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Sunday, August 1, 2021

How We Know It's August in Florida

The first indicator isn't the calendar.  The first indicator is when the UV Index says 11 on a scale of 10 and uses the description, "Potentially Fatal."  We know that's aimed at visitors to the area who aren't used to it and don't pay much attention.  

There are many places where folks look forward to summer; it's time to go outside - maybe for the first time in months, enjoy warm, glorious days; garden, bike, picnic; maybe enjoy a book while lounging on the beach.  Songs like Nat King Cole's classic "Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer" come to mind.

That's not here.  Here, summer is something to be a bit more reserved about.  If you live here, you can keep up with your regular life.  If you were from a moderate place, not used to our heat and humidity, running or other outdoors activity could conceivably kill you.  August marks the Dog Days of Summer; everything outdoors slows.  Fishing slows - sure the fish have to eat, but they become more active after dark.  Animals are more sluggish.  Ordinarily, it can be nasty here from about mid-July to almost the middle of September.  The worst of it is August. 

When we first got an HDTV years ago, Mrs. Graybeard and I naturally spent much of our TV time searching out HD programming.  One of the first movies we watched was "The Chronicles of Riddick".  You have to understand this is not even particularly good scifi.  It's a fun movie to watch, it's a visual treat, it's a fantastic display of special effects perfect for HD, but don't pay too much attention to the story.  To quote a review (long gone from the net), "Furyans, Necromongers, Elementals, The Underverse, the Threshold...it so clearly wants to be epic that it forgets to tie all of these disparate worlds, universes and civilizations into a coherent story. (Director) Twohy clearly makes the mistake of not realizing that there is a huge difference between being grand and being simply confusing and the more ideas that are introduced, the more lumbering it becomes…"   

We still watch it on occasion when we run into it.

A large portion of the movie, and one of the longest action sequences, takes place on the planet Crematoria (many of the names in the movie are that cheesy).  Crematoria is a planet that has a tremendous temperature variation (probably an impossible amount) with daytime temperatures of 700F and night time temperatures 300 below zero.  When the sunrise terminator sweeps through, the force of the heat gales that come with it is literally enough to blow you apart, disintegrating flesh and blowing pieces off until you die.  There's a scene where a character (Purifier), a Furyan like Riddick, sacrifices himself by walking into the sunrise terminator and self-immolating.  That's him trying to stand up to the gales while being set afire and having pieces of burning flesh blown off him.

The first time I saw that scene, it reminded me of the time we decided to do a long bike ride on July 4th (I think it was a hundred mile ride, but for sure it was a virtually all day ride).  I mentioned it to Mrs. Graybeard who said, "sure, we've been out on days like that."  

The National Weather Service publishes charts for heat index that show the amount of danger from the combination of heat and humidity.  This is one of their charts.  I've drawn a box around the typical morning conditions here.  "Extreme caution" conditions are common.  In the afternoon, it pushes farther into the orange, maybe red.  This afternoon, for example, it was 93 with humidity around 75%.

And that's what life here is like for August plus or minus a week or two.  Stay out of the sun.  Do your outdoor activities near sunrise or sunset.  Don't expose bare skin to the sun any longer than necessary - and even then, use sunscreen if you need to be out when the sun is intense, say from 10 AM to 4 PM.  SPF 3 million is adequate.  Without air conditioning and mosquito control, a technological civilization could not exist here.

 

 

25 comments:

  1. Yep. It isn't a dry heat, oh Lordy no, nothing dry about it at all.

    August... where we hope it rains in the afternoon. Not 'rains' as in lightly sprinkling and raising up the humidity, no. We're talking about an hours-long toad strangler that sucks all the stored heat out of one's roof and blocks the burning glowing orb of pain so that the outside temperature drops to something approaching a reasonable value for 'painful' rather than 'Set Fryer to INSTANT CRISPY.'

    Up here in Gainesville, FL, in the mid to late 80's, temperatures of 100 or over were not uncommon. With just enough rain in the afternoon to set the humidity to 'live steam' level. Right at the time everyone got off of work.

    Bleh.

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    1. When I hear, "it's a dry heat" I think so's a Bessemer furnace.

      Truth is, dry heat is easier to handle.

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  2. Yep, that scene kinda sums up August.

    You're not actually on fire, but you kind of wish you were because at least you'd be dry.

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  3. one thing 'bout livin' neah Sarasota, I'm reminded of the Noel Coward song from Rudyard Kipling's line: "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun"

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  4. We're not normally that bad (Houston was the worst) but this week has been . . . awful. I was thinking this morning that I'd much prefer living by the Arctic Circle.

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  5. I think I'm finally recovered from a fairly serious heat injury. Once you let yourself get hurt, you are much more susceptible and sensitive.

    I've found that cooling vests help tremendously. They let me enjoy the Houston Rodeo one year and do outdoor work for the last 3 years.

    I like an evaporative one from Techniche when I can wear it as the outer layer, or when I'll be away from home and in the heat for more than 2 hours. You recharge it by soaking it in water for a few minutes, which is great, but it is MUCH more effective when you don't wear a shirt over it (think 'cover garment'.) Still, I was able to stay at the Rodeo for several extra hours and was comfortable. The gel inside does wear out eventually (or wash away.)

    https://www.amazon.com/TechNiche-International-Adult-HyperKewl-Cooling/dp/B00DMDY3BE


    I also use one from Ergodyne that you freeze. It has 'phase change' gel pads as cooling. It works fine under even a heavy coat (or a protective vest.) It lasts me about 2 hours then it needs recharging. They say it is good to go in minutes in a cooler of ice or the freezer, but I like it frozen solid. I wear it when I'll be close to home and can cool it down easily. If I was working, I'd carry a cooler on the truck and use that to recharge. It was about $200 but is worth it.

    https://www.ergodyne.com/chill-its-6260-ice-packs-for-lightweight-phase-change-cooling-vest.html

    Don't mess around with heat injuries. You'll go stupid before you realize you have a problem, and then you are on a countdown to a real problem.

    nick

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  6. And that is the way it is. And he is not kidding about being dangerous since yours truly ended up in the ER thanks to an overdose of Florida summer.
    Now that I am up in TN and the temperature have reached 100 in a couple of occasions, the missus and I have been sitting in the shade wondering in amazement that it does not feel like 100 but more like a mild mid 80s and we can actually breathe air rather than humidity.
    The locals look at us from inside AC homes like we were some sort of extraterrestrials from Hell
    Of course, come Winter and different song will be sung

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    1. Another thing about where you are now - in mid-September several years ago, we drove around the SE up to Mammoth Cave in KY, through TN to NC. North on I-75 south on I-95. The entire time we were out of Florida it was easily 10 degrees cooler than here. Instead of 80 at daybreak and 90+ in the afternoon, it was more like upper 60s and 80. It wasn't until we got below the Florida state line that it got hot again.

      And it's better here than where you were. Less humid. After a year we down in Ft. Lauderdale visiting mom and took the kid to Ocean World. I think it was June. We felt like we were gonna die. Left the park early and cranked the air in my old pickup as high as it could go.

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    2. It was 80 here this morning. At sunrise. The dew point was 78 degrees. Let that sink in- positively awful.

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  7. I am a native Floridian and yes, it gets warm here, but not as bad as people make it out to be. I believe more people die from the weather up north in winter than here in summer. The local news around here has made that chart above useless - they do not report humidity anymore, only dew point!

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    1. Try the local National Weather Service website. They report humidity and the heat index number.

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    2. The dewpoint is a more accurate description of the weather. 78 degrees and 90 percent humidity is not nearly as bad as 95 degrees and 75 percent humidity.

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  8. Ah, memories from two summers spent in Pensacola, Lower Alabama. The white sand beaches, the girls in bikinis, the bars, the heat, the humidity, the two-a-day thunderstorms, the fire ants, the mosquitoes, the palmetto bugs, the alligators...

    We Army types got up early and did PT at 0500, so we could get done before the Navy raised the black flag at 0600.

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  9. Good to know as my wife and I are thinking about moving to Florida. Coming out in September to look around the Palatka area. Will bring lots of sunscreen.

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  10. Aww, come on man, we horseback ride about every other day in a beautiful tree shaded state park and begin our "tough" 5 mile ride at about 10:30 and end at noon. Horse gets rinsed off and then back to the hacienda. Whew!

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  11. right now (11:00 am) it's 90 degF outside and 70% humidity. AND i wortk in a refinery. i will be staying inside as much as i can

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  12. This is our second summer on the Gulf (south of Tampa). Yes, it gets hot and humid, but it did in Maryland, too. It does go on longer here, admittedly, and we visit the dermatologist much more regularly, but at the risk of inviting more northerners down here, it's not so bad.

    Your advice about sunscreen is a good one, at least until your tan gets good and built up.

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    1. I've had the techs in doctor's offices laugh at my farmer tan before, but I virtually never go out without a shirt on. I'd be burned in 15 minutes.

      Everything in life is a trade off. Many people in the northern states put up with winter to get the summer. They're going into their workshops when it starts turning cold. I go into mine when it starts getting hot.

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  13. yep, SE Texas in forested area...we also fit that description quite well. miserable for 6 to 12 weeks of the year. after that its tolerable

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  14. I spent a week in the Daytona area, during our honeymoon, in May of '97. You could definitely tell who the Northerners were. We were the only ones in shorts and T-shirts.
    Was still too hot for my liking.

    Leigh
    Whitehall, NY

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  15. Around 50 years ago I was at my Grandmother's house in Fort Smith, Arkansas. She tried doing some laundry one day. She did not have a dryer at the time so it was hung out on a clothes line. The laundry never got dry as the temperature was 106 and the humidity was 100 per cent that day. There was dew on the grass in the late afternoon. They generally didn't report the Heat Index at that time.

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    1. Not possible. The highest recorded dewpoint in the US was 91 at Melbourne, Fla., on July 12, 1987.

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    2. All I remember is that humidity number was what the local weather reported. I believe that there was a government weather station there at the time on the airport; it may have just been a remote sensor station.

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  16. The numbers might be wrong, but in Houston despite 100+ days I've had plenty of stuff stay wet. It can be days for the smallest of puddles to finally dry up, and my wet sneakers were wet for two days last week despite being out in the sun and wind the whole time.

    nick

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  17. BillB; Divemedic; NickF:

    Y'all are bandying about numbers that demonstrate why this Cheesehead prefers his atmospheric moisture in frozen form. Also, no bugs. You can always put on another layer, but ya can't get more nekkid than yer birthday suit.

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