I’m not from this area of the country, but I have experienced some really hot summers in other parts of the US. But nothing really compares to this weather. It is unbearable in every way. I feel like I need a shower just sitting here and dehydration is inevitable.
Why is it so brutal here!?
In: Planetary Science
There’s a geography/geometry/astronomy question as well as a thermodynamics/meteorology question. At the equinox, when the axis of the earth is perpendicular to the axis of the sun, the equator gets the most sunlight and the poles get less. That’s to be expected.
But near the solstice, because of the tilt of the earth and the length of the days increasing as you go toward the poles (on whatever hemisphere it’s summer), the maximum amount of radiation happens around 30 degrees or so, and it stays that way for a few months. Actually, that’s not even true — for a month or two, there’s even more solar radiation near the poles, where the sun is up all day (albeit not that high), but it’s not enough to overcome the fact that in the winters are in complete darkness. The sun is trying super hard to melt all that ice and snow, but there’s just too much.
So among all regions that don’t get *that* cold in the winter, the regions around 30 degrees get the most summer heat from the sun. After a few months, that makes those spots the hottest in the world — not the hottest on average over a year, but the hottest by a month or two after the solstice, when the sun is still blazing hot, so that it’s reached something of an equilibrium with incoming warmth during the day from the sun and heat radiating out at night.
Why the the southeastern US in particular feel so hot compared to, say, coastal southern California has to do with the mediating effect of oceans, the dependence of nighttime cooling on vegetation, altitude, humidity, etc., and other answers touch on some of that — and it gets complicated.
I remember the worst summer of my life. It was Texas 2011. There were over 100 days of 100 degree weather. It was so humid the air just HELD that heat. It would be midnight and still be 100 degrees outside. There was no wind. It was so miserable and 3-4 showers a day was the norm. I vowed to never live there again. It took me 4 years to leave but I’ll never return.
Brutal? What are you talking about? It’s only 98 outside.
In a sentence it’s climate change. Those buildings and streets down there are old with low energy efficiency building codes and high thermal heat banks meaning they aren’t designed to minimise the impact of heat and global warming has made cities like Houston 4-5 degrees hotter than they were 50 years ago.
Couple this with increasing humidity which makes the heat more unbearable due to the high specific heat capacity of water and weather in the southern states has become truely unbearable
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