17 comments

  1. Kim as our resident interpreter of UK English what the heck is a gritter? And what on earth does it mean when the tap water turns white?

    1. A gritter is used to put grit onto roads, normally to melt snow, but in hot weather the grit helps stabilise the tarmac.

      I’m not sure about the white water, but it might be dissolved CO2 or calcium coming out of solution.

      Anyway, the weather has been gorgeous up here in NE Scotland. Low 20s C (mid 70s F), glorious sunshine, and so on.

      1. Interesting. I don’t know that the grit technique is used anywhere in the U.S. in hot weather. I’ve never heard of it anyway. It’s likely the asphalt mixes here are designed to tolerate much hotter weather than in the U.K. Even in the U.S. upper Midwest summer temps can break 100F occasionally. In the Dallas area where Kim lives 105-110F is not uncommon in the hottest part of the summer.

  2. It works the other way too.

    My wife has a friend who lives in North Carolina, and their whole area gets shut down, no mail delivery, and God help you if you need an ambulance or fire department, over an amount of snow that wouldn’t be a valid excuse for us to be fifteen minutes late to work here in the NJ/NYC area.

    Not to mention the time we were in Sedona, AZ between Christmas and New Year’s with another couple (she from upstate NY, he from Chicago, so none of us strangers to snow) and we were the only ones who didn’t freak out over about a half-inch of snow on the ground when we woke up. Seriously, people were trying to extend their hotel stays because they were afraid to leave because of the “snow storm”. Hardest part for us was we had neither snow-brush nor gloves, so had to clean the windshield with bare hands.

    Mark D

  3. Similar to a news article I read yesterday about the biggest wildfire in recent memory burning near Manchester. It had burned almost 7 square miles, under 4500 acres. Not that wildfires are anything to sneer at, but, that’s just sounds like early summer here in Washington.

  4. Spend the last week in Florida then Las Vegas. Florida was 97 with about 100% humidity. Vegas was 109 and bone dry. I’ll take the dry heat every time.

    1. I was in the USA last year and the dry heat was as bad as the humid heat of Brunei and Indonesia.

      1. I live in Las Vegas. About a month ago, I went on a trip to Fiji for about a week.

        I’ll take dry heat any day.

        Even now with temperatures pushing toward 110, at least you dry off fairly quickly if you start sweating here. Fiji was somewhere in the mid-80s to maybe low 90s while I was there, but you’d be soaked within 5-10 minutes if you were doing anything more strenuous than a slow walk (or even that, if you were out in the sun).

  5. Eight years of my life I have lived where the winters are real cold, the last time in Minnesota where it warms up to zero towards the end of February and in 1986 I sold my damn snow blower and moved back to Texas. The rest of my years, younger and older I lived in Oklahoma and Texas where temps up to 110 were not unusual in the summer.

    I will take the heat any time over that cold stuff, in the summer I spend as much time as possible outside, lots of water and sitting on my back patio a fan helps and we do love our a/c in our homes and cars. My younger kid years we had an attic fan and just rolled the car windows down and drove fast and there were a few 120 degree days when we were glad to see the evening sunset.

    It is all kind of relative and what a person is gets used to, living on a sail boat in the Gulf off of Galveston for a bit one summer I almost froze to death going into restaurants to eat from time to time, I was miserable.

  6. One more thing, when we do get snow and ice in the winter in Texas it’s best to avoid driving when you can because folks don’t know how to drive on slick stuff, lots of them have very little tread on their tires or any insurance.

  7. 95? Hell Kim, here in Lamesa in w Texas we break out some sweats when it gets that chilly.

  8. It says 98 here in Wimberley TX, on vacation. Just caught a few bass, went for a swim in the creek, and drinking a beer on the patio before dinner. Beautiful weather. How can anyone complain about that?

  9. I see this same discussion every time the subject of hot or cold weather comes up.

    Texans and other south-westerners try to one up everybody else about their extraordinarily hot summers (…compared to most other places) And people from the snow belt are always ragging on southerners driving in the snow.

    1 – I love Texas and Texans, but you can keep that summer heat. 110 degrees in the shade for weeks on end is not a positive trait – regardless of the humidity level. The same goes for anywhere else in the south.

    2 – Now, what slays me is all those northerners that rag on us southerners because we “can’t drive in snow”. Southerners generally don’t drive well in the snow because for the most part we don’t have to. It snows so infrequently in places like Alabama and Carolina that the infrequent snow event becomes a news story regardless of the level. So what. The smart people stay home anyway until the inevitable thaw comes the next day (…or that afternoon.) But what really makes me laugh is that it could be high noon on the fourth of July and folks from NJ, NY or – heaven forbid – Boston, MA, STILL can’t drive worth a shit.

    Roy – who is duckin and runnin…

  10. I lived in central Australia for 2 summers.

    120 was not uncommon. 130 was not unheard of.

  11. Temperatures are just numbers: it’s your appreciation of them that counts. (hunting cottontails in Wichita Falls in July: hunting snowshoe hares in Grands Forks in January)
    I agree: cold is cold and hot is hot, but (I hate to be gross) what does she have have in her(?) pants that makes them bulge like that or is it just the lighting?

  12. Oh Happy Day, A/C fan unit decides to quit working on Hot Friday Texas afternoon and inside temp zooms up 10 degrees. Good thing out A/C guys work on weekends and they are bringing a new fan motor, bearings burned out, before noon tomorrow. It also helps to be friends with the A/C guys who are gun guys and friends, they told me how to check it just now, after 7 p.m. and I took the top off to give them the specs. and with a bit of Break-Free gun spray and spray break cleaner I already have the blade off. We do like us some A/C when Texas heats up.

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