Heat Wave to Hit Two-Thirds of the U.S. Here’s What to Expect

Re:Heat Wave to Hit Two-Thirds of the U.S. Here’s What to Ex... by Retric on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @07:20PM (#20465043)

Heat index is by far more useful than temperature when discussing this. At 90f at 90% humidity is more dangerous and feels hotter than 102 at 50% humidity. 100f at 65% humidity feels like 136f and higher humidity quickly turns deadly.

Or as the article puts it, extreme heat killed 108 people last year.

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Re:Heat Wave to Hit Two-Thirds of the U.S. Here’s What to Ex... by bradknowles on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @07:56PM (#20465289)

That's nothing.

A few years ago, in France, over 50,000 people died due to heat stroke and other extreme heat factors.

In the US, many places have this thing called "air conditioning". In France, and much of continental Europe, that's pretty rare.

Heck, in many of the poorer places over there, they don't even have fans.

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Re:Heat Wave to Hit Two-Thirds of the U.S. Here’s What to Ex... by slenk on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @08:55PM (#20465617)

It's more like 50k throughout Europe, but that is still awful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

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Re:Heat Wave to Hit Two-Thirds of the U.S. Here’s What to Ex... by jointpdf on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @07:38PM (#20465170)

Yep, and the effects are nonlinear. i.e. increasing marginal danger from every +1F or +5%. Here’s a helpful chart: https://s3.amazonaws.com/bncore/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/h...

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