How do you guys cope ??

[Pura Vida]

Originally Posted by Horsehockey

Because cats normal body temperature is between 101° and 102.5°? Maybe she’s trying to warm up.

I was thinking this, plus maybe it's just part of her animal instinct to be outside at certain times.

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by ewalling

I once heard an amusing comment about the English and the weather: they're always talking about it because they don't actually have any!

The comment suggests that persistent conversational observations about the weather among English people - "Bit chilly for the time of year, isn't it?" etc. - reflect a hypersensitivity to small, barely perceptible variations in the absence of anything genuinely significant. Certainly, England has not traditionally been known for extremes of weather, which was one reason why it was pleasant to live there. Barring the (very) occasional anomaly, there were no devastating hurricanes, no raging wildfires, no destructive flooding, no Scandinavian freezes or Death Valley heatwaves.

This will make things tough at the moment since the country is not built or prepared for extremes.

A amusing observation but not completely accurate.

The UK is ideally located in a temperate zone.
However we are subject to weather zones or systems that compete for our attention :

1. The North Atlantic. Weather mainly from the west/south west.

2. Arctic/Scandinavia/Russia - the cold from the north east.

3. The European and African land mass - south and southeast. - Usually hot winds wet or dry,

There's another which i can't think of at present.

These compete to effect us. During the last few days it has come from the south, southeastern weather from Spain and Africa. (witness cars being covered in red sahara sand!)

We have a long established BBC "Shipping forecast" which many of us love to listen to late t night.
It is preceded by a piece of music called "Sailing by" and then weather around the coast of the British Isles specifically for shipping & fishing vessels.

This short video is how it sounds:

With descriptions like "rising more slowly, Good" we also find it amusing.

I live on the south coast so particularly relevant.

Most find it soothing as well as informative.

It is such an institution that we also laugh at ourselves:

[Gitfiddlemann]

Originally Posted by tinnitus

As mentioned above, we're coping alright in 90-105 temps by taking care of outdoor projects before noon every day. It's also helpful to live an hour from the coast, where it's usually 25-30 degrees cooler. That happens weekly with the grand-dog.

But Mrs. Tinnitus and I are confounded by something our chunky calico cat is doing this summer. Of course, cats like to sleep in sun, we get that. She comes and goes as she pleases through flaps in the garage.

So why does she sleep inside an air conditioned house all day when it's 80 outside and then insist on staying outside when it's 90, 95 or 100+? We had a couple nights over 85 recently, and she slept outside all night too.

Outside temp drops down? She comes inside to a 73 degree house. Temp shoots way up? She stays outside to bake on one of the decks, whichever is hotter. Exactly the opposite of what we'd do - but we're not cats. (BTW, we keep big bowls of water front and back, and she seems to like it cold from the fridge.)

Anyone know why she does this?

I think it has to do with them always seeking their "comfort zone", and that's not necessarily related to temperature.
I have a semi-feral cat that I've been taking care of for years, and although he's out and about during the day, I keep him sheltered at night in a shed that's attached to the house (which has neither heat nor AC). He loves to be in there in the upstairs loft part. Last summer, during a real hot stretch, I put a big fan in there at the bottom of the stairs, thinking he would enjoy the breeze.
He HATED it, and refused to go in there at night. I finally figured that the heat never bothered him at all. He might have even preferred it. it was likely the fan noise he didn't like. Probably because it uncomfortably robbed him of his sense of hearing.
I talked to a vet about that and she agreed. She said that cats can tolerate a lot more ambient heat than humans, but also, the quieter the better.
Lesson learned. We have to refrain from imagining that cats (and dogs too probably) perceive comfort in the same way we do. They have their own way of looking at things!

[ewalling]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

A amusing observation but not completely accurate.

The UK is ideally located in a temperate zone.
However we are subject to weather zones or systems that compete for our attention :

1. The North Atlantic. Weather mainly from the west/south west.

2. Arctic/Scandinavia/Russia - the cold from the north east.

3. The European and African land mass - south and southeast. - Usually hot winds wet or dry,

You may have missed the point I was making somewhat. I was suggesting that people in England do not generally speaking experience significantly life-changing weather events. Sure, when I was growing up in Yorkshire back in the 60s and 70s we'd occasionally have some snowfalls that might briefly interfere with power or keep us from going to work or school for a day. There was a heatwave in the summer of '76 that had people gasping for a while, too, as I remember. But it was very rare for people's lives to be completely turned on their heads through weather.

Here in the US, though, there are wildfires, tornadoes, and hurricanes in certain places that can completely wipe out a person's life and livelihood. Houses get levelled, destroyed and people get killed. Extreme weather events are not just an effect of global warming; they've been going on for ages. What I meant was that global warming may now be giving English people a taste of what it's like to experience an extreme, and neither the infrastructure nor the population is used to it.

[EZYPIKINS]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

I have stood in the middle of the volcano in Nisyros, Greece in late summer.
I have climbed Mt. Tiede in Tenerife.
I have driven to Terlingua Texas and Ojinaga in Mexico.
I have driven from Sacramento to Kramer Junction on the 395, ten to Santa fe via the I40 (?)
i have walked through the little stone paths of Thira at midday with a Billingham bag wih two Canon F1ns and lenses from 15 m/m to 300m/m!
i have driven north to south on Crete (no real roads just tracks in a Fiat 500!)

but ....

I've never been so hot as in southern England in July and August! 85 to 100 F with RH from 60 to 23 and back again in 24 hours!
Walking a few hundred yards up to my allotments yesterday afternoon the sun actually hurt my face and arms.

The south of England is now officially declared a drought area.
In France the river Loire has dried up.

This stuff is getting scary.

I was born and raised in the south San Joaquine Valley in California. Where summers often reach 110-115.

Used to gig in Inyo Co. Where summer temp reaches 125 and higher.

And yes the afternoon sun will hurt your face and arms if you stay out in it very long.

[Horsehockey]

My hometown of 8000 in Saint Peter, Minnesota. I was away in the service. My dear mother and her tenant hid in the downstairs laundry room closet and the tornado passed overhead before it went right down Main Street.

Lots of damage for a small town. This from Wikipedia:

On March 29, 1998, a tornado struck St. Peter, killing six-year-old Dustin Schneider, injuring dozens more, and damaging much of the town's housing, commercial, and civic buildings. The tornado destroyed 156 single-family houses and 51 apartment units. An additional 362 houses and apartments suffered serious damage and 1,383 houses or apartments had minor damage. The town's three trailer parks were largely spared with no mobile homes destroyed and just two seriously damaged. Major losses included the Old Central School, St. Peter Arts and Heritage Center, St. Peter's Catholic Church, St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church, and Johnson Hall at Gustavus Adolphus College.

[hubcapsc]

it was likely the fan noise he didn't like.

In the spring and fall when we run the attic fan, my cats are
sure the fan is a monster that is going to kill them and they won't
go upstairs...

-Mike

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by hubcapsc

[B]In the spring and fall when we run the attic fan, my cats are
sure the fan is a monster that is going to kill them and they won't
go upstairs...

Sounds like my cats last year. This year, they seem to have changed their minds.

Amazing as it sounds, their hearing doesn't seem to be impeded by the produced white noise either. I have low-noise fans (I measured about 32 dB at 3m) which is still very loud for animals with hearing as sensitive as theirs; I have no way to measure reliably to what frequencies the spectrum goes. But they'll still hear tiny sounds and know exactly where it came from. Just like they do when I'm practising guitar btw.

[Malcolm Kindnes]

Originally Posted by frankmcr

It's what you're used to that matters.

My relatives in Florida put on down vests when the temps plunge into the mid 60s.

Precisely, I have many friends in Vietnam and they think 22⁰C is cold, especially if there is a little breeze.

[catndahats]

revisiting this thread....
On a positive note, our "weather" has broken and is back to being somewhat bearable again...tropical disturbance on the southern border has brought cooler temps the last week or so, and ever so much more needed rain returned to our area (after months of zero measurable rainfall). The trees, crops, rivers, lakes, and critters are all dancing a jig.

As maw-maw used to say, "This too will pass."
Hang in there everyone!

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by Horsehockey

My hometown of 8000 in Saint Peter, Minnesota. I was away in the service. My dear mother and her tenant hid in the downstairs laundry room closet and the tornado passed overhead before it went right down Main Street.

Lots of damage for a small town. This from Wikipedia:

On March 29, 1998, a tornado struck St. Peter, killing six-year-old Dustin Schneider, injuring dozens more, and damaging much of the town's housing, commercial, and civic buildings. The tornado destroyed 156 single-family houses and 51 apartment units. An additional 362 houses and apartments suffered serious damage and 1,383 houses or apartments had minor damage. The town's three trailer parks were largely spared with no mobile homes destroyed and just two seriously damaged. Major losses included the Old Central School, St. Peter Arts and Heritage Center, St. Peter's Catholic Church, St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church, and Johnson Hall at Gustavus Adolphus College.

random coincidental memory:

I still remember getting the shipment of a radio-station's computer returned to headquarters after that storm. The inside of the computer's case was filled with pea-gravel likely from landscaping around the station office. I think it was wet gravel and the computers electronics were largely unsalvageable.

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by Malcolm Kindnes

Precisely, I have many friends in Vietnam and they think 22⁰C is cold, especially if there is a little breeze.

Idem for my friend in Peru, who is apparently used only to very small temperature variations...

And you know what, I can relate. The other night temperature in my bedroom went below 23°C for the first time in weeks, and I had to kill the fan (because I didn't want dig out a t-shirt to sleep in; it was like 3am).

OTOH, a few years back we were touring central France and went to visit a cave system (I forget the name, you enter it through what looks like a big sink hole). We were warned against the constant 14°C temps inside, but I never put on the jacket I took with, revelling instead in the glorious cool on my skin (I *was* wearing a polo shirt that day )

[Andyrondack]

Staying with my cousin in Southern Europe , he had an allotment on a hillside out of town from which he kept his family and some neighbours in fruit and veg.
I remember on summer mornings getting up early to go help him water and tend his crops.
There was a well at the top with a generator pump to get the water out. My cousin had dug trenches and terraces down the hillside so we just had to turn on the tap at the top to water the whole allotment. Midday temps were high 30s to 40 C but we were always home for breakfast after which he went off to his paying job and back home for a siesta during the hottest part of the day.
Like the song goes.. Only Mad Dogs and Englishmen ( that's me then) Go Out In The Midday Sun.

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by ewalling

You may have missed the point I was making somewhat. I was suggesting that people in England do not generally speaking experience significantly life-changing weather events. Sure, when I was growing up in Yorkshire back in the 60s and 70s we'd occasionally have some snowfalls that might briefly interfere with power or keep us from going to work or school for a day. There was a heatwave in the summer of '76 that had people gasping for a while, too, as I remember. But it was very rare for people's lives to be completely turned on their heads through weather.

Here in the US, though, there are wildfires, tornadoes, and hurricanes in certain places that can completely wipe out a person's life and livelihood. Houses get levelled, destroyed and people get killed. Extreme weather events are not just an effect of global warming; they've been going on for ages. What I meant was that global warming may now be giving English people a taste of what it's like to experience an extreme, and neither the infrastructure nor the population is used to it.

hi ewalling, i hear what you say (or read what you write, and agree - up to a point.

However, the UK is "currently" in a part of the word which is called "temperate". In the past and no doubt in the future our weather will become more extreme.

Most northern European peoples evolved physical attributes to deal with the local weather conditions of where a few dozen generations had settled.

People from further north - the arctic circle for instance, developed different physical appearances for their environment, and the further south, different again.

Those folks in the hotter parts of the USA, who boast of temperatures that can quickly damage someone of a northern European ancestry will not be able to survive in the way that the first nation tribes adapted to is some thousands of years ago.

We humans adapt,but it takes generations, and we have travelled and settled far more in recent centuries than we did before.

In my short time of living on the south coast of England, I have seen extreme snowfalls, a hurricane (with tornadoes), and my Roman city flooded which had not happened since before the Romans left.

British people still die from meteorological events in the UK from time to time, although as you rightly say, not half so much as in the USA, or Africa, or India.

Large land masses in the tropical and sub tropical regions are surely bound to create extreme weather events, but to say that Brits have no weather, is to misunderstand these islands and the waters that surround them somewhat.

Anyway it seems tat we are back to normal ow - I spent a lovely afternoon as the guest of a hundred plot allotment site discussion the necessity for the diminishing insect life in our area.

Best, Andy

[frankmcr]

Once upon a time though, the Thames would freeze, and fun was had . . .

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/56035590