Firing the Temp

I’m biased, but I’ve always adhered to the belief that the West coast is the best coast. But for the last couple weeks, the West coast has been the test coast. We’re living in a steaming petri dish as nature’s latest and extended heatwave tests just how much heat people can take. Almost everyone in the West has been involuntarily entered into this clinical trial. But maybe no place tests how the human body might be forced to react in the future more than the locale that is increasingly living up to its name: Death Valley. I can’t lie. I do wonder what it feels like to walk outside into unthinkable heat. For now, I’ll settle for reading about it as I watch the Bay Area fog roll in. Ross Anderson in The Atlantic (Gift Article): I Went to Death Valley to Experience 129 Degrees. “129 hits different. When you emerge into that kind of heat from an air-conditioned space, you feel its intensity before the door even closes behind you. It sets upon you from above. It is as though a clingy gargoyle made of flame has landed atop your head and neck. This gargoyle is a creature of pure desire. It wants only one thing, to bring you into thermal equilibrium with the desert. It goes for your soft spots first, reaching into the corners of your eyes, singeing your nostrils. After a few minutes pass, it tries to pull moisture straight through your skin. You feel its pinches and prickles on your forearms and calves. The breeze only makes things worse, by blasting apart the thin and fragile atmosphere of cooled air that millions of your pores produce by sweating. Your heart hammers faster and faster. Your cognition starts to blur. Only eight minutes in, I looked down at my phone. It had shut down entirely. I chose to view that as an act of solidarity.”

+ What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. It’s spreading. Las Vegas hits record of fifth consecutive day of 115 degrees or greater as heat wave scorches US.

+ “Amid frustrations with the local utility company CenterPoint Energy, which doesn’t offer an app, some Houstonians got creative with their attempts to track the power outages. They turned to the Whataburger app instead.”