u/Leighgion

I've said before much of the discussion around heat prep focuses on daily, real-life issues in the first world, like air conditioning maintenance, proper use of electric fans, swamp coolers, managing humidity, backup power, solar shading and personal cooling products. That's all important, but my brain always goes to more extreme scenarios where normal first world parameters, like going to the air conditioned mall when your home system fails, don't apply.

I call this one, "Tub-pocalyse."

Temperatures have soared to unlivable levels. All you've got is running water and an electric fan. There is nowhere cooler to retreat to. Fill the tub with water, open the door and windows, point the fan at the water and get in once the water feels coolish to the touch. As long as the web bulb temperature is survivable, you'll get by as the fan will both cool the wet, exposed parts of your body and cool the tub's water towards the wet bulb temp. Air circulation is critical so the humidity from the evaporated water can escape. Eventually you'll need to get out in order to avoid maceration of your skin, but being completely wet with a fan blowing should buy you a decent amount of out time before you need to get back in.

The same principle could be adapted to a small, outdoor pool or pond if they were shaded and the water temperature could be brought down far enough.

I've only had my 2021 Corolla a short time and I'm learning all kinds of things, among which is that these cars don't come with conventional spare tires. Mea culpa, I should have known this before.

Not a huge problem to me, but I'm reading the tire sealant included has a limited shelf life and might just be at the end after five years. I'm away for a few more days so I can't physically look at what's back there, but I'm trying to get a jump on things.

Has anybody purchased a replacement bottle of tire sealant that works with the included air compressor? I'm seeing various options including kits that include a compressor at reasonable prices, but of course I'd prefer just to buy a bottle of sealant rather than an extra compressor.

Most of us here aren't anywhere close to these circumstances, but my mind always drifts back to how you'd survive when the chips are really down.

I have gone on extensively about the virtues of swamp coolers in dry climates, so I shan't reiterate that here. However, one of the unquestionable pain points of regularly using swamp coolers is the fact that you're constantly refilling a tank of water that's pumped through filter media. A lot of wetness combined with heat is a recipe for a bacteria farm.

The general recommendation for a portable swamp cooler is to drain it and clean out the tank every 2-3 days. I did this for a time, but when you've got several coolers as I do, this quickly becomes a pain in the butt between your other adult responsibilities, so I looked for ways to extend the time.

A brief flirtation with chlorination ended quickly. While throwing some bleach into the water definitely helped keep microbial growth under control just like in a swimming pool, it also made the output smell like a swimming pool. Not acceptable and plus, regularly handling bleach was too much of a hazard to clothing and towels.

Leveraging the proven antimicrobial properties of copper, I bought some copper plates and placed them in the tanks. This definitely helped and extended the time between cleanings by at least double before smell crept in. Copper isn't cheap though, so the relatively small plates I could afford only had so much surface area to work.

This summer was the first summer since my discovery of hypochlorous acid, and I determined to try to use its superior antimicrobial power to try to keep the cooler tanks clean for longer. My reading informed me that field tests had shown that as little as 1 ppm of HOCl was sufficient to kill all the common bacteria found in standing water with only a minuscule amount of salt and chloromines as a byproduct. I started adding HOCl to the cooler water every couple of days. At first, I carefully measured to produce around a 2ppm concentration based on the tank volume, but after a while I just eyeballed it.

I have to say, after almost a whole summer of doing this, that's it's been a smashing success.

Long as I keep up, the water never smells. Eventually I do need to drain the tanks, as iron builds up and the water starts to get frothy as impurities like dust accumulate; there's no filtration system like a swimming pool would have, but it's a net win. I never worry now about anything growing in my coolers and have a lot more flexibility in how often I drain them.

Europe's fifth heatwave is officially upon us, but while it's intensely hitting Britain with a record-breaking 38ºC in Kew Gardens, hammering France and Central Europe, things in my neck of the woods in Spain are.. relatively sedate.

I'm actually currently in the north, where the high pressure system theoretically has more influence, but the aegis of the cold Cantabrian Sea blunts the majority of the impact. It's technically 5ºC above normal here, but the reality is that it's just made things feel a little hot rather than comfortably moderate. Nights are weirdly warm, but the sea breeze does a lot of ameliorate that. The range today was an unusually narrow 23-27ºC (73-81ºF).

Supposedly, according to the long range forecast, Madrid's serious heat might be over by the time we're back there with a chill high of only 26ºC/79ºF. I'll believe that when I see it.

So the end of the August is coming and despite the extensive national and global damage the heat has left, most of us regular folk in adapted regions have come through with very little change to our personal circumstances. Really not sure how to feel about that, as while I vastly prefer no great disasters in my life, I also can't help but think the ease which so many of us can ride out these events isn't motivating the population enough to support serious efforts at change.

I am at this time, mercifully away from the brutal dry heat of central Spain and in the much milder, if humid, warmth of coastal northern Spain.

While hotter than normal, as most places this year, temperatures are only peaking at 27ºC/80ºF.

We've been coming here for years to take the kids to the beach. As fellow northern latitude folk will know, the mild temps are deceptive when it comes to the UV intensity; just because it doesn't feel that hot doesn't mean you won't get burnt to a crisp. Everybody in the family has suffered from that during days of carelessness.

Now, you might logically say the answer is sunscreen but I'm going to be honest, I hate sunscreen and even if I didn't, all the sunscreen in the world doesn't do a thing for heat, which ultimately is a problem if you're on the beach for hours without shelter even if the air temps are relatively mellow.

So, we got a beach tent.

Then, we got a smaller beach tent, because the first beach tent didn't fit in carryon bags and was a pain to carry to the beach.

Smaller beach tend has been the beach MVP for years now. It's a simple triangular affair with two flex poles and an open front, but it allows us to stash the beach bag in the back with space for two to sit in the shade. Breaks down to a roll that fits in a backpack. Perfect, far as cheap nylon beach tents go.

However, being a cheap nylon beach tent, it has cheap nylon beach tent limitations. Nylon doesn't breathe and it's dark blue-green nylon, which means the sunny side heats up in record time, which seriously undermines the thermal protection it offers. A couple years ago though, I hit on an ultra simple solution that didn't demand buying anything extra.

All I do is drape a pink microfiber athletic towel over the sunny side of the tent and use a clothespin to secure it to the tent poles. I always orient the tent so the interior is shaded and facing the sea.

The pink is a much lighter color than the blue-green, so it reflects considerably more heat away and microfiber is a superior insulator to nylon, so this simple mod vastly reduces radiant heat input; the sunny side tent wall with the towel is never more than warm to the touch. With the front being completely open and facing the sea, the interior of the tent now never goes above ambient. Not bad at all for under $25 of stuff.

I could no doubt improve performance by going for better suited material and color, but the current results are so good there's not much motivation. The microfiber towel serves double duty as once it's time to go, it can be taken down and used as a towel.

The fourth European heatwave has officially left Spain for a few days. At first, it felt better. Still hot, but better.

Now, we're objectively hotter in many ways than during the heatwaves.

It hit 37ºC/98.6ºF outside today with the low an exhausting 24ºC/75ºF, rather like the fourth wave, but the building itself is now worse. All of that sustained heat has thermally loaded the structure and there hasn't been nearly enough slightly cooler hours for it to shed enough of the heat.

It's 11:30 PM right now. It's still 31ºC/87ºF outside and my walls are averaging 30ºC/86ºF. The nimbus of safety and comfort the airstream of each swamp cooler is vital now; my latest cooler is delivering a chill 22ºC/71ºF. Humidity is low as usual, but I just don't feel alright in most rooms without active cooling now. If I need to do a cooler juggle and I temporarily am without, I really feel it.

The ten day forecast doesn't go lower than 34/93 high and 21/69 low, but we're not officially in a heatwave, because we're just not quite at the right numbers compared to seasonable average.

Stay safe out there. I know a lot of you have it much worse than me.

They've seen "Nosferatu" (1922) at their own request and they've known about Metropolis for some time, so when I told them this was what was up, my eldest said, "Finally!" She likes vintage things.

While the experience leaned as much into being educational as popcorn entertainment, I'm proud of them. At least far as movies go, they've taken in what their mother and I have tried to instill that cinema is, and should be, a very varied experience across time and styles. They've also watched and liked Prime Video's "Sheep Detectives."

Highlights:

1. The eldest did not like Robot Maria's dance. Too scantily clad.

2. Youngest saw Freder is a really good person.

3. Both were appalled at the conditions the workers were enduring.

4. Youngest thought the workers weren't very smart destroying the heart machine while all their kids were at home in the worker city.

5. Both were impressed by Robot Maria in the context of her being the first of her kind in a movie, and the direct inspiration for C3PO's design.

6. Youngest had questions about which Maria was which during the pursuit.

7. Freder's visions needed some explanation, but the kids absorbed it well.

8. Youngest was very astute as to Rotwang's state of mind at the end. She understood he was crazy and thought Maria was Hel, the woman he'd lost.

The fourth heatwave rolled off a couple days ago so things are now simply "hot" rather than "WTF, man?"

I opened a conversation with a comment about the heatwave being over.

The response was an offhand comment about the next presumed heatwave.

How quickly things change. Last year, we had one August heatwave that was pretty savage. This year, we've had four and we're totally blasé about a fifth or even more.

Being a ballet dad means a certain amount of waiting in cars.

The world being what it is right now, waiting in a car without cooling might well end up with no more ballet dad, but I feel very wrong every time the engine kicks up and idles just to keep running the AC.

It occurred to me today, very belatedly, that we have a whole bunch of ice packs in the freezer. I grabbed a few of them and just threw them in a canvas tote. While waiting in the car, I rolled down all the windows and just had the bag on top of my body. I only needed to wait about half an hour today and fourth heatwave has passed, so the ice didn't even begin to thaw (the drive is only about 15 min).

This might just make idling the car in summer totally unnecessary long as I'm prepared and the wait is under a couple hours.

UPDATE:

I went with my kid to wash the car yesterday. The carwash is partially under renovation, so there were only half the normal number of bays open. There was a line. It was 34ºC/93ºF outside, so just rolling the windows down wasn't really an option. I dialed the car's AC to 25ºC/77ºF and passed ice packs to the kid. It took long enough the engine still had to spin up like three times to keep us cooled (hybrid car), but the ice still netted gas savings.

Cold isn't a real thing.

Seriously, unlike heat, cold is not a form of energy, it cannot be measured directly nor can it be generated, stored or moved. While it's conversationally convenient to think of heat and cold as opposing forces, they are really are not.

Cold is a subjective sensation defined by a relatively lower level of heat that is not experienced the same way by all people at all times.

Again, I am not being pedantic. In these times, it's important people understand the science of heat and cold in order to properly be able to deal with thermal safety and comfort.

It was natural before for regular folks to think of air conditioners as virtually magical cold-generating boxes. However, we're increasingly at the point where that misunderstanding can critically impact our ability to adapt because when it's so hot that the AC is working fine but simply isn't able to keep up, people don't understand the nature of the problem and blame the AC when the real problem is that their insulation is garbage, they stupidly painted their house trendy black, sunlight is streaming in uncovered windows, air is leaking everywhere or some other combination of factors.

What an AC system actually does is use a vapor-compression cycle to extract heat from the inside air, then dump it outside. While an energy intensive process, this works great... long as the heat input is notably lower than the rate the AC can extract heat.

However, once conditions get worse (like say, the heatwaves that have dominated 2026), the balance is thrown off and many AC units become the thermal equivalent of Charlie Chaplain frantically trying to bail water out of a sinking ship. The solutions at this point can't calling Buster Keaton to take over and use a bigger bucket; the leaks must be plugged.

Staying cool is not about generating cold. That's impossible. It's about managing heat.

With our endless series of heatwaves around the world, it seems opportune to pause and reflect on what heat actually is in a scientific way. Can't fight a problem effectively with proper understanding.

Very strictly speaking, heat is defined as the transfer of thermal energy from one object or system to another. However, for the purposes of casual conversation, we can and do use the word "heat" to also refer to stored thermal energy. It's not scientifically correct terminology, but it's good enough.

Thermal energy is stored in matter through molecular activity. The more thermal energy contained, the more molecular activity and vice versa. Absolute zero (0º Kelvin, -273ºC or -459.6ºF) is the temperature when all molecular activity ceases.

Heat transfer occurs three different ways:

1. Conduction, which is heat transfer via direct physical contact between objects or substances. If you touch a hot car that's been in the sun and burn your hand, that's conduction. Hugging an ice pack to get cool is also conduction.

2. Convection, which is heat transfer via movement of a fluid medium which might be liquid or gas, though we tend to most commonly think of gases. A breeze blowing on the aforementioned hot air will gradually cool it via convection (long as the air is a lower temperature than the car) as the air absorbs heat from the car and carries it away.

3. Radiation, which is heat transfer via infrared radiation. This is how the sun is able to heat the Earth and other planets and objects through the vacuum of space and how you can feel heat from a hot building at a distance even though no air is flowing at you from it.

When there's an imbalance of thermal energy, heat transfer will happen. That's inevitable. The only question is how fast it happens, which is something we can influence.

Insulation is the material and art of slowing heat transfer whether it's our clothes, a vacuum travel mug, fiberglass bats in our walls or a blanket. Controlling insulation is essential to managing heat.

When it comes to our bodies, we must remember that every living thing is a heat source as our biological processes generate heat. We must shed excess heat in order to stay healthy and comfortable. Controlling the rate we shed heat is the core question of thermal comfort.

In addition to the three basic ways our bodies can shed heat, we have an additional feature: sweat. By sweating, our bodies can wet the surface of our skin and exploit the physics of evaporation: when water changes state from liquid to gas, it absorbs a lot of heat energy. So long as the air is dry enough, our skin is exposed and we replenish by drinking liquids and electrolytes, we have considerable cooling capacity via sweating.

However, as is increasingly the case around the world, there's many environments where all this is simply not enough. The higher the temperature, the more difficult it is for our bodies to shed heat and the higher the humidity, the less effective evaporation is. At a certain point the cooling trio becomes totally ineffective because the air and surrounding environment is a hotter than your body temperature so heat is actually going to migrate into you instead of out. If your sweat can't evaporate fast enough to compensate, then you will start to cook from the inside out.

There is a grey area where different people cope differently with the heat, but eventually you hit the hard wall of thermodynamics and how tough you are is irrelevant. Proteins denature at the same temperatures no matter who you are.

It used to be we could depend on our homes to keep us protected with only moderate effort. No longer. Riding out the climate we have now demands more of us acquire and leverage a working understanding of how heat works.

No post for day 4.

Last night, the lows supposedly did not go below 25º. As it was Friday, the kids stayed up later for movies. As I was putting things in order, I heard the telltale gurgle of a swamp cooler's pump pulling air as it ran low on water; my mother-in-law had spent longer than normal in her room and so one fill wasn't enough to make it through the day and night. I went into stealth mode to refill her cooler without waking her up.

It's currently 10:30 local time and it's already 28ºC/82ºF outside. Despite having the window wide open all night and good cross ventilation, it's essentially the same temperature inside at my desk. Thermal mass of this building protects from temperature spikes during the day, but prevents dramatic cooling at night. Still, better than the daytime indoor high of 30ºC/86ºF.

As always, it's very dry. Currently 19% and it will fall as the day heats up. We've seen readings of 12%. This makes things much easier to take, but it doesn't become okay so much as "less awful." If I need to spend more than five minutes outside, I completely depend on having a spray bottle to keep things bearable, which works incredibly well when it's this dry. Only downside is the need for constant reapplication and limited capacity of the bottle. Being wet is not at all a problem, because you simply don't stay wet for more than a minute.

We are forecast to hit the magic 37ºC/98.6ºF again today, which is better than yesterday's 38ºC/100.4ºF, but still five degrees Celsius above seasonal norms, from those halcyon days when we had seasonal norms.

My best wishes to you folks in Northern Europe. It sucks enough down here where we're prepared. Hope you're staying safe.

This case is a textbook example of everything that's wrong with response to dangerously rising temperatures.

1. Policy. Seriously, WTF? How do you house people in a glass building during a multi-heatwave year and tell them they can't use the AC because the amenity wasn't on offer?

2. Humanity. Even if it wasn't a record breaking multi-heatwave year, you don't house people and refuse them access to environmental controls during the summer.

3. Architecture. This building is a monument to everything wrong with the building standards that have been in place for decades. Without HVAC, it's at best unlivable and these days, it's a deathtrap. It should never have been built like this. A differently constructed building could have housed people without AC and while they might not have a great time, they wouldn't be hospitalized and if they did run AC, the bill would be much lower because the place wouldn't be an oven to start with.

It peaked at 37-38ºC/98.6-100.4ºF depending on what weather service you ask.

For my amusement and education, I brought my IR thermometer out with me. The sidewalk in the shade was reading 38-45ºC/100.4-113ºF depending on what spot. The hotter spots were all near air conditioning exhaust paths.

Urban heat island effect is very real.

In the sun, the pavement was 61ºC/141.8ºF.

Sitting in the car for a while with the windows down while I waited for the kids, I measured the black dashboard at around 45ºC/113ºF in the sun. After spraying that spot with water and waiting a minute, the temperature dropped to around 35ºC/95ºF.

Evaporation is cooling king.

Walking in the street now has that familiar feeling of being enveloped in an invisible cloak of heat. I sprayed myself with water several times just to walk five minutes. Without that spray bottle, the streets are a hostile alien environment.

All considered, the apartment is doing fine as always. Long as the blinds are down, the worst rooms are peaking at 29-30ºC/84-86ºF and my swamp coolers can deliver 22-23ºC/71-73ºF.

It's the morning of day two of the fourth European heatwave. No post for day one.

On the personal level, it's fine. The highs were and are forecast to be 37ºC/98.6ºF, median human body temperature with daytime humidity around 16-24%. That's not great, but could be much worse and existing measures are more than enough to keep us safe and comfortable; AC in the car and swamp coolers at home. This is far from the worst conditions we've endured.

In the broader sense though, it's ugly. The multiple heat waves have brought and sustained hot and dry temperatures much earlier than normal and for much longer.

Farmers have taken a major hit this year and we're certain to see prices increase in the coming months.

Wildfires are raging through Spain and France. There are fires to the west of Madrid and last week we could smell the smoke. Can't smell it anymore and the word is suppression efforts are making headway, but hundred of square miles have been torched and ten's of thousands of people have been evacuated for their safety.

This is probably the most stark example I've experienced where my personal immediate situation is not greatly affected, but the broader context is and we're all going to suffer clear and direct consequences in the medium term as the agricultural damage is felt on the shelves.

Society has collapsed under the crushing weight of massive increases in temperature, but you and your car have made it through intact.

Your climate now has daytime highs at 50ºC/122ºF and nighttime lows are 35ºC/95ºF. Daytime humidity is around 40%. It's virtually impossible to survive without reliable means of cooling.

You've got a full tank of gas, your air conditioning works, you can drive where you want and siphon all the gas you can find out of other cars and scavenge whatever stuff you can find.

Unfortunately, there's not a single solar cell or wind turbine left functional. Nothing electrical that isn't in your car or run on batteries will work.

Every single window in every building is broken.

If you can survive for a month, there is a chance that aliens observing the death spiral of the Earth will land and take you in to preserve what's left of your species.

Can you make it and how do you do it?

We've had an influx of posters who felt sick after extended activity in the heat. All the recent ones have come here before going to a doctor, mostly looking for some kind of reinforcement that it wouldn't be necessary to go to a doctor even if they passed out.

I think we're seeing a persistence of denial that changing conditions are making previous levels of activity unsafe. People stubbornly carry on with the image in their minds of what they were able to do before and are unable to reconcile past with present when they feel sick.

It's a hard pill to swallow, but people are getting sick and dying because they won't accept things are different now.

My kids are now old enough they can get themselves out of a car, but this issue popped up in my mind as we had a recent case last month in Spain during one our heatwaves. It's an unpleasant reality we should be reminded of. It's surprisingly easy to forget a baby in the back of the car and it takes very little time for the internal temperature to become deadly.

I have a carbide-backed tactical pen and I bought identical ones for my kids. If I ever see an unattended baby in the back of a hot car, I'm prepared to go in. It's standard for car side windows to be tempered glass, which will shatter safely if breached by something like a carbide point.

Last night, it was cool enough I didn't have to run the swamp cooler to sleep. First time in over two months. It was again, slightly chilly in the morning.

That's going to be over shortly.

Today, the high is forecast to be 33ºC, which is still fine, and the current outside temperature at 11:45 AM is a very manageable 24ºC. However, the signs of change are already here. Yesterday morning, my walls were reading 24.5ºC. Today, earlier in the day, they're already at 26.5ºC; last night did not cool the apartment as much as the night before.

Tomorrow, the forecast says 36ºC/21C, so daylight is back to inferno and nights are back to being tropical. After that, the nighttime lows are set to sail past 24ºC and days will hike to 37ºC.

I'm hearing from a lot of people in Europe that they're seeing similar levels of relief before the coming fourth heatwave of 2026. Stay cool folks, and exploit this window of relief as much as you can. I took the time to clean my swamp coolers since their service is currently not crucial. I should probably rinse out the AC filters too just so all is in readiness.