They do, as it highlights your pattern of posting inaccurate and/or misleading anecdotal claims as if they were fact, and when they are demonstrated (using sourced data) to be wrong you do nothing but double down on it.
What pattern? What inaccurate and misleading anecdotal claims? You’re throwing around some incredibly wild accusations.
I will however leave that to other members to verify for themselves.
Because you cannot verify it yourself?
You claimed that Dubai wasn't comparable as it was a dry climate ("Dubai is coincidentally one of the less humid places"), quite how you came to that conclusion I neither know nor care, it is factually wrong.
Quick Google search:
Dubai's average humidity is around 60%. For the most part, it is a more manageable humidity year-round than say living in Singapore or any of the tropicals of south-east Asia.
Singapore… Right next to Malaysia which I brought up, leading you to start talking about India instead, which is a country complicated by other factors. Another quick Google search. Compare this to Dubai:
Malaysia is a hot and humid climatic country with high average outdoor temperature of 23.70C - 31.30C and average humidity of 75% RH - 95% RH throughout a day.
Temperatures in Dubai may go higher, but the differences in average humidity between Malaysia and Dubai more or less balance things out I’d say.
Your actual claim was "As someone who once survived one week of daily 45 Celsius in Italy", the reality was 44.1 for 3 days, you anecdotal claim was wrong on both max temp and duration, yet you continued to double down on it, hell you still are!
45 C according to the car termometer I was relying on. News to me that we cannot trust thermometers, which is a claim you haven’t backed up with anything. That official records measured slightly less is unimportant to the point I was making comparing my experience to the UK, which didn’t go much above 40 degrees.
Don't act shocked that people don't treat you as an honest broker, the evidence for why is right in your own posts.
My original post was misunderstood. Not treated as dishonest. People generally treat me fine.
Your piece of advice would kill people.
Wrong. You are doing your health a disservice if you do not flush out the heat at night. Without air condition it’s an effective way to make a room suitable for sleeping.
The old and young struggle more than healthy adults (and arguably healthy adults is a narrow band) to regulate body temperature, and babies under three moths old can't do it period. Anyone following your advice would have just raise the internal temp of their house to match the external one, 40 degrees and babies under 12 weeks is a match made in dying.
I didn’t say you should open your windows during daytime in a heatwave. You just assume I was. Read it again and you’ll see I was replying to someone talking about cooling down rooms at night.
It's not a prolonged heatwave this time, do you think this is a one off, that next time it couldn't be longer and/or hotter?
I have no idea. Do you?
In two days, as has been pointed out and pretty much handwaved away by yourself, the UK saw emergency services stretched with medical and fire related incidents (45 wildfires in my home county alone - which normally would not get that many all summer) caused by the heatwave, roads and airport runways taken out of operation (good luck going for a nice drive to cool down if the roads are closed - 42 did in my home county), rail lines buckled, perishable goods going off as shops refrigeration and freezer units fail, etc.
Please do point out where I “handwaved” these issues away. Another unfounded accusation.
Allow me to add to that last one and build upon
@Famine point about home fridges, my wife is type 1 diabetic and fridge's not operating at correct temps can have a significant impact on the safe storage of insulin, we are fortunate that having travelled to a number of hot countries we know how to cope with this via he use of additional cooling bags specifically designed for the purpose. That however is not the worse of it, pretty much all insulin has a max temp of 37 degrees, above that it is ineffective. The UK hitting 40+ meant that any type 1 diabetic out in the open, who wasn't using additional precautions (and most will not because this is not normal for the UK) is trying to use insulin that is now doing nadda, now staying indoors would work, unless they follow the asinine advise to open windows and raise the internal temp to match the external temp, and bye-bye goes the insulins effectiveness. However what this effectively meant was that in order to stay safe my wife was housebound for the duration of the heatwave, and it wouldn't matter how much shade or water she drank when outside.
That’s unfortunate and I haven’t suggested otherwise.
... which is what other people had. I already linked you to the article about the fridges and freezers in local supermarkets all breaking down...
Which has no bearing on people’s ability to cool drinks at home.
Yes, amazing, you had a trip to Italy and used zero Italian infrastructure... somehow.
That’s how camping with a tent tends to work.
Cool. No I'm not "saying that" whatever it was you rephrased it as, because otherwise I would have actually said that.
Still not an answer to the question.
What I'm pointing out is you said you survived 45+ for a week in Italy but the reality was a peak of 44 on one day. At best you were exaggerating for effect.
I wasn’t exaggerating for effect. I relied on the reading provided by the car we drove. That the actual temperature then might not have reached 45 C in official records is largely irrelevant to the point. Any temperature between 40 C and 45 C is a struggle. I’d understand your concern if I was off by 10 degrees, because then I wouldn’t have been close to having experienced what the UK just did.
That's literally the joke - the joke being that unreliable data sources are perfectly fine for you if they present the data you want them to present.
I have had nothing but reliable experiences with car thermometers. Misreadings of one or two degrees aren’t overly decisive, unless you’re near 0 C.
In fact the "digital sign near the airport" was the joke, the pinecone was the joke being repeated but much more obviously, given that pinecones are primarily used to observe humidity rather temperature. It was also a neat dovetail with the fact that the hottest place I recall in Cyprus was Mount Olympus, and it's covered with black pine trees.
I know what the jokes are. I’m not laughing though.
In It's extraordinary how hard you're trying to not get this. You went to a place that was hotter than the temperatures the UK experienced this week; congratulations, you're not the only person who's ever done that.
That’s not the point, as I’ve stressed repeatedly. Point was that I survived hotter weather by sticking to shadows and hydration, meaning it’s possible to cope in less hot weather doing the same. At least you had access to the struggling fridge in your home.
The place(s) you went regularly experience(s) these temperatures, and everything in the country is designed to cope with those temperatures as a result. When they reach those temperatures, everything continues working.
The UK has never experienced the temperatures that it experienced this week and (almost) nothing in the country is designed to cope with those temperatures - or indeed anything close to them. When we reach those unprecedented temperatures, even though they are lower than the temperatures you experienced in the place designed around those temperatures, lots of things stop working.
That includes roads (which melt), bridges (which buckle because they can't expand as expansion gaps aren't designed that large) electricity (the overhead lines expand, droop, and break), utilities (the pipes melt and fail, or expand and fail, or don't fail but introduce points of failure due to fatigue and fail later), appliances (which burn out trying to give heat to an already-hotter environment), buildings (high-steel buildings expand, introducing points of failure), homes (which overheat) and even fields which spontaneously combust (or, more likely, ignite due to carelessness from smokers).
It overwhelms our fire services and our healthcare system - which is already having a bit of a tizz because of the latest burst of "Omicron+" COVID and which isn't set up for large numbers of hyperthermic people because we live on a damp rock - and our police service too as they respond to every other emergency.
None of which I deny by reiterating the importance of shadows and hydration.
40 degrees is nothing in Italy.
40 degrees is a challenge when you as a tourist doesn’t benefit from Italian standards, not to mention the shock it provides to the system when you come from a country where the summers tend not to go much higher that 25 C during the warmer days. This is why my experience offers a valid perspective in relation to what Britain went through. Take it or leave it.
It's a never-before-seen event which affects national infrastructure and causes emergencies at cumulative "major incident" levels in the UK. Here it's something of great concern, and we surprisingly came through it pretty well - but then it was only 36 hours of it. If we had to put up with a week of it, which regularly happens in Italy, it might be a lot more difficult. And we won't have weatherised for next time when it comes, because it's less expensive to clean up after a once-in-two-decades event than it is to make everything so it's better at coping with something that happens only every 20 (give or take) years.
I cannot say I’m surprised that you came through it pretty well. It’s what I was basically saying from the beginning when others low key freaked over the fear generated by the media (as always). Broken record here, sunlight shelter and hydration gets you quite far. Though, I have no right to say so because Italian holiday.
I was fine though. All my stuff kept working - even if the fridge was struggling and the milk went off - and I went down the beach.
I personally stay away from the beach on hot days as it’s full of reflective heat and light. Up to 10-15 kilometres inland you still get to enjoy the benefit of the coastal environment. To each his own.
www.independent.co.uk
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