Hot damn y'all! It's been an honor breaking records with you with month and I would just like to say thank you to all who made this possible. In a few more hours we'll've lived through the hottest month in recorded history but as that old sage Homer Simpson is fond of pointing out, it's only the hottest month of our lives so far.
Just think, in no time at all we'll be looking back on these momentous times as the cool old days. Weather we like it or not, we're gonna have to grok the hot!
One evening earlier this week we walked to the amphitheater at a nearby park for a concert. Dinosaur Jr. and Clutch were burning it up onstage and it felt like the air wasn't too far behind them. When we got home a little past 11pm I checked the heat index and it had dropped to a chilly 97F (36C). Been a while since I went to an outdoor concert, may have to reconsider when I go to them in the future.
The next day the heat index got up to 111F (44C), which makes me suspect outdoor concerts aren't the only thing I'll have to rethink. Don't be jealous though, y'all will all get your chance to soon enough.
Went outside to try and grok the hot but mostly I just got sweaty. Did make some progress though, yesterday I was able to say with a straight face that at 101F it felt cooler out.
Homework Assignment Thought exercise for those of you who've made it this far: If we keep going the way we's headed, how might you personally have to adapt and adjust to the hot?
In the desert plants like the juniper have adapted by allowing parts of themselves to die so that the rest may live. That sounds a bit drastic, but as temperatures approach the limits of human endurance we're likely going to have to make some rather hard decisions ourselves.
Mesa Verde was inhabited for centuries before the famous cliff dwellings were built but changing climate conditions forced their abandonment less than a hundred years later. Nowadays plenty of places are facing a double whammy of extreme temperatures and a rapidly diminishing water supply that threaten to force similar decisions.
Or we can wait until Mother Nature forces our hand. I'd rather not, so drop me a comment with your thoughts or ideas about how we can prepare and adapt to the hot to come.
Photos are from Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in Utah, along with one from Mesa Verde in Colorado.
For questions and concerns about grokking, see Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land or click here.