Day 6 - 213 -- Describing Heat

Mercy! The heat outside is still high. The sun feels so hot on a short walk between buildings. Coupled with little air movement, it is uncomfortable. Thankfully, humidity has dropped since yesterday, so the air felt less solid. The past few weeks has led to reflect on meteorological methods to communicate heat warnings and feel like temperatures. In the past, the national weather network included dew points in all visual forecasts -- on screen and online. That line was deleted when the format was updated a few years back. Now, all that I can do is look at overnight lows and assume that the due point is there or higher. When the dewpoint is between 65F (18C) and 69F (20C) things begin to feel uncomfortable. When dewpoints are over 70F (21-22C) they use the work oppressive. Still there is no scale used to clearly explain heat and humidity.

With no scale to use, I felt the need to design my own. We have wind speed scales with the Fujita Scale for categorizing tornadoes and the Saffir-Simpson Scale for hurricanes. So, why not the "Saturday Scale" for explaining the degree of heat in the summer air? Here goes:

1. Pleasant -- 22-25C with cool drier air overnight (about 15C)
2. Hot -- 25-30C days with 15-16C overnight, low humidity
3. Smoking Hot -- 25-30C with humidity that adds another 5C to feel like temps, moderate overnight cooling -- 17-18C
4. Hotter than Hell -- 30+C with humidity that adds another 5-10C to feel like temps, little overnight cooling
5. Are you freaking kidding me? -- 35+C temps with any level of humidity, but particularly the level that adds 5-10C to feel like temps, little overnight cooling 
6. Blistering HOT -- 40+C regardless of humidity -- this is just a silly temperature

With this sort of scale used globally, it would stop the silliness that ensued in Spain when I was trying to say that the a/c wasn't cooling the apartment to the owner/manager who didn't speak English. Sadly air conditioner or some invented Spanish version made no sense to him. When I decided to say the room was too hot, I used the adjective caliente. To which he smiled and 'calor'. I laughed at myself knowing I'd just said the apartment was too spicy. <giggle> Given the outside air temp was closer to 40C, I really needed a cooler place to recoup between excursions. The day it was 42C, I headed for the beach -- a walk of 5 km -- assuming that there would be places to buy cold water or soda along the main road. Sadly, nothing until I got a couple of blocks from the beach. I just waded in the Mediterranean that day, but walking the few feet to the edge of the water, I was sure I'd blistered the soles of my feet. Luckily that was not the case. So -- that explains level 6 of the Saturday Scale. 

So many songs use heat as a metaphor for human emotion and for happy summer days. A line from a song surfaced in my mind when thinking of the temperature. That song is shared here. The line should be obvious <smile>. I do love the energy in this song and with a keyboardist even. All members of this band were inducted into the songwriters hall of fame since they'd each written more than one song that landed number one position on the charts. No other band has done this. Enjoy! 

Don't Stop Me Now -- Queen