neighbors) to keep cool. For our household - a mobile home without great insulation, on a sunny lot - this means hydrating like mad, eating only cold foods, covering the windows, using the laundry room/mud room as an airlock of sorts, running our own window A/C unit (given to us by a dear friend when she moved east to a place where such things are included), running the window A/C unit our neighbor lent us (they have more of them), and not running much else. A/C, fans, fridge, freezer, this laptop, and a couple of cell phones depending on who is here.

As I write this, it's 97.3 degrees in my neighborhood. It's 76 in the two rooms with window A/C units. It's about five degrees warmer in all the other rooms. It's the cooler end of town - it's 102.1 at a friend's house in the south end.

And that's for those of us with options.

Imagine what it must be like for folks with no A/C at all. Which is most of us, honestly; as I said, we're the least air-conditioned metro area in the United States. And our buildings are built against near-constant misty rain and the occasional earthquake.

So, yes, it's easy to make fun of us. It's better to have empathy.