Heatwave in EU?!?!

[battlepants220]

I hear you guys talking about a "heat apocalypse" but its only like 40c? converted from intelligent units to freedom units thats only 102! Bruh! Thats average here! Last week it was 111, 112, then 113! You guys gatta toughen up! Drink water! lol 

 

...for real though, stay safe. Hydrate your homies. 

[Imbadatnames]

35 minutes ago, battlepants220 said:

I hear you guys talking about a "heat apocalypse" but its only like 40c? converted from intelligent units to freedom units thats only 102! Bruh! Thats average here! Last week it was 111, 112, then 113! You guys gatta toughen up! Drink water! lol 

 

...for real though, stay safe. Hydrate your homies. 

Dunno about the EU but in the UK the housing isn’t built for warm weather, they’re built to trap heat in and there’s not many houses with AC, at least built in. 

[battlepants220]

5 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

Dunno about the EU but in the UK the housing isn’t built for warm weather, they’re built to trap heat in and there’s not many houses with AC, at least built in. 

yeah its pretty rough. Like living in an oven. The heat is truly extreme here but housing is, for the most part, pretty well insulated and A/C is much more common (though still considered a luxury and not a safety right).

[Ralphred]

32 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

they’re built to trap heat in

It works the other way too, open all the windows after 10pm, close them at 6am (along with the curtains) and behave as if it's 0 degrees outside when it comes to opening doors/windows.

Also don't engage in any "short term fixes" like sitting in the car with the AC on, it'll just prevent your body from acclimatising to the change in temperature properly.

[Origami Cactus]

It has everything to do with humidity. I have been in 40c low humidity, feels like 20c would in my country.

But 40c high humidity is what kills people, and most of the EU countries that don't see 40c often are much more humid than countries where it is 40c all the time. So you can see why people are worried.

[tikker]

Not an official heat wave for my country (minimum 5 days >25 C and at least 3 with >30C), but it is toasty here now. My sensor hit 42 C in full Sun at noon. Now it has cooled down to like 36C in the evening and tomorrow will be 20 degrees cooler and rain though, so that's nice¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Humidity was low at 20%, which made it really not that bad. Closing everything kept it at a breezy 26 C inside the house as well.

[Zodiark1593]

3 hours ago, battlepants220 said:

I hear you guys talking about a "heat apocalypse" but its only like 40c? converted from intelligent units to freedom units thats only 102! Bruh! Thats average here! Last week it was 111, 112, then 113! You guys gatta toughen up! Drink water! lol 

 

...for real though, stay safe. Hydrate your homies. 

Being near the ocean, humidity is likely to be an issue. When humidity is low, sweat and cool water can more easily provide an evaporative cooling effect. However, when humidity is high, reprieve can be nearly non-existent, which leads to the other problem. Most homes in the UK are pretty well insulated, but often lack airflow, and air conditioning isn't terribly commonplace there.

 

While normally a good thing, the high insulation of many UK homes can work against you as well, particularly at night where the walls are capable of retaining heat for long periods of time. Even with strong ventilation, it can take time for the walls to bleed off heat, which makes sleeping difficult, potentially making some people more susceptible to heat-related illness as their endurance wears down.

 

Though I much prefer cold weather, I'm pretty well acclimated to the hot weather here. Been a decade going without AC, with only a bedside fan, and only recently splurging on a window unit simply due to my new night shift job. Power outages are becoming increasingly commonplace though (owing to the measures employed to mitigate sparking), so I'm contemplating a Jackery (or similar giant power bank) to at least keep my bedside fan going (alongside the laptop). The air gets maddeningly still otherwise and sleep is non-existent.

[Imbadatnames]

2 hours ago, Ralphred said:

It works the other way too, open all the windows after 10pm, close them at 6am (along with the curtains) and behave as if it's 0 degrees outside when it comes to opening doors/windows.

Also don't engage in any "short term fixes" like sitting in the car with the AC on, it'll just prevent your body from acclimatising to the change in temperature properly.

It works for a hot day or two but the nights have been mid 20s so it doesn’t really work

[TetraSky]

Humidity.

A dry 40˚C temperature vs a humid 40˚C are worlds apart. It gets harder to breathe, harder to sweat because your skin is already coated with the humidity. Sun shines harder through the humidity that acts as lens, burning you... The asphalt pavement can literally melts when humidity is in play.

So you can't even compare hot temperatures around the equator (california, mexico, etc...) to temperatures experienced in humid areas.

 

That's why just a plain AC is not enough in Canada and elsewhere where the climate is humid, you need one that has dehumidifier feature in it. Learned that the hard way when even though my new AC was full blast, it still felt suffocating in my room. Because it's so humid.

[LWM723]

@TetraSky Uh, all AC units remove humidity, thus the name air "conditioner". Anything else is not AC.

[Ralphred]

19 minutes ago, Imbadatnames said:

nights have been mid 20s so it doesn’t really work

Nights have been cool enough here you need a blanket after midnight, sucks if you live in a city though, all that concrete soaks up the daytime heat.

13 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

So you can't even compare hot temperatures around the equator

You have to take hours of sunlight into the equation too, further from the equator the longer the day is:

Johannesburg gets 11.5 hours of "daytime" today, London, Brussels, Berlin and Hamburg all get ~16.

[TetraSky]

50 minutes ago, LWM723 said:

@TetraSky Uh, all AC units remove humidity, thus the name air "conditioner". Anything else is not AC.

Unfortunately, not all AC are created equal.

Case in point, units like this : 
https://www.renodepot.com/en/arctic-king-window-air-conditioner-5-000-btu-2-speeds-white-mwhuk05cmn8bck0-21615012

 

It's an "air conditioner", but all it does is "cool" the air and doesn't remove the humidity, so it doesn't feel cooler. And this is usually the case for all "cheaper" units like that one at this price point or lower in Canada. Made the mistake of buying two similar units for tiny bedrooms. Complete trash.

[Montana One-Six]

9 hours ago, battlepants220 said:

I hear you guys talking about a "heat apocalypse" but its only like 40c?

Yeah it's the same every year in Europe at least that is how I experience it especially the media is pushing that narrative almost every year. I personally have no issues with these temperatures because it usually is just hot with low humidity and I lived in places where it gets much hotter on average and also much more humid so I'm always like: "Yeah not that bad, could be worse".

 

In the summer of 2018 (which was also very hot in Europe) I flew to Hawaii for a University research excursion and it was ~10 °C hotter in Frankfurt Germany than in Honolulu Hawaii but Honolulu felt 2 times as hot because of the humidity. Since I experienced each with the same clothing at the same day it demonstrated pretty good how much difference humidity actually makes.

[Ultraforce]

18 hours ago, Caroline said:

I laugh at US people telling europeans to toughen up but they literally have central A/C systems working 24/7 heh

 

Move to South America and experience >90% humidity throughout most part of the year, cities with temps up to 50C, violent thunderstorms and hot nights, imagine it as living inside a pressure cooker, oh and the best: air pollution so dense in some areas you experience this meme irl:

Rest of the world has nothing on us, perhaps some SEA countries but that's it.

I've heard from some people who lived in Thailand for a while that Japanese summers are very brutal given the humidity in the summer.

[AWatson]

I was out watching the cricket yesterday.

 

Nothing like 8 hours in the sun on the hottest day of the year .

 

I was decently stocked with cold water etc so I was OK, but it was a bit of a mess at the hottest part of the day.

 

I saw a good 5 or so people who had fainted (including someone who went down next to me in the queue for the bar).

 

The medical staff were very busy!

 

I just feel like we probably aren't used to or prepared for temperatures like that here.

 

I know someone who works in a kitchen, and yesterday without the ovens or any equipment but the fridges turned on, the temperature inside was already 37C at 9.30am.

[Zodiark1593]

22 hours ago, TetraSky said:

Unfortunately, not all AC are created equal.

Case in point, units like this : 
https://www.renodepot.com/en/arctic-king-window-air-conditioner-5-000-btu-2-speeds-white-mwhuk05cmn8bck0-21615012

 

It's an "air conditioner", but all it does is "cool" the air and doesn't remove the humidity, so it doesn't feel cooler. And this is usually the case for all "cheaper" units like that one at this price point or lower in Canada. Made the mistake of buying two similar units for tiny bedrooms. Complete trash.

As a mechanism of how ACs work, they dehumidify the air. This occurs because as the air becomes colder, it's ability to hold moisture is reduced, resulting in condensation collecting on the evaporator which is typically drained, or in newer units, directed towards the condenser to improve efficiency.

 

Sounds like the units you picked up flat out didn't work, or (depending on room size) were undersized for the application. The small 5000 BTU units are recommended for 100-150 sqft rooms, so barely larger than walk-in closets tbh. 
 

Also, if you’ve mistakenly picked up an evaporative cooler instead, those not only add humidity in the course of their function (when water evaporates, it pulls a significant amount of heat from the surrounding air), however, they also do not work well (or at all) when the humidity is high. 

[tikker]

Last night cooled down to a breezy 30 C at midnight... by 6 AM it was still 25 C and a bit higher during the day. Unfortunately relative humidity went x3 to 45% as well which is quite the transition.

[realedk]

I used to live in Phoenix, Arizona and the normal temperature in the summer was 106-111F.

Texas is about 100F every day

[Spotty]

Thread cleaned. Stay on topic.

If you want to discuss COVID-19 use the COVID thread. If you want to discuss politics use Twitter. 

 

• No political content, regardless of your views
• Coronavirus discussion should be posted in the official topic only
• Do not backseat moderate – if there’s an issue, please use the report function. This includes responses such as "off topic", "spam", "advertising", "status update material" etc; leave it for the mod team to handle.

[LWM723]

A large part of Canada gets 35C+ with 80% + humidity and it is unbearable. Also -40 in winter.

[RollyShed]

A year or so ago we rode bicycles round one of the islands in Samoa. It was a "killer" and the temperature was 30C each day.

 

I got home and dashed out the next day on the bike. I didn't realise until later the temperature was 30C. I just didn't notice it.

Difference?

Samoa humidity about 100%. At home, humidity probably quite a bit less than 30%.

[thrasher_565]

6 hours ago, LWM723 said:

A large part of Canada gets 35C+ with 80% + humidity and it is unbearable. Also -40 in winter.

alberta... also get mosons and freezing's ice... but its flat there so just slow down before the stop... but -20 there is like -10 in bc at -20 is when it starts to get cold and have to keep moving your fingers.

[battlepants220]

115 today. Record high. All our chestnuts roasting on an open fire before too long. Man this sucks

[airborne spoon]

Yeah here in California its 115-125F from July till Sep but that is just a normal day and the brits are like oh no its 103F hahaha. and yeah we have AC but i also work outside and sleep outside for 2 weeks every month for work in that shit so all i can say is suck it up buttercup.

[rrats]

On 7/19/2022 at 4:21 PM, battlepants220 said:

I hear you guys talking about a "heat apocalypse" but its only like 40c?

We don't have such heats in here. Heck in some countries like Greece you can survive without AC during the worst of the summer. 40°C is not a standard temperature. Also there is the humidity