(no subject)

[rivka]

Yesterday it was 105 degrees in Baltimore. Today's high was 104. At nearly midnight, it's cooled down to 96 degrees.

It's hot.

But really it goes beyond hot. It's punishing. We live in an elderly three-story brick rowhouse without central air. When we turn on the cold tap, the water trickles out at blood temperature. When I hold the banister coming downstairs, my hand comes away hot. The hardwood floors soak up the heat and radiate it unpleasantly to our feet. The rooms we air condition - the living room during the day, the study in the evening, the bedrooms at night - eventually become tolerable, but when we step out into the hall the heat immediately encloses and stifles us. It is tangible, like being slapped in the face by cotton candy.

The kitchen becomes intolerable after ten in the morning. Cooking is barely to be thought of. No one is hungry except Colin, anyway.

It is hard to drink enough to keep up with the fluid loss. Nothing is cold enough for me. I drink down a pint of water and still feel thirsty.

Last night, without warning, we lost power to almost half the house. A strange assortment: our bedroom had lights but no AC. Our bathroom and hall had no lights, but Colin's room, also on the third floor, had lights and AC. The study, lights but no AC and no power to our computer network. No lights in the kitchen, pantry, Alex's bathroom. Alex's room had AC and the ceiling light but no night light.

Michael spent an hour or more trying to track down the problem. None of the breakers appeared to have been tripped. Fiddling with them produced no effect. We finally dragged the futon from the playroom into the living room, which still had AC, and slept on the floor there.

This morning the landlord's handyman got the power back on in 15 seconds. It turns out that we have two breaker boxes in the basement, in two different rooms. Michael knew the location of one of them and I knew the location of the other. Neither one of us knew that there were two.

Even with all our AC units available, it is still ungodly hot. We have to be stingy about how we run them, because of the power overload. Also they are not very efficient, and the house is not well-insulated, and the rooms which don't have AC units are vast reservoirs of intolerable heat and humidity.

Alex was up past 11 tonight. She complains that her throat is scratchy and dry, but I think it's just too damn hot to sleep.

How's the weather by you?

Comments

[droewyn.livejournal.com]

Our weather is about the same as your weather... and we've been moving into the new apartment (and cleaning the old house) all week.

Today we decided not to venture outside before the sun went down. I think we did more in three hours than we did all day yesterday.

[lizzibabe.livejournal.com]

about the same, but with central air. I'm trying to keep costs down by keeping the thermostat set at 77. we'll see how well that works when I get the bill for the month.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

The weather here is ... not an issue. It's going to be warmer for the rest of the week, high 20s °C (up to 85 °F), but when it's not actually raining the humidity is low.

When I go to southern Ontario and Quebec, I have a hard time because I'm not used to that humidity any more. I will be spending next week working at a camp in Ontario and trying to sleep on the sunny side of a university residence. Fortunately, (?) I expect to be very tired.

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

Pretty much the same but without a/c. I have ceiling fans, which help, but pretty much I'm taking cold showers three times a day and sitting around sans clothing. I keep making ice but it melts ridiculously fast. Popsicles, though, are a wonderful thing.

Thankfully, I'm in an area where it is possible to open all the windows at night. Closing them back up in the morning generally keeps the place less than 30C. Not much, but I'll take every degree I can get.

The BoyCat just sleeps all day. For which ability I am truly envious.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

My weather is basically your weather, give or take a bit. The weather station about a mile from my house recorded a high of 107.1 at 3:52 this afternoon. It may have been a few degrees lower at the house, due to the trees. The weather station at GSFC hit 102 this afternoon, though I could hardly tell from my office inside a building that's kept at 65F.

The central air conditioning is holding out so far, though daytime temperatures in the house have been getting up around 80F even though the thermostat is set to 76. BGE is cycling our a/c compressor as part of load management so it's only on for 50% of the time.

[puzzlement.livejournal.com]

Sydney (and the south and west of Australia, only even worse) were like that over our summer. It got to nearly 110℉ three days after my son was born, I was grateful after all that they'd insisted on not discharging us the day before due to his jaundice. Visitors sat in my room miserable and dripping with sweat, taking an hour to dump the heat even in hospital aircon. Later, the home visiting midwives had me spraying down my newborn with water.

Every night a really hot forecast came in, we'd head to the shops and buy up cold things, to be rationed out over the course of the day.

That night heat figure is beyond brutal. I hope it breaks for you all soon.

[lerryn.livejournal.com]

It was 80ish today, and supposed to be 91 tomorrow, which doesn't compare to the east coast at all, but is hot for Seattle. All I have is fans anyway, no AC in my apartment. Might be a good day to work overtime in my lab, where there is AC.

[ailbhe]

Urgh. We're having hot-for-here, though it's dropped this week. When it's (googles for conversion) 86F here the children stop sleeping much at night and pretty much stop eating.

We open the skylight in the attic, and keep an indoor-outdoor thermometer so that we can open the curtains and windows only at that point when outdoors is cooler than indoors (about an hour after sunset). We have heavy curtains. And lots of rugs, for washable insulation.

Perhaps you can go and live in the freezer aisles of a local supermarket for a bit...

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

If we were in commuting range, I'd invite you over to stay.

They closed the pool here because it's too hot. The kids aren't allowed outside at school because it's code red out there.

Yesterday morning I heard our generator running. I was terrified that the power was out, since our AC isn't on the generator. Luckily, it was just the weekly test cycle.

[torontoteacher.livejournal.com]

Toronto... the heat is pretty bad, but the ambient humidity hovering between 60 and 80% is the real killer. No AC here either. We're spending a lot of time at the public library and the splash pad.

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we've spent a fair bit of time in the last couple of days at the wading pool/splash pads at Leslie and Jones and Hide-a-way park. Luckily, lake Ontario is cold. :)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

34, 44 with humidex, overnight low of 25 aka 35. It's horrible. I woke up at 2.45 last night drenched with sweat and had a cold shower before I could sleep again. I'm so glad I'm going to Wales tonight, where it will be typically summer chilly.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

We had a huge storm, so it's cooled off temporarily. It'll be bad again soon, I've no doubt though. *sigh*

The air quality sucks. Ugh.

Two things I used to do in the no A/C summers as a kid: at night, get a thin, very loose tee shirt for sleeping (I used to use my dad's). Sprinkle it with water, liberally, then roll it up tight and smooth the water throughout. Don. The damp fabric will act like sweat, and then cool off.

The other thing: I mix 1/4 juice to 3/4 water, add a pinch of sea salt, and drink that. It rehydrates a lot better IMO than plain water, and helps replace needed fluids without unbalancing my tummy. (Gatorade mixed with water works, too, but I freaking HATE gatorade.)

[eeyorerin]

Hot for Buffalo (only in the 90s, but, well, Buffalo). I ended up sleeping downstairs on the sofa early this morning because it's so much cooler down there. Now my back is killing me, but it was nice to sleep.

You all sound miserable, you poor things. I hope the heat breaks soon.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

oh, yuck.

here it's 73f at the moment, going to hit 84 on friday, which will be the hottest in the upcoming week.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

It's pretty bad here, but we're able to cope a little better I think because we have central air and haven't had any trouble running it as much as is necessary. It's not powerful enough to cope with how much the place heats up, but indoors we've been maintaining a steady 25'C - 27'C even when it's been 36'C - 43'C outside. I've basically switched to a policy of not spending much time outdoors if I can avoid it. I get the brunt of it during my commute.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

As others are also experiencing, I see, we also have air quality / smog warnings and humidex warnings in effect. (The outdoor temperatures I mentioned above are with the humidex factored in already, though.)

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

It's just a teeny weeny tad cooler here in western MA than in Baltimore, but no one here has AC! I just finished up work for the week - usually I'm very happy on Thursday afternoons! - but this week, it just means that I've lost my source for air conditioned loveliness.

We have increasing chances for thunderstorms over the next few days, and I hope they materialize.

[guruwench.livejournal.com]

It's 31C here, humidex of 41, and a severe thunderstorm watch in effect. I chose not to spend the money on my building's a/c fee to install my window unit this year, since as of the end of June we'd had maybe 3 days since May 1st where I'd have wanted it, and I'm moving mid August.... ugh. So, 9th floor apartment with no a/c and it's horrid. Cold soaks in bathtub and lots of cold stuff like water, popsicles, ice cream, fudgesicles. Ice packs on my neck.

It's supposed to break here tonight, and I so hope it does. The cats, though showing pinker-than-usual ears, seem to be fine and conserving energy by not moving a lot and lying on the hardwood or linoleum.

I hope you guys get relief soon too.

[curmudgn]

Well, it's the second week of July and we still haven't broken a hundred degrees yet, which is a Cool Summer by our standards. (A Hot Summer is what we had last year, with almost seventy days over 100 degrees, and two-thirds of the rain we get in a "normal" year.)

Today, Tropical Depression #2 is falling apart over the upper Rio Grande Valley, and we're feeling it with bands of shows and intermittent heavy rain passing through all day long, and a flash flood watch in effect through tomorrow.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

The outside's about four degrees less than yours. Fortunately, I have excellent AC from the heat pump. Unfortunately, I'm not supposed to go out when it's 90F or more, or Code Orange or Red, so I've been inside for quite a while. I did get up at 6am today (79F, massive humidity) to run some errands and came home to go back to bed.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

It was very nearly that hot around here, last weekend and the beginning of this week. My apartment has no a/c (window units won't fit in any of the windows.) I'm incredibly lucky that my former housemates invited me to use their house, which has central air conditioning. And a waterbed. Even though the house didn't have a functional water heater over the weekend, it worked out better than staying in my apartment.

[pameladean]

Ugh, I'm so sorry. We had several bouts of weather like that in the early years of this century. We don't have central air either -- this is 1916 rental property and the studs aren't far enough apart to take standard ducting -- and I know exactly what you mean about stepping outside one's little enclave of comparative coolness and being hit in the face with horrible damp heat.

Things aren't too bad right now. They had predicted 90 for tomorrow but then backed off to 85. Thunderstorms for Sunday, which means increased humidity.

I live in fear that one of the ancient window air conditioners will break. The idea of wrestling one of them out of the window and putting in a new on in a heat wave is appalling.

I hope you get some relief soon.

P.