Well, Yes...

It is HOT. Even for Las Vegas in the summer, it is definitely hot. I remember one of our first drives from San Diego to Wyoming after we were married. It was also the last week of June. We got to Baker, CA. (I think it was probably named for some person, but a more apt name couldn't be for one is truly baked in Baker, California, in the summer.) It was about 5:00 P.M. and we went into a restaurant to cool off for a bit. We didn't have air conditioning in our 1950 blue Ford pick-up, and we were feeling quite fried, having left the cool ocean air about noon. We had one little kid then; he was almost a year old. We asked the waitress when it would start to cool down. She replied, "About midnight." Little did we know that the "cool down" she referenced meant it would drop from 105 to about 95. So, we just girded our loins and kept driving northward, through Vegas, the Virgin River Gorge, St. George, and then finally we got up the hill into Cedar City where the altitude made the night air cool enough for us to feel that we might survive this summer trip after all. For our future journeys to visit the grandmothers, we learned to time our departure from the seaside so that we were driving through Las Vegas around midnight.

Last night, about 11:00 P.M. we went out to do a little hot tubbing (really it was just 99 degrees in the water) and the air temperature was still about 95 degrees. Without the sun shining down, however, it's really quite pleasant. I actually swam a lap in the pool first--the water there is 88 and it feels fine.

Today, as I drove around to do a few errands, I took this photo of my truck's thermometer at noon.

 

So when you listen to your newsreaders today, whether it is radio or television, and they breathlessly exclaim about the Western heatwave, they're only exaggerating a little. (I heard an opening line today in which the speaker declared "millions of people's lives at risk today" because of the heat. Well, yeessss....if they go outside and lay on the ground and don't drink any water...sheesh). But, even the homeless people are being gathered up and put into shelters where they can be in the air conditioning and drink water during the really hottest parts of the day. Local officials open "cooling shelters" in school gyms and rec centers when it's super hot. Some people don't have decent air conditioning, so they come over, too.

 

I often say, "Well, it's a dry heat" or "It's the desert in the summer" in discounting the heat. But, not today. Today, I agree: IT IS HOT and IT IS UNCOMFORTABLE. That's right. It is. We'll lie low inside and when the sun starts to set, we'll head to the pool. Too hot for daytime, but perfect for night.