The temperature is 39ºC; the temperature has always been 39ºC
Enjoy the heat while you can. According to some of the global warming forecasts I’ve seen, when the climate really starts shifting, you guys are going to be freezing your ass off for a couple of decades, until the poles completely melt and you’re submerged underwater.
Crap, does this mean a whole bunch more elderly French are at risk to kick le bucket? That was terrible what, a year or two back during the last regional heat wave?
Yeah , but it’s mostly been a dry heat 
I’m not trying to be snarky or anything, but in Nevada, do you guys have air conditioning in most of your buildings and cars as a matter of course?
See, on this side of the Atlantic, we’re not used to having temperatures in the low to mid-thirties really. Hence, very few buildings and cars have air conditioning, even those with computers in them. So now, imagine 31-35 C weather, with no air-con, and high humidity. It might be hotter for you guys outside, but inside, its probably really rather different, and hence you can probably cope with it slightly better.
And in non-deserty areas as well, like Toronto. AC in the newer buses and trains, in workplaces, and of course in most cars. These past few days I’ve been enjoying going to work to get away from the heat.
Ah. You mean like my apartment.
The hottest days here tend to involve hot humid air that has come up from the Gulf of Mexico and it’s used before it gets here. It’s like we’re all standing around breating in each others’ armpits. Blech.
At least a cool front went through last night and it’s still warm, but rather nice out, today.
If it makes you feel any better, it’s been running 112-113 highs in Phoenix, AZ for a week, but now has “cooled off” to around 107-109 or so. For a day or so the low temp at night was in the 90s.
A few years ago I was in Badwater in Death Valley, and it hit 128 F.
Feel cooler now?
We’re just getting you back for those Arctic air masses you were sending our way a coupla winters ago. So there. 
I’m surprised to see this discussion taking place largely in Celsius. I thought the UK was still on Fahrenheit? I always pictured the US & UK, arm-in-arm, using Fahrenheit/feet & inches/pounds & ounches, and telling the rest of the world to kiss ass. Seems a bit lonely…
Anyhoo: it was a balmy 100 when I arrived at casa de jsc1953, in beautiful Fremont CA last night. Is it hot everywhere in the world simultaneously?
Nah, we’re far more confused than that. Temperatures are mostly celsius, distances mostly imperial, weights are a little bit of each, volumes depend on what you’re measuring…
Most of the radio,TV and newspaper weather forecasts in the UK give their temperatures in Celsius. The general population are probably divided 50/50 as to what scale they use in general conversation.
Hot weather still tends to get measured in Fahrenheit in the UK… back in the 1980s, I remember the papers would go crazy when we reached 80F!
Phew What A Scorcher! etc…
Nowadays, we typically break 80F some time in May, and 90F is reached as a matter of course each summer.
In fact, last year, I believe we hit 30C (there we go mixing the measurements up again - that’s 86F) every month from May to September inclusive. That’s pretty remarkable for an island stuck on the eastern edge of the Atlantic above 50 degrees North.
Another reason we tend to stick with Fahrenheit for summer is that the UK record until 2003 was 99F, so there was a big “will it won’t it” thing about 100F being reached. In the end it was, with 101F in August 2003. Most Brits are fairly conversant with both - certainly I can convert automatically and instantly, to within a degree or two, any figure between 0C (32F) to 40C (104F).
Today it only reached 93F; tomorrow is now forecast to hit 99.
As for cold weather, we tend to use Celsius pretty exclusively for that, as “minus” numbers just seem more appropriate. (Not that we ever get any cold weather in the UK any more… the snowy winters of my childhood are a dim and distant memory… sniff) I love extreme heat and extreme cold… it’s the grey drizzly nothing days in the low 60s I can’t stand, and we still get more than our fair share of them.
I’m not trying to be snarky or anything, but in Nevada, do you guys have air conditioning in most of your buildings and cars as a matter of course?
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I was thinking that earlier… I think that probably does have alot to do with the dry vs. wet heat thing. A/C is definitely a requirement to survive here. However… in my personal day to day life- I do quite a bit outdoors year round and our particular A/C and ventilation system is horrible. We have two swamp coolers and a new A/C unit but some brilliant moron designed our place with two rooms that have NO A/C VENTS!!! Of course, these two rooms are located on the west side of the house. So between 2 p.m and 8 p.m things are beyond hot in our house. We got it working a little better but last summer we had to make treks to the bookstore and just spend hours there being cool.
Every time you walk outside on one of those dry heat 110 F days, you literally can feel your skin burning (even through clothes) and you can easily give yourself a nasty burn if you forget and grab any kind of metal (like porch railings and door handles).
I’m really not sure this generalisation is correct. Where it’s used, it’s either in certain sectors of the media, and even then only for headline-writing purposes, or as a conversion to help people who still want to think in old money.
Maybe it’s just me then. I’m 29 and probably just about on the borderline of Fahrenheit/Celsius thinking. My girlfriend is three years younger and looks at me rather blankly when I say it’s going to be 90 degrees. To be honest I probably am more used to thinking in Celsius, although I still mentally think of the temperature in both units when I see the TV forecasts. (Note to foreigners - the maps always display temperatures in C but the forcasters will sometimes give a rough conversion, although that seems to happen less often these days)
I suspect they do it for the broadcasts with the more ‘traditional’ audience, such as after the 6 & 10 o’clock news, rather than on the News 24 bulletins.
Actually I was just repeating what I hear from tourists . Once it gets past 105 your just screwed. As my job also consists of unloading semi trucks full of crap on a semi weekly basis it doesn’t matter what the humiditity is , it freakin blows
So, if headline writers ruled the world, then warm temperatures would be given in Fahrenheit, since 100 is so much more dramatic than 39; conversely, cold temperatures are in Celsius, since 0 is more impressive looking than 32.
How soon we forget the miserable wet summers of no-so-long-ago. British summers are either wonderful or dreadful, with only a modest spectrum between. It’s one of the things that makes living in Britain such fun.