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Earth United Kingdom

Hot Weather Hobbles Britain, a Nation Unaccustomed To Extreme Heat (nytimes.com) 281

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Trains slowed to a crawl. Schools and doctors' offices shut their doors. The British Museum closed off its upper galleries, then the entire museum. The government urged people to work from home. Much of Britain took an involuntary siesta on Monday as merciless heat scorched the country, driving temperatures close to triple digits Fahrenheit by midafternoon and threatening to smash records. From a report: By midafternoon, Wales had provisionally recorded the hottest day in its history, with the thermometer in Hawarden hitting 98.8 degrees Fahrenheit (37.1 Celsius). The current record for England of 101.7 degrees Fahrenheit (38.7 Celsius) was set in 2019, according to the Met Office, Britain's national weather service. At 3 p.m., the mercury in Kew Gardens in London hovered just under 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

For Americans in states that regularly sizzle, those numbers might seem underwhelming, but this is happening in a country unprepared for such extremes. In a nation known for its scudding clouds, frequent showers and temperate weather, the blazing heat was enough to hobble much of the country.
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Hot Weather Hobbles Britain, a Nation Unaccustomed To Extreme Heat More

Hot Weather Hobbles Britain, a Nation Unaccustomed To Extreme Heat

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  • Poor people... (sarcasm mode on... fire) (Score:4, Funny)

    by franzrogar ( 3986783 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @12:32PM (#62712904)

    Poor people, suffering 37ÂC...

    Spaniard talking: Now that you're also taking siestas due to extreme heat are you also "lazy people" as we'd been tagged by your kind for taking siestas?

    • Englishman talking: Damn it, tried to think of a witty putdown but completely failed. Must be this dreadful heat boiling my brain. :-)

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        Must be this dreadful heat boiling my brain.

        The Brexit referendum also took place in the summer. Was it hot that day?

      • American talking. I find that in the summer months that people have a short temper and behave irrationally. We usually have an uptick in crime during the hottest parts of summer too. Hope y'all can keep cool and safe, it's bad news if this becomes a regular occurrence.

    • As a Northern Canadian, I think all Spaniards are fragile folks because they don't think of 5-10C as being t-shirt weather.

    • They should have been prepared for this unprecedented heatwave.

      At least, that's what everyone smugly told Texas during our unprecedented freeze last year.

      • They should have been prepared for this unprecedented heatwave.

        At least, that's what everyone smugly told Texas during our unprecedented freeze last year.

        Unprecedented? Or something that happens every so often, like in 2011 and 1989?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • It all depends on what you are used to. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Retired Chemist ( 5039029 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @12:42PM (#62712940)
    I can remember years ago, when the English where reporting dying of heat stroke when it reached 90. Of course, the fact that they were wearing woold suits might have had something to do with it. It is not only the heat, but also what you are prepared for. 40C is pretty hot for 50 north in London (which is farther north than Vancouver). I guess global warming is a real thing after all.
    • See! There was nothing we could do about it! It's God's judgement for the things we allow other people to do.

    • In my part of the U.S., 90F/33C does occasionally kill people. Usually in conjunction with high humidity, and usually in apartment buildings in poor areas where A/C is unaffordable, not working, or nonexistent.

      And it can get a good bit hotter. Officially our record is 40F circa 1986 - and I remember this - but parts of town were 2-3 degrees hotter.

      • Ya, wet bulb temps are what really matter when it comes to heat stroke probability.

        I lived in the midwest for a while, where a 100 degree day would have you dizzy after a 100 yard walk from the house to the barn.
        here in Seattle, I walk a few miles even when the temp hits 100 in the summers, because as long as you have water, the humidity is low enough that you can still keep cool.

    • It also depends on humidity. Iâ(TM)m in Scotland just now, suffering at 27Â. I was fine at 35 in California, and not even this uncomfortable when it hit 40Â. 45 though⦠that was all kinds of pain.

    • Buddy of mine came from Switzerland. Highlands. Real cold all year long. Summers were a nightmare for him but when we were bundled up it was shorts and t-shirt weather for him. Human beings adapt to their environment.

      That said, once you get past a certain temp (around 78 F) you're pretty much boned no matter where you are. There's a reason very, very few lived in the American SW before air conditioning. Past the age of about 50 you were probably dying of heat stroke.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Once you get above 37, human body temperature, things start to get tricky. Your body needs to maintain a fairly narrow internal temperature range, or stuff stops working. When the air is hotter than the inside of your body, you can't remove heat through the skin. You have to get rid of it other, less efficient ways.

      In fact that closer you are to 37, the harder it is to regulate body temperature. In the high 20s you start to have problems with physically demanding tasks.

      A certain amount of adaptation is poss

      • Once you get above 37, human body temperature, things start to get tricky. Your body needs to maintain a fairly narrow internal temperature range, or stuff stops working. When the air is hotter than the inside of your body, you can't remove heat through the skin. You have to get rid of it other, less efficient ways. In fact that closer you are to 37, the harder it is to regulate body temperature. In the high 20s you start to have problems with physically demanding tasks.

        The numbers in here are so wrong i

  • I would suspect most of the flats and houses not have A/C as it is very unusual to be (so) hot there?

    • Re:A/C not present in households? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @12:57PM (#62713010)

      https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]

      According to that report, less than 5% of homes in the UK have A/C.

      • According to that report, less than 5% of homes in the UK have A/C.

        Wow, really?

        Geez, I dunno if I've ever heard of homes not having AC...I mean, if they're too old to have central AC, they at least all have window units...

        Interesting.

    • Pretty much every country which doesn't touch the Mediterranean sea has basically no air conditioning. It doesn't normally get hot enough to need it. Central heating systems on the other hand yes.

    • There's plenty of places where it's normal to see extended daytime high temps over 100(F) and nobody has A/C. Because the architecture is designed to deal with it, and people are accustomed to those temps. The UK is not, and most buildings are designed to keep heat, not lose it.
    • What I noticed in places that try to get away without AC (looking at you, Pacific Northwest): Somehow the landowners always have it in the houses they live in, but act like it's unnecessary for their rental properties.

      This one landlord I had back in the day implied I was "whining" for asking about AC, and later I found out he not only had AC in his house, he had it set at 65. Meanwhile I have no balls because I find it hard to think in 93 degrees at 80% humidity.
      • I would guess you are right about that correlation, since on average landlords are more wealthy than tenants.
        • Try to keep up. I'm saying landlords have little or no interest in the comfort of their tenants, and this can manifest as lack of AC. Even when they prove an awareness that AC is desirable by what they choose for their own houses.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ac22 ( 7754550 )

      Correct. There are only maybe 10-15 days in any given year when it would be genuinely useful. Larger shops and offices have proper HVAC systems, however.

    • As a Brit - Iâ(TM)d be surprised if more than 1% of households had AC in the UK. The number is rising (very slowly) now that heat pumps are beginning to catch on for new builds, but itâ(TM)s very much not the norm.

    • To be fair, having lived in California all my life, only my parent's home had A/C. I have a portable A/C only now. Other places I lived, no A/C whatsoever. Sometimes it's pride I think - when in college in San Diego there was no A/C probably from being cheap, but also I think there was an attitude that if you had A/C then you were admitting that the weather wasn't perfect. So after college, none of the apartments had A/C either, and in Silicon Valley the A/C is also rare. I've got a friend in a very ups

  • We don't have much AC usage over here in the UK, because it's never been worth bothering with.
    The average summer temperature, even in Southern counties, rarely gets over 77F and when we do get what we call a "heatwave", its usually gone within days, with some rare exceptions.

    So, this Monday & Tuesday are ridiculously exceptional for us, hovering close to 100F for two days, with night time temperatures not dipping much below 72F - and it's a problem because the vast majority of houses are designed for ke

    • Above 85f or so all of the time can be dangerous. Usually you get a cool down over night. You probably won't. If it's above 90f inside, I would recommend trying to sleep outside regardless of outside temperate. It's midnight there, how's it inside?

      Are there AC cooling stations? Spend a couple of hours there per day (let core go to regular, let metabolism heat you for a bit).

      Fans, ice (in a bowl, in front of fan), and dampened synthetic shirts (on self, in front of bowl) is my recipe for handling high t

  • Unaccustomed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @01:20PM (#62713122)

    I see a few comments here sarcastically saying "poor brits" simply because you live in a place that's hotter. Well good luck suddenly dealing with freezing cold. The things you're "accustomed" to go way beyond just how you feel about temperature. It goes into how buildings are constructed, how infrastructure is prepared, how it is maintained, how you normally eat and drink and work during the day, policies around working. Everything gets adjusted.

    I used to live and work in a chemical plant where 40C days were a common occurrence. We've never had an employee with heatstroke. I also worked at our European sister plant. During the maintenance stop, 3 employees were hospitalised with heat stroke and the temperature barely topped 30C. Completely different work process, completely different uniforms, different equipment, different facilities, different access to water (mandatory waterbottles on one site, banned from drinking in the plant on the other).

    Everything needs to be adjusted for such an extreme deviation from normal temperature.

    • Maybe the Texans poking fun should be reminded that their electrical grid canâ(TM)t even stay running when it gets a bit cold. I mean, we may be struggling along, but at least our infrastructure is still mostly functional.

      • Well... that's because you don't have ACs to take down your electrical grid right now.

        https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]

        I'm sure if less than 5% of Texans had heaters, we would have been able to state "our infrastructure was still mostly functional".

      • Are there Texans poking fun? Also, you can turn the question around. Texas had a once in a lifetime cold spell of -17C (normally hardly ever goes below 0) and many US liberals and, I think, Europeans were blaming Republicans/capitalism/lack of regulation etc i.e. saying we should be more regulated, you know like those sensible Europeans. Meanwhile the moment temperature deviates from expected by 5 degrees Europeans literally start dropping dead like flies.

    • "I see a few comments here sarcastically saying "poor brits" simply because you live in a place that's hotter. Well good luck suddenly dealing with freezing cold. "

      It is a matter of proper preparation. In Eastern Washington the winter lows commonly hit 0 F and the summers commonly get over 100 F. For Spokane the record low is -30 F and the high 109 F.

      I live further west and lower so the lowest temperature I remember is -19 and the high was about 112. It is 83 right now after a cold front blew through last n

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        A good chuck of the US is like that. I have friends in the England and Ireland that have never been here that just can't comprehend the weather here. "Yea it's 38C here. Well, got to go mow the yard." might as well be "I'm off to Mars!" I sent one a picture of my back deck covered in hail in late May one year. "Is that snow?" "No, hail". "Wha??? Nah, you're pulling my leg, that's from Winter." "Nope, look at the trees, all green".
        • An intra-year temperature variation of 140 degrees Fahrenheit like we have in the continental US is alien to most of the rest of the people on the _planet_.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Thing and the UK is that buildings are mostly crap for any weather, hot or cold. We have the oldest housing stock in Europe, so a lot of it is poorly insulated, has very outdated heating systems, few options to cool.

      Somehow new builds are often even worse, especially on the cooling front.

  • Fahrenheit (Score:3)

    by Going_Digital ( 1485615 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @02:52PM (#62713542)
    What is this Fahrenheit thing you speak of, here in the UK we use proper metric measurements. I think Fahrenheit is something my grandma used to use.

    • Turns out that Fahrenheit is more useful for measuring temp from a human perspective because there are more degrees of gradient and so you can get a better idea of what a temperature feels like using a whole number rather than a number with a decimal place.

      • The 0-100 F scale also corresponds roughly to the extremes of a temperate climate. It gives you nicer numbers for pretty much every use case. Except boiling water, and when I want to do that, I just listen for the sound it makes.

        A lot of the metric measurements units are better, but Celsius isn't.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Malc ( 1751 )

        We don't see fractional degrees of Celsius. The only place I've seen that is US weather forecasts where they've presumably converted it from Fahrenheit. A degree of Celsius here or there doesn't make much difference - why bother with the extra accuracy if you can't tell anyway?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • If you can't calculate between C and F in your head, why are you on Slashdot?

  • Americans are looking at this story and going "What the heck, why would they close public buildings, like doctor's offices and museums, during a heat wave? What if there are people who don't have air conditioning at home, or it breaks down? They'll need to go to a public building to get out of the heat..."

  • For Americans in states that regularly sizzle, those numbers might seem underwhelming, but this is happening in a country unprepared for such extremes. In a nation known for its scudding clouds, frequent showers and temperate weather, the blazing heat was enough to hobble much of the country.

    I imagine that many places in the US would be similarly hobbled if forced to eat boiled lampreys at every meal, deal with people who cut into line, pay outrageous taxes and have to put up with universal health care.

  • We are all going to die!

    Paul Joseph Watson nails it. The government is looking for something to go into hysterics about.

    Thermogeddon
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1WLjYAttV8

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