I've experienced 50 degrees Celsius in the Sahara. Hard to imagine hotter.

I have experienced 50 in Multan, Pakistan many summers multiple times. It's a city though, not a desert. There are many other cities where temperatures go this high each summer.

I’ve experienced 100C in a sauna :)

It’s a lot different though, since you can exit the sauna into air that is substantially colder, you can’t escape the desert heat.

Only in the way I “experienced” 300+C by jumping through a bonfire. You never reach a true equilibrium in a Sauna that hot, but you can reach an equilibrium in 50C when the humidity is low enough.

Good point, 5 minutes at 100C is nothing like spending all day at 50C.

We used to get stuff out an oven which cars were baked in after being painted. Lots of close on an run. In hindsight, very stupid.

Reminds me of a great little story I just read about working in a brick yard in the 50s.

https://brickcollecting.com/merwin.htm

Yeah, I found some cool bricks and wondered if brick collecting was a thing.

It is - a demolition yard near me had a particular pole that weren’t for sale. The yard owner kept the best for himself.

Ones made by prisoners. One with a nice glaze etc.

Apples and Oranges. Saunas have much lower humidity, and also you are exposed for much shorter duration of time. 100C is the boiling point of water; so if you stay for an extended period, you'll probably die.

Some people who live in 50C temperatures do not have access to AC or a reliable water source.

Saunas (at least the way we enjoy them here in Finland) can be pretty humid, because we throw water on the stones of the stove. But throwing too much water can make it intolerable, and lethal if you don't follow your instinct to leave if it gets too hot.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-10904691

Normally in a sauna it's not constantly so humid that sweating wouldn't be able to keep your body temperature normal (as long as you stay hydrated). Throwing water on the stove raises the humidity just momentarily and makes you sweat at full capacity, but normally you would wait for some minutes before throwing more water.

If air is humid enough, sweating can't cool the body anymore because sweat won't evaporate, so already 35C is lethal in 100% humidity.

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-potentially-fatal-combinations...

Also the feeling of radiation. I remember experiencing 123F in death valley and the feeling of my skin just feeling weird

Are you a boiled chicken? Do saunas actually get that hot?

googles

I guess they can. Seems bonkers though.

Sauna at my gym ranges around 200 F +/- about 10 degrees, according to the thermometer on the wall, so getting close to 100 C. I sit in it about 20 minutes after a workout. Yes I am sweating buckets by the end. It feels good though.

Dry air is a bad thermal conductor, so the body can easily deal with the hot air for a while.

It quickly gets uncomfortable when they pour water on hot stones in the sauna. Humidity really makes all the difference.

even higher, I've been in Wi Spa in LA that gets up to 231f/110c

100℃? You were in boiling water temperature? How's that possible? Or did you mean to say 100°F?

Narh, it's 100C. Sauna can be pretty hard-core.

And just how much sunlight was in your sauna?

I've experienced 50 degrees Celsius in Las Vegas.

But then I stepped back into the air conditioning.

Vegas has never been 50C.

The record high for the city is 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47.22C) at McCarran International Airport, most recent previous to today was in June 2017, according to the National Weather Service.

The city has recorded that high temperature five times, including today.

That's in the shadows, right?

Technically speaking there is no "in the sun" temperature because it would depend on how much thermal energy the thermometer material absorbs from light.

Exactly. Mass of air has temperature and an object like thermometer can come into equilibrium with air temperature.

On the other hand an object in sunlight will have temperature that has very complex relationship with a lot of parameters including shape of the object or windspeed.

Further, the object will not come into equilibrium and will show a gradient of temperature meaning the readout will depend on where you measure.

> including shape of the object or windspeed

I suppose the air (the wind) tends to be colder than objects in the sun, since most sunshine pass straight through the air.

A way to investigate this, is to step barefoot on flat black stones, in the summer sunshine

There are two equilibrium temperatures, i.e. temperatures that likely don’t depend much on the device that you are using:

* under a tent, i.e. in the shadow and sheltered from direct wind: commonly used and correspond to the temperature of the air;

* wet bulb: more recently under attention, correspond to the effect of cooling by evaporation similar to what a healthy human body does. Wet-bulb often gives much lower number in a dry heat and is more significant for human survival. I’ve read that 32ºC or 88ºF are likely were prolonged exposure lead to adverse health but don’t quote me on that.

> There are two equilibrium temperatures.

The third one is radiative equilibrium. You could achieve that in a solar furnace, the object won't get hotter than the black body temperature of sunlight, which is ~5800K.

"Under a tent" (or air temperature) is more useful. It is going to telly you how hot will be objects that come into equilibrium with air which you can't tell from wet bulb temperature. You can derive wet bulb temperature from air temperature and humidity.

Also measuring air temperature is easier and more practical as it is just enough to measure temperature of an object that comes into equilibrium with air.