Be safe. Don’t burst into flame.
Correct. I grew up in the southeast and it would get hot, but rarely or never so hot that you plan your whole day around not going outside. Here, YOU PLAN YOUR WHOLE FREAKING SUMMER around not going outside. Most people who have never lived in this kind of weather have a point where their brains turn off when thinking of ambient temperature - usually when it hits the triple digits. They think 105 is the same as 110 is the same as 115 is the same as 120. Not true at all. In fact, I think just the opposite. After about 110, each degree feels punishingly hotter than the previous one.
And in July, it gets humid. “It’s a dry heat” is a myth, perpetuated by people who don’t know what the hell they’re on about.
I love the monsoons for their lightning displays, but I grew up with a swamp cooler. I freakin’ loathe those things. For those not in the loop, they only work if the air is bone-dry. Also, they cause the air in your house to be humid–they’re like gigantic humidifiers. I have a page about them here. The monsoon season, with its nearly daily thunderstorms? That’d be July and August. Misery. In hot, humid climates, nearly everywhere has air conditioning. Of the 25 years I lived in Arizona, maybe a total of one year did I live somewhere with air conditioning.
When I was pregnant, I remember a day… I was 8 months pregnant. It was August. I had one of those indoor/outdoor thermometers with the sensor. The outside sensor was in the shade. It read 111. The indoor sensor read 103. That’s with the cooler on. And so, by definition, it was also humid inside. Oh, and while in Atlanta you can always just hop in the shower and cool off with a nice cold stream of water, in Arizona the ground water coming into the house is about as warm as I’d typically run a normal bath. No relief whatsoever. On the worst days, I used to sit in front of a box fan with wet towels draped across me. I had an extra set of wet towels hung over a chair, and when the ones on me absorbed enough of my body heat to no longer be cold, I’d swap them out with the cool ones from the chair.
In Atlanta you get sticky and uncomfortable, and you whine about it. In Arizona you open the door and it hurts to open your eyes. Children have been known to get 2nd degree burns from falling down on blacktop pavement.
Oh, and one other thing. People who haven’t lived in that kind of place love to say “I visited there once for a week–it wasn’t bad at all!”
sigh
Yeah, and people go to the gym and go sit in the sauna for 15 minutes, too. I don’t see them moving in, though. Visiting != living.
Uh, I’m just starting my first summer in four years with evaporative cooling instead of AC, and you need to stop now, **Opal **. You’re scaring me. See, I’m scared now.
ETA: Oh, and a strange thing happened the other day. I drove several miles with the sun hitting my right thigh in a certain spot and I could feel it burning. I kept my hand over it a lot of the time to help. For the rest of the day, I had a huge red solar urticaria (hive caused by sun) there. Through my denim shorts. Who the hell thinks to wear sunblock under their jeans?
There was one particular day I’ll never forget when the humidity was crippling! I don’t know what the deal was. It seriously felt like a sauna. That is no exageration. The air was just so thick and suffocating. And it seemed to come out of nowhere.
But other than that, the weather has been quite dry. Today it is 118 degrees with 11% humidity! The heat index is like 113.
I’m in Diyala Province, Iraq.
But there’s a bright side… the low is 91. Woo hoo!!!
I know just where the O.P. is coming from,over here in England the temperatures have sometimes become unbearable.
On several occassions its been upin the seventies,I expect any day now the rail companies to announce cancellations and delays on train services due to us having the wrong sort of heat.
DAMN this Global Warming!
DAMN it to hell and back.
I hear ya.
I grew up in the Mojave Desert in California. My Parents had a rule that we couldn’t use the wading pool/sprinkler/slipnslide unless it was at least 100 F. I don’t remember a single day that I wasn’t allowed to use them all summer long. And evern better, my high school didn’t have air conditioning.
So I don’t live in a desert anymore and I don’t miss it at all.
I was just sitting here thinking of the things I could do in the house and who I could call to chat with, because I can’t go outside until 7. I just cannot do it. I do this every weekend.
You know it’s hot when my survival instinct overrides my shopping instinct.
A lot of people visit in May or early June when they might see an impressive number like 103 (bone dry, of course) and think that’s as bad as it gets. “It’s hot, but it’s a dry heat!” That relates to what I said above about people’s brains turning off above 100 degrees. They really don’t realize that 118 is a world of difference from 103. And they don’t realize that it gets humid, or that we might have 90 consecutive days above 100 degrees. Also, on those 103 degree days, the overnight low was probably ~75 or below. On the 115+ days, the overnight low was most likely in the 90s. It’s 100 degrees on your drive to work in the morning. That’s a big difference from 90s in the morning, peaking at 103, and then 90s in the evening.
I’ve met so many people who move here from the midwest in the cool season and act so cocky about how the dry heat is nothing, they grew up in awful humidity, etc. By late June they’re crawling into work, half melted. By the end of July the moving truck is in the driveway.
It takes a good attitude to make it through multiple summers here. I do love the place, though, in spite of it all.
I live in Las Vegas and I would rather have 90 days of dry 118 in a row than 10 days in Illinois or NYC or Berlin with 85 degrees and 90% humidity!
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I can remember getting out of shower in Illinois and using a towel to dry off, and kept drying and drying until I realized the humidity was so high, I was never going to get dry.
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I can remember putting on nice clean clothes and, by the time I got to the bus stop, I was sopping wet and smelled like I hadn’t showered in weeks.
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I can remember my mother not allowing any of us kids in the house until we took off our t-shirts and wrung them out so we wouldn’t drip on the kitchen floor she just mopped.
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I can remember walking in NYC in the summer and my jeans and underwear stuck to my legs from the sweat, and my shirt was drenched, and that subway smelled like a combination of roasted chestnuts and urine.
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I can remember sweat dripping off my brow so fast I couldn’t see and it would sting my eyes.
So - you want that low(er) temperature and high humidity? Take it! I will stick with the happy 118 DRY heat any day - and I have lived in Las Vegas for almost 10 years…
I have to drive to work in a few minutes, in a car that has been sitting in the sun all afternoon. Thanks for reminding me that I’m about to have a horrible day. 
The worst I’ve ever felt was 115F/45C with about 99% humidity in southern Japan with a typhoon passing by on the other side of the island (Kyushu). There was not a breath of air moving. It was almost unbearable.
By contrast, I’ve felt 123F/50C with very low humidity, and would take that any day over the high humidity.
Of course, I also lived in New Orleans for several years, where in the summer it’s routinely above 90 (although, strangely, it’s never gotten to 100 there), the humidity is intense indeed, and the only breeze you can feel is if you walk on one of the levees by the river. It took a year to get acclimated to the humidity, but then I coped okay. The trick is that everybody sweats like a horse all the time, so being all sweaty really isn’t a big deal, and if you’re going to be outside working for any length of time, you always have a small towel to wipe yourself off with. I learned to love the shade provided by an umbrella, and I learned the value of hydration – simple rule, if you’re out in the heat for hours and you’re still managing to pee, you’re drinking enough liquids.
I never had to wear all the stuff Bear_Nenno probably has to wear out in the heat, however!