The weather

LA to an NYC correspondent:

This is, without question, the most uncomfortable day I have ever experienced. You simply can’t be outside. I spent three weeks in a semi-desertified region of Maharashtra State in India in July 1987. There were some rough days, when you lay there like a dog with its tongue out. But there was never anything like this.

People keep thoughtlessly saying that what’s making it feel so hot and uncomfortable is the humidity. But it’s not your standard humid heat. It’s more of a heavy, dry, toxic heat. As I understand, there is a stationary air mass that is keeping everything where it is and that’s why the air feels so heavy.

Correspondent replies:

Right, I agree completely. I was just saying to my wife as we trudged home last night after dinner that there was something strangely lifeless and enervating about the air just now, even though the heat itself wasn’t all that bad, and there was even a slight breeze. It felt as if the air had already been breathed a few times, and had had all its “vivifyingness” drained out of it. It’s absolutely suffocating.

- end of initial entry -

Karl D. writes:

Agreed. This is truly brutal and unending. And I live in the country! I can only imagine how hellish it must be in Manhattan. I have said that if this keeps up I am going to have to take out a bank loan or pay my electric bill on the installment plan. ; )

Karl D. continues:

I should add that in my opinion, one of the greatest inventions of the last century was the air conditioner. The air conditioner changed the world and made it a much more comfortable place to live in. Although according to Obama, the inventor of the A/C he didn’t do a darn thing but leech his idea off the backs of every hot sweaty person on the entire planet.

Diana M. writes:

I agree with you about the heat. Like all New Yorkers, I’ve survived brutal heat waves, but this one is peculiarly awful. It is like being in a jar with the lid screwed on tight.

July 18 after midnight

Paul Henri writes:

No! I won’t have it. Calling NYC hot this week is like a New Orleanian calling December cold. Check out New Orleans’ average July temperature (lower 90s) every year and humidity and compare it to NYC’s temperatures this July and usual humidity . Jed Clampett might say this when listening to your complaint: “Pitiful.” For crying out loud, it is 80 at midnight here; you sweat just sitting on your porch, if the mosquitoes let you.

I live in a sauna. A good friend quipped long ago when his Dad did his lawn once. He was married, working, and going to law school at night: “Yeah, I let him use my sauna.” For many years, I would come home from work every Friday, change clothes, let the sun drop behind trees or houses, and then cut, edge, and weed-wack my lawn in my sauna even if I could barely see. I wanted to get it out of the way instead of having that brutal heat hanging over my head all weekend.

LA replies:

You don’t understand. The northeast is having a weird weather condition in which it feels 15 degrees hotter than it is. So for example it was around 90 all day Tuesday and is still around 88 late at night, but it feels over 100. This is not due to humidity. For example, the humidity Tuesday was just 40 percent. It’s due to some stationary air mass keeping the air locked into place and pressing down on us. This heat feels strangely heavy. Never in my life in this part of the country have I felt it literally impossible to be outside. But that’s the way it was Tuesday. I walked across Broadway and back once around noon, and walked one block around 8 p.m., thinking of going further, but I couldn’t and instead came directly home. So when I said that this is the most uncomfortable weather that I have ever experienced, I’m speaking a fact.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 17, 2012 02:15 PM | Send