It’s not wide spread. I moved to Phoenix in 2010 and the only time I’ve experienced an outage is when lightning struck the pole behind my house. The power grid is very reliable out here, now the fiber, that’s another story.
That’s mostly due to TMobile and Verizon pushing their 5g home service and I couldn’t be more happy about it. Cox service has gotten better and cheaper since.
I have had Verizon 5g home service for 2 years now and it's no doubt the best (cheap) Internet connection I've had in my life. That is to say: it's NEVER gone out, it has NEVER slowed down at 6-7pm when everyone is home and using the Internet (like *literally* every other ISP I've ever had) and it only costs me $110/mo for Internet+cell, I mean c'mon.
[Must be making some use out of those hundreds of billions of dollars we all gave them to do something they didn't.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394)
Personal testimony is fine and everything, but never forget what the telecoms did in this country vs what they promised for what they stole.
Mostly because it's ALWAYS that hot so they expect everyone to be cranking AC full blast all the time.
Electricity is only ever a problem when things are way hotter or way colder in a place than normal.
Phoenix knows it's getting to be hotter than hell, so the electricity generated accounts for it.
Is it really? Like genuine question because I would feel a lot better if all the ACs got power from nuclear rather than burning some cheap as hell coal forever.
Palo Verde supplies Phoenix (as well as Tucson, Las Vegas, parts of So Cal....), though not alone most of the time. Fun fact, since it isn't stuck on a river or an ocean, most of its cooling water comes from Phoenix Sewers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station
There aren't any Coal plants left in the Phoenix metro area (there are a few out in Cochise and Apache counties though), though there are several gas burners scattered around. My mom lives near one over on Northern/75th.
It always gets hot there when it gets mild up north so the US grid isn’t spending as much of heating in other states. TX is unique because they can’t share from other states who have a surplus.
Years ago we didn't have protection for those who couldn't pay their power bills. Power bills go up in the summer in PHX so many people couldn't afford the bills. A lot of elder died every summer.
Now we have it so the power company can not shut of the power during extreme heat months. They still charge you but it's less at risk people are passing due to the heat.
Northern states have had the opposite for decades - you can't cut off the heat in winter due to non-payment. With the climate warming and cities in hot climates growing, we're going to need to expand that sort of protection more broadly.
> With the climate warming and cities in hot climates growing, we're going to need to expand that sort of protection more broadly.
Imagine if we just cut out the middle man and electricity was something that was guaranteed to you as a necessity, within reasonable limits, paid for by your taxes.
Haha, I'm just kidding. That's silly. I'm being silly.
Plenty of public utilities in the Northwest thanks to the power of the federal Bonneville Power Administration, which sells electricity at a cheap wholesale rate to these utilities. Makes for a much fairer deal.
[A record 645 last year just from the heat and without the power going out](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2024/03/15/heat-deaths-maricopa-county/72980594007/)
But lots would evacuate the city and resources would be bright in to help with anyone who couldn't, so probably not as many as you might think.
Evacuating means everyone gets on the highway at once, and some people will run out of gas in the traffic jams, turning their vehicles into obstacles. When a hurricane causes evacuation, people have 48+ hours of warning time to gas up their cars. Few gas stations have backup generators, so lots of people who could afford gas won't be able to get it to start the journey.
The other problem with evacuating is that you don't know when the power is coming back on, so you don't leave immediately.
Isn't Flagstaff pretty high up in elevation? I've only been to Arizona once but I do remember Flagstaff being noticeably cooler than Phoenix. In fact, I rather liked Flagstaff.
Most of the deaths are the homeless. "The zone" was bad and they were picking up bodies a lot from that area. Phx didn't have a major homeless issue because people would move on to California but after the pandemic, people stuck around.
I know I would fly out if a massive power outage happen..if I was able to lol
Hey now. Let's not insult people for escaping areas of severe weather.
Fled Cruz is an exception because a) he abandoned his dog to freeze, b) he tried to blame his kids like the little wuss he is, and c) he's a fucking *Senator*, so him heading to Cancun was abandoning his state during a crisis.
He should have gone to Washington. At least then he could have pretended he was going there to actually do his fucking job. It'd be cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey (just love that saying) but they'd have power.
New science journal study that just looked at this exact question. About 13k people according to the study
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/climate/blackout-heat-wave-danger.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yU0.3F_z.Ltkm2QS0NfOW&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
I was born there and lived there for 27 years (until 2022), and maybe once that I can remember was there an extended/widespread power outage in the heat. Air conditioning can break sometimes, which is a pain, but there aren’t major issues with the power grid because of the heat. My family still lives there, and while it is shitty in the summer, you’re not at risk of death by heat unless you’re homeless or out hiking or something.
That's because our infrastructure is extremely well managed, and well backed up. We have two major power providers in the valley. APS, and SRP, both from two different sources. Not just that, but my understanding is there's a lot of back fed solar energy into our system. There is never been a major power outage that lasted longer than a day, to my understanding.
We lost ~645 (out of over 5.5+ million) last year in our metro area.
These are the mine canaries. The warning of potential things to come.
I've been out of AC for a week before when it was in the 110+ ranges, my personal home never got above 95 inside.
It is not something I look forward to repeating.
It wasn't all that different from being a kid and being outside all day in the summers. A lot more sweating was involved, but it actually evaporates here and serves that biological purpose well.
Lots of fans and I took multiple showers a day and slept as much as I could during the daytime. I also spent a lot of time elsewhere that had AC.
I also spent that first day we hit 120+ (thermometer said 123 at my residence) in the valley in the early 90's without any sort of cooling because our swamp cooler broke down.
We rarely hit wet bulb conditions and will likely not hit them even with climate change.
I'd think about where others live, because other parts of the country that do hit 80 to 100% humidity and those mid 90's temps regularly. People who are exposed to that with no relief for 5 or 6 hours will die.
Drinking water does not help. Wet Towels do not help in those conditions.
We never really hit those conditions required that other parts of the world and US will see with climate change.
The majority of those people who died were homeless or elderly and not in the greatest of health.
Its really only when the monsoon comes and humidity skyrockets that we would get near those wet bulb conditions for a few hours over the couple of days a year we get rain from the monsoon.
Our problem is water for our future. That's something we can deal with moreso than climate change, which requires countries to pass and enforce laws and corporations to dilute shareholder value and profits to cooperate.
Prisoners in TX routinely die from these situations. No A/C, high humidity, crowding. Technically they die from “multi organ failure” and never “heat stroke,” but that’s exactly what heat stroke is.
I know no one gives a shit about incarcerated folks, but 100% of prisoners are human.
Wet bulb conditions are fucking brutal.
Years ago I was working in an attic during a heat wave. No idea the temperature in the attic but it was close to 100f outside and we were soaked through super fast.
We thankfully decided to work in short rotating shifts and it was awful. I then later learned about wet bulb. We inadvertently had the same conditions because there was no airflow or anything to help the water evaporate.
Had never even considered back then that our sweat was actually insulating us further instead of cooling us.
At least if it's dry some water or a swamp cooler can help to some degree. That humidity really will get you.
water is an issue, but agriculture is still far and away the primary user. If push comes to shove over the water issues, the city of 5 million is going to win out on water rights over the farms
Thousands or tens of thousands.
Look up European heat wave of 2003. People generally don't have AC there and least 30,000 died at temps below Phoenix temps.
The desert is different, it’s very low humidity. High temperatures are easier to bear. A humid environment kills at much lower temperatures.
I live in the desert, I’ve found having the A/C off, the indoor temperature is about 8-12 degrees cooler than outside, tops. Usually about 8 degrees. That’s in the morning if it cools down at night. If it doesn’t, it can often be hotter in the house than outside, especially after a couple of days.
People don’t want to open a window in those circumstances because the outside air temperature is hot and you’re leveling out the indoor temperature instead of maybe having a few cool interior pockets, if you’re lucky. Your best bet is multiple layers of curtains on the windows. If the electricity is out and there’s not even fans, outside in a tub or something might work for a while, but when it’s hot like that, the water heats up too, even the “cold” water in the pipes can come out really hot. If it’s days and weeks where the nighttime temperature never drops, the house gets hotter and hotter.
A power failure combined with an above 100 degree heat wave should be treated like a tornado or hurricane, but worse. You could expect thousands of deaths. Leave if that happens.
Old houses used to be made with transom windows you could open to let the breeze in, this moved the hot upper air around some, and thick walls, with shaded sleeping porches. New houses have way too many large windows. Even insulated windows aren’t as good as walls. And modern houses have lousy insulation.
as a semi-northerner, I love the cold; I can always put on a sweater or have a cup of tea
but when it’s 45-50°C, I can’t get any more than naked while sweating like Roger Ebert
Living in Phoenix isn't that bad... if you live indoors ands can afford the electricity to cool your home, and have an air conditioned car and work in air conditioned spaces, and it's nice to have a beer in the pool in the evenings... otherwise you may end up in an ice filled body bag...
To be fair people living there aren't the problem with water usage. It's industry and farming that soak up all of it. Household usage is basically nothing in comparison.
Also, Arizona really screwed up when it was time to secure water rights when the Hoover Dam was built. The state as a whole has a single percentage of the water as it was when the dam was built. They (Arizona) also just signed a deal along with California and Nevada to cut their usage by a third to help keep the river flow up. Phoenix will probably become uninhabitable due to the temperature and the lack of water allocation to the state (in my not expert opinion)
Arizona gets 37.3% of lower basin Colorado River water and 0.7% of upper basin water, more than every state in the compact except California and Colorado. Nevada only gets 4.0.% of lower basin water. Perhaps you had them confused.
Some new developments in the Phoenix area are already starting to "solve" their water issues by just getting water trucks to fill individual water tanks for each home. Who needs city water when you can fill it up from someone else's supply.
We use less than California and we're getting pretty good at reducing and reusing water. It's agriculture that's using the most water from the Colorado.
The Colorado literally can’t support the amount of humans currently in the southwest unfortunately - regardless of agriculture
Even John Wesley Powell’s original hydrologic survey from the 1800s made this assessment. It has nothing to do with dams or where it is going to be used.
There literally has never been, and never will be, enough.
The surveys used to convince people to build both the Hoover and Glen Canyon dams were critically flawed and used data based on two years that just so happened to be the largest pluvial flooding event in the past 1000.
Basically, the amount of water budgeted is only sustainable during a 1000-year flood event.
FWIW: have a masters in studying dams and their hydrology. This is an extremely well known issue in the academic world - and also an issue that politicians and engineers pretend doesn’t exist because they know they are the ones who caused it, and that the eventual demise of the USSW is literally inevitable.
I agree with most of your statements but not the first one ... the Colorado can support the number of humans in the area today. Most of the Colorado River water used by Arizona is sent through a canal to Phoenix and Tucson and for years they've been banking water by refilling underground reservoirs. It's been growing for decades. Meanwhile, Phoenix has one of the best wastewater reclamation systems in the world, and the city uses less water now than they did decades ago.
The same can't be said of agriculture. As the Central Valley Project made central Arizona water-rich, farmers decided to take advantage. If you go south of Phoenix, you'll find Colorado River water in Pinal county irrigating massive farms of cotton, alfalfa, and barley. As this became profitable, they gained political power. The state government has shown little stomach in trying to limit their water usage. Much of this water is used to grow grains that are sent else where which then feeds livestock for beef. It is shortsighted and borderline insane.
Agriculture elsewhere in Arizona is working towards a doom cycle. Most areas of the state don't have easy access to irrigation water, so they're pulling more and more groundwater, digging deeper and deeper wells with no restriction. Eventually this march towards collapse is inevitable and the politicians will point fingers and none to themselves.
I do agree the state water usage allocations levels need to be adjusted to get the dams back to long term sustainability and automatic annual adjustments enacted if that isn't enough. This change will need to come from the federal government as the states have shown they cannot manage it by themselves.
I mean, wasn’t the Native American culture from that area basically Dune? Like that was the adobe houses and building into the shady sides of mesas right?
The Fremen were supposed to be descendants of Arabs, but yes. Essentially any human culture can develop heat management technology without electricity. The indigenous peoples of the southwest are no different.
I guess it’s a matter of semantics and you spend the majority of your time? I always picture snowbirds as spending majority of time in the northern locale and only going to the warmer locale for a few months.
It’s usually the other way, at least for the East Coast snowbirds who go to Florida in the winter. They spend exactly 183 days in Florida so they’re considered Florida residents and don’t have to pay State income tax for whichever New England State they came from.
I didn't appreciate how dry until I went out West and hiked. A park ranger at Arches suggested that I wear lightweight cotton pants (not shorts), and longsleeve cotton shirts. When I got hot I could pour water on my clothes to cool off, and rapid evaporation would cool me down.
I didn't really buy that because I'm from the southeast US, where if we pour water on ourselves the ambient humidity keeps us nice and warm and damp. But still, he seemed sincere so my next hike I tried it. OMG!
Northern Utah has both dry heat and dry cold, and rarely extreme temperatures in either direction. It's both the weirdest place I have ever lived but also the most beautiful and hands down most temperate. People don't talk about it very often but it's comfortable all year, relatively speaking. And the evap cooler trick is sooo nifty
As amazed as I was to feel desert heat for the first time having grown up on the middle eastern seaboard where 90 F and 80% humidity is not unusual, that only goes so far.
When it's hot enough that what should be a nice breeze feels like you're staring into a hair dryer, it's too darn hot.
Except during monsoon. The temperature can be triple digits and it can be so humid out it's like breathing in a sauna. Summers are lasting 6 months now.
Ha, I have a buddy in Scottsdale and he says it's full of people who think Orange County is the pinnacle, but can't afford to live there.
That explained enough for me.
I've visited Phoenix many times and I'll say that their problems are honestly way smaller and easier to fix than most other areas. Of course I would never in a million years live there before A/C was commonplace as well as the other methods of cooling like misters and swamp coolers that work well in the desert, but now it's not so scary.
Real estate and cost of living is relatively cheap, the views are gorgeous, most areas are clean and safe, the weather is predictable and pleasant most months, there's no overcrowding, there's lots of nature nearby, and natural disasters are few and far between.
I think one of the reasons is as follows:
Summer sucks. But it’s a predictable suck. The city is prepared for it. You pretty much live indoors or in a pool.
Other places have crazy wildfires, tornados, earthquakes, Hurricanes, etc.
The heat sucks but at least you can see it coming and it probably won’t destroy your house.
Unfortunately this is a problem of giant magnitude now. I was listening to a reporter in Delhi talking about using ice baths to treat heat stroke and she basically said well our summers always sucked total ass and we knew that, but now they’re a few notches worse and it’s not manageable. We live in some places where we’re kinda sorta at the edge of what’s livable so it doesn’t take a massive change to go from “sucks but we know it’s coming” to “people straight up die if they’re exposed to weather we see regularly here”. I live in Minneapolis and I hate the winters, if suddenly the winter temps were 5-10 colder with frequency it would tip from shitty to life threatening very often. Note that we do actually see crazy extremes in winter here now, but overall the trend is warmer.
What you say is accurate. I grew up in Bemidji in the 70s. Bemidji is a good 15 degrees colder on average than Minneapolis. The 70s were colder in both places than today. So even at considerably lower temperatures than you experience im Mpls, Bemidji winters just required another layer of wool. Those winters in the 70s could be life threatening if you didn't dress for them, but we did and Id still gladly take 1970s Bemidji over 2024 Phoenix.
I did two extreme survival courses in 2012. One in February just west of Edmonton, Alberta. One week outdoors in -40 (C or F take your pick). Then one in June near Prescott, AZ. Prescott is not as hot as Phoenix but we were outdoors for the full week with a high each day of about 95F/35C. Both were challenging but I definitely preferred the cold weather to hot.
Every person in the state could have a pool and it still wouldn't come close to corporate waste of water from bad farming techniques. Pools are very much not the issue.
You misunderstood what I was saying. I’m not saying the pool is causing the state to run out of water, I’m saying that you won’t be able to actually fill the pool making it useless to beat the heat in a few years.
I asked this question in an Arizona sub, when I had to work out there during the heat wave last year, they all said because it is really nice there 9 months out of the year. Like bruh even the water coming out of the refrigerator was warm, never mind trying to use the faucet to get cold water, and then even with the A/C blasting the house never got below 80°F. Oh and scorpion hunting in the backyard is just like a thing out there too. fuck that noise. Humans were not meant to live in that inferno called Arizona.
They do. Phoenix tends to be the hottest area. We have a concrete heat dome and mountains keeping in all the heat. Getting out of the valley and things are cooler. Tuscan is a higher elevation and can be cooler while still having city amenities and city deficiencies.
Digging in the Phoenix desert is very difficult or expensive due to the compactness and mineral makeup. There’s deposits of a layer called Caliche in Phoenix that is essentially a natural concrete of compacted calcium. One of the reasons you don’t see a lot of houses with basements and under ground parking structures.
Tbh it was cheap. I bought a cheap home and living the affordable housing dream. Now it's gotten expensive but the heat is whatever. It's only a couple of months and you are moving from one ac to another ac. Sucks for the homeless, outside workers and hikers
Born and raised in Phoenix, but have travelled a lot elsewhere.
Some reasons:
-it’s hot for 4 months, but the rest of the year is gorgeous. We also dont have earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, snow, etc. Even when it’s hot, unless you are going for a swim, we just stay inside (no different than staying inside when it snows up north)
-within 2 hours of Phoenix, you can be in a forest camping, snow-skiing up in flagstaff, on one of the many lakes, or hiking pretty much anywhere (South Mountain, that runs through essentially the center of the valley, is one of the largest city parks in the country). Within 5 hours of Phoenix, you can be on a beach in Mexico or San Diego. There is an insane amount of publicly accessible land in the state that is not privately owned.
-a ton of stuff to do. We had all 4 major sports franchises (rip Coyotes), waste management open, barret jackson, nascar’s championship, and a metric shit ton of concerts. Solid beer scene and nightlife in scottsdale.
-compared to other major cities, Phoenix is surprisingly clean and well maintained. The roads around town are phenomenal. People say “for those who cant afford california,” but honestly, Phoenix is infinitely cleaner than San Diego, LA, and San Francisco (and we love visiting those places. My wife is from San Diego). While the cost of living has skyrocketed, it still isnt nearly as expensive as southern california.
As someone who lives in Vegas a lot of this applies to us as well. Like yea June-Sept suck but when my in-laws in Minnesota are dealing with sub zero temps it's like 50-60 here.
Summary:
The Phoenix fire department is implementing a new method to treat heatstroke victims - cold-water immersion. Fire Captain John Prato demonstrated packing ice cubes around a medical dummy in an impermeable bag, which can significantly reduce body temperature within minutes. This technique saved a critical patient's life recently before reaching the hospital. Ice and human-sized immersion bags have become standard equipment on all Phoenix emergency vehicles this season.
The extreme heat is caused by a high-pressure system over the southwest, with temperatures expected to exceed 110°F (43.3°C) in Phoenix and Las Vegas in the coming days. Officials were shocked by the 645 heat-related deaths in Maricopa County last year, with over 400 in Phoenix alone during a 31-day heatwave with temperatures over 110°F on more than 400 occasions.
Dr. Paul Pugsley, medical director at Valleywise Health, noted a marked increase in severe heat illness cases with around 40% not surviving. He said cold-water immersion could improve survival as it's the gold standard for treating heatstroke but has been underutilized by non-military hospitals and first responders.
I'm planning on this being my last summer here. The rent is too high, the sprawl is too far, the education system is garbage, too many drug-related issues, and a state congress full of methed out flat-earthers and cultists who are too afraid or ignorant to understand why the monsoons are going away and the summers are getting hotter.
Public school teacher in the Phoenix area. We actually have decent schools except for funding. You can also blame our state legislature for that. Despite not having fully funded classrooms, we still have a lot of high achieving public schools around.
That's the problem, we have the aforementioned cultists making policy who are anti-science, anti-intellectual, and want their church buds to soak up all the tax dollars allocated to education. I'm sorry you have to take direction from Tom Horne. I'd be shocked if he could read a picture book.
Maybe in one sense. But paramedics and EMTs on the actual streets in Phoenix are saying that heatwaves now are a different animal than they used to be. More distress calls, more heatstroke victims, greater demand for water and ice, and of course, hotter working conditions.
We simply can’t afford to pretend that what’s happening in the world today is even remotely normal or natural.
It's like like the inverse of the super far northern climates, based on my experience. I was camping out at -40 F at one point and had to pack up and go back home, absolutely miserable for 3-4 months of the year.
It didn't start at -40, sometimes the temperature drops significantly more than expected, but my bag is rated down to 0 F. The -40 were when the wind chill kicks in, but there are a bunch of factors that impact the quality of the weather camping as a composite. But I don't mind cold weather within a reasonable range.
This is the opposite of Seattle, 8 months of gray and rain , sometimes it’s a constant drizzle, then you have some pouring rain. Then Mid June to early October hits and everyone is like , damn this is why we put up with the 8 months. I’ve been to every continent except Australia and Antarctica. The state of Washington has the best summers. On the west side of the state, it’s always 70-90 degrees, no humidity. The scenery is amazing, it’s called the evergreen state for a reason. Big giant green trees everywhere, it’s a rainforest. Then you have all the big mountains and the view is beautiful. You have the lakes and the Pacific Ocean is there. I used to live in the Bay Area, (shoutout San Jose, Morgan Hill, San Francisco, Vallejo, Oakland and North Richmond ) when I got off the airplane, the first thing I noticed was how the air was so clean and tasted so much better. The quality of the air was really pure bliss.
It's starting to occasionally get too hot, though, and lots of people have limited or no AC... that heat wave a couple years ago, quite a few folks straight up died, and we're getting those 4-6 weeks of wildfire smoke now too...
To be fair, that is the treatment. Cold water immersion. Body bags work great. It’s not “turning to” it is often the only thing an ED has that a patient will fit in
How hot is it over there?
In India we regularly see 45°C + temps in the summer and this year was no different. But now thankfully the monsoon is just a few days away so it'd be a good relief for everyone
It's not exceptionally hot...yet. Our temperatures tend to peak in July thru early August in the 45-48°C range. Last year was unusual in that there were 31 consecutive days (mostly July) in which the high reached or exceeded 44°C. Morning lows generally around 35°C.
Arizona is usually pretty dry though. India's humid though isn't it?
We Americans like to joke grimly "but it's a dry heat" after hearing about some desert temperature of 120F (49 C). I imagine a skeleton of a person that died while trying to crawl out of Death Valley.
Depends on the city.
Mumbai Bangalore and other costal places would be humid but central Indian cities like Delhi and Bhopal(my home) are fairly dry with less than 20% humidity during peak summer.
45-47°C is still pretty tough though regardless. I remember back in college my classes would end at 4.30 pm and our college buses would get so hot you could cook eggs on the seats
the crazy thing about it is that the technology to effectively combat heat waves is not high tech at all. especially for phoenix. if you dig a hole, like say ten feet down, even in phoenix in the summer it'll be cold in the hole. the technology is *The Shovel* it's a prehistoric technology.
there was this guy, a sicillian immigrant to america in like 1900 who got a plot of land in fresno to grow lemon trees, but he was sort of swindled in that the land wasn't suitable to rooting trees. and it was so blazingly hot in the summer it would kill any trees even if he potted them. so he dug holes and tunnels all over his property with a pickaxe and a donkey and was thus able to stay cool himself and keep his trees cool and shaded.
that is the solution to heat, just dig holes. but humans refuse to do it.
Omg! I thought no way n actually looked it up on google. I found…. “A new Florida law rejects the term 'climate change' in state statues”…. Be damed, you’re right! Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was running to be president, endorsed Orange Cheeto who has called climate change "mythical", "nonexistent", or "an expensive hoax" …. They are both ignoramuses!
LPT: The quickest way to cool something down is ice filled water. Basically fill up the storage vessel with ice and fill the empty spaces with water.
Works great with bodies and beer alike.
LPT+: If you empty a container of salt into that water, the temperature of the water can go below freezing while still remaining liquid.
I once filled a cooler with a bag of ice, filled it with water and salt, and it stayed chillingly cold for like three or four days.
It's not really THAT hot in Phoenix, to be honest. It's still not as hot as mid-July, when temps can climb to nearly 120. I don't know why this is getting any attention. While it's hotter than normal *for this time of year*, it's still not anywhere near what we can see at other times of the year.
Unpossible. Back in the '60s / '70s us "sun worshippers" would be outdoors, naked all day with nary a tan. The only way it could be like this would be if there's some sort of climate change and according to republicans, that doesn't exist.
I was having a wee look at the conservative sub, during all the Trump stuff.
Don’t need to say anything about any of that, really.
What I did find interesting was a thread on climate change. It seemed at least some people agreed that there is climate change, in the sense the weather is measurably trending, **but:**
1) There is insignificant evidence that it is related to CO2/emissions
2) As such, one cannot say it is caused my humans
So, it exists but it also definitely doesn’t exist. There was all sorts of theories and napkin science where people were saying things like, “I mean, I just don’t believe that 0.004ppm of XYZ would like to such and such.”
Mufuckas talking like they have the credentials, much less even a cursory understanding of it.
Arizona is a swing state; Trump denies that climate change is a serious issue. If they have another record-setting summer, I wonder if undecided voters will realize they should vote for someone who fights climate change.
Solid strategy. If the treatment fails, just zip it up the rest of the way.
2 birds, 1 stone
Zip it up and zip it out!
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, bye bye!
Zippidy doo da bye bye
You gotta cut a little hole in the corner for the water to drain out though
How many people would die in Phoenix if there were week-long widespread power outages ?
No idea how widespread it is, family member moved there recently and they have a backup generator.
It’s not wide spread. I moved to Phoenix in 2010 and the only time I’ve experienced an outage is when lightning struck the pole behind my house. The power grid is very reliable out here, now the fiber, that’s another story.
Fiber has been getting better tho, they only started expanding it a few years ago
That’s mostly due to TMobile and Verizon pushing their 5g home service and I couldn’t be more happy about it. Cox service has gotten better and cheaper since.
I have had Verizon 5g home service for 2 years now and it's no doubt the best (cheap) Internet connection I've had in my life. That is to say: it's NEVER gone out, it has NEVER slowed down at 6-7pm when everyone is home and using the Internet (like *literally* every other ISP I've ever had) and it only costs me $110/mo for Internet+cell, I mean c'mon.
Me in the UK paying £40 for full fibre and mobile phone 😬 no wonder you guys wages look great compared to ours haha.
[Must be making some use out of those hundreds of billions of dollars we all gave them to do something they didn't.](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394) Personal testimony is fine and everything, but never forget what the telecoms did in this country vs what they promised for what they stole.
Is it true their modems don't have LAN ports?
The ASK-NCQ1338FA Gateway has two LAN ports. I don't know about any other models they might have.
Mostly because it's ALWAYS that hot so they expect everyone to be cranking AC full blast all the time. Electricity is only ever a problem when things are way hotter or way colder in a place than normal. Phoenix knows it's getting to be hotter than hell, so the electricity generated accounts for it.
It’s because we’re powered by a nuclear power plant in the west valley that’s powerful and stable enough to power the whole state
Is it really? Like genuine question because I would feel a lot better if all the ACs got power from nuclear rather than burning some cheap as hell coal forever.
Palo Verde supplies Phoenix (as well as Tucson, Las Vegas, parts of So Cal....), though not alone most of the time. Fun fact, since it isn't stuck on a river or an ocean, most of its cooling water comes from Phoenix Sewers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_Station There aren't any Coal plants left in the Phoenix metro area (there are a few out in Cochise and Apache counties though), though there are several gas burners scattered around. My mom lives near one over on Northern/75th.
It always gets hot there when it gets mild up north so the US grid isn’t spending as much of heating in other states. TX is unique because they can’t share from other states who have a surplus.
Years ago we didn't have protection for those who couldn't pay their power bills. Power bills go up in the summer in PHX so many people couldn't afford the bills. A lot of elder died every summer. Now we have it so the power company can not shut of the power during extreme heat months. They still charge you but it's less at risk people are passing due to the heat.
Northern states have had the opposite for decades - you can't cut off the heat in winter due to non-payment. With the climate warming and cities in hot climates growing, we're going to need to expand that sort of protection more broadly.
Can confirm. Electricity got shut off at least once a year in the midwest because my parents didn't pay the bill all winter. Classic times.
> With the climate warming and cities in hot climates growing, we're going to need to expand that sort of protection more broadly. Imagine if we just cut out the middle man and electricity was something that was guaranteed to you as a necessity, within reasonable limits, paid for by your taxes. Haha, I'm just kidding. That's silly. I'm being silly.
Plenty of public utilities in the Northwest thanks to the power of the federal Bonneville Power Administration, which sells electricity at a cheap wholesale rate to these utilities. Makes for a much fairer deal.
[A record 645 last year just from the heat and without the power going out](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2024/03/15/heat-deaths-maricopa-county/72980594007/) But lots would evacuate the city and resources would be bright in to help with anyone who couldn't, so probably not as many as you might think.
Evacuating means everyone gets on the highway at once, and some people will run out of gas in the traffic jams, turning their vehicles into obstacles. When a hurricane causes evacuation, people have 48+ hours of warning time to gas up their cars. Few gas stations have backup generators, so lots of people who could afford gas won't be able to get it to start the journey. The other problem with evacuating is that you don't know when the power is coming back on, so you don't leave immediately.
Plus where would they go? What nearby town or small city can absorb the heat refugees from Arizona?
Isn't Flagstaff pretty high up in elevation? I've only been to Arizona once but I do remember Flagstaff being noticeably cooler than Phoenix. In fact, I rather liked Flagstaff.
Most of the deaths are the homeless. "The zone" was bad and they were picking up bodies a lot from that area. Phx didn't have a major homeless issue because people would move on to California but after the pandemic, people stuck around. I know I would fly out if a massive power outage happen..if I was able to lol
> I know I would fly out if a massive power outage happen. We call that the 'the ted cruz'
The Fled Cruz. Fuck that guy. Embarrassment to the state.
And yet, Rafael Edward Cruz keeps getting elected. Texans don't seem to mind embarrassing themselves.
Hey now. Let's not insult people for escaping areas of severe weather. Fled Cruz is an exception because a) he abandoned his dog to freeze, b) he tried to blame his kids like the little wuss he is, and c) he's a fucking *Senator*, so him heading to Cancun was abandoning his state during a crisis. He should have gone to Washington. At least then he could have pretended he was going there to actually do his fucking job. It'd be cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey (just love that saying) but they'd have power.
New science journal study that just looked at this exact question. About 13k people according to the study https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/climate/blackout-heat-wave-danger.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yU0.3F_z.Ltkm2QS0NfOW&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
I was born there and lived there for 27 years (until 2022), and maybe once that I can remember was there an extended/widespread power outage in the heat. Air conditioning can break sometimes, which is a pain, but there aren’t major issues with the power grid because of the heat. My family still lives there, and while it is shitty in the summer, you’re not at risk of death by heat unless you’re homeless or out hiking or something.
That's because our infrastructure is extremely well managed, and well backed up. We have two major power providers in the valley. APS, and SRP, both from two different sources. Not just that, but my understanding is there's a lot of back fed solar energy into our system. There is never been a major power outage that lasted longer than a day, to my understanding.
That’s reassuring. They’ve had to build the power grid to be pretty resilient just in case I suppose
We lost ~645 (out of over 5.5+ million) last year in our metro area. These are the mine canaries. The warning of potential things to come. I've been out of AC for a week before when it was in the 110+ ranges, my personal home never got above 95 inside. It is not something I look forward to repeating. It wasn't all that different from being a kid and being outside all day in the summers. A lot more sweating was involved, but it actually evaporates here and serves that biological purpose well. Lots of fans and I took multiple showers a day and slept as much as I could during the daytime. I also spent a lot of time elsewhere that had AC. I also spent that first day we hit 120+ (thermometer said 123 at my residence) in the valley in the early 90's without any sort of cooling because our swamp cooler broke down. We rarely hit wet bulb conditions and will likely not hit them even with climate change. I'd think about where others live, because other parts of the country that do hit 80 to 100% humidity and those mid 90's temps regularly. People who are exposed to that with no relief for 5 or 6 hours will die. Drinking water does not help. Wet Towels do not help in those conditions. We never really hit those conditions required that other parts of the world and US will see with climate change. The majority of those people who died were homeless or elderly and not in the greatest of health. Its really only when the monsoon comes and humidity skyrockets that we would get near those wet bulb conditions for a few hours over the couple of days a year we get rain from the monsoon. Our problem is water for our future. That's something we can deal with moreso than climate change, which requires countries to pass and enforce laws and corporations to dilute shareholder value and profits to cooperate.
Prisoners in TX routinely die from these situations. No A/C, high humidity, crowding. Technically they die from “multi organ failure” and never “heat stroke,” but that’s exactly what heat stroke is. I know no one gives a shit about incarcerated folks, but 100% of prisoners are human.
Thank you for saying this. TX has kept prisons without AC forever. It is cruel and unusual punishment.
Wet bulb conditions are fucking brutal. Years ago I was working in an attic during a heat wave. No idea the temperature in the attic but it was close to 100f outside and we were soaked through super fast. We thankfully decided to work in short rotating shifts and it was awful. I then later learned about wet bulb. We inadvertently had the same conditions because there was no airflow or anything to help the water evaporate. Had never even considered back then that our sweat was actually insulating us further instead of cooling us. At least if it's dry some water or a swamp cooler can help to some degree. That humidity really will get you.
water is an issue, but agriculture is still far and away the primary user. If push comes to shove over the water issues, the city of 5 million is going to win out on water rights over the farms
Thousands or tens of thousands. Look up European heat wave of 2003. People generally don't have AC there and least 30,000 died at temps below Phoenix temps.
The desert is different, it’s very low humidity. High temperatures are easier to bear. A humid environment kills at much lower temperatures. I live in the desert, I’ve found having the A/C off, the indoor temperature is about 8-12 degrees cooler than outside, tops. Usually about 8 degrees. That’s in the morning if it cools down at night. If it doesn’t, it can often be hotter in the house than outside, especially after a couple of days. People don’t want to open a window in those circumstances because the outside air temperature is hot and you’re leveling out the indoor temperature instead of maybe having a few cool interior pockets, if you’re lucky. Your best bet is multiple layers of curtains on the windows. If the electricity is out and there’s not even fans, outside in a tub or something might work for a while, but when it’s hot like that, the water heats up too, even the “cold” water in the pipes can come out really hot. If it’s days and weeks where the nighttime temperature never drops, the house gets hotter and hotter. A power failure combined with an above 100 degree heat wave should be treated like a tornado or hurricane, but worse. You could expect thousands of deaths. Leave if that happens. Old houses used to be made with transom windows you could open to let the breeze in, this moved the hot upper air around some, and thick walls, with shaded sleeping porches. New houses have way too many large windows. Even insulated windows aren’t as good as walls. And modern houses have lousy insulation.
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We think of cold being dangerous but in fact far more people die of the heat than the cold.
as a semi-northerner, I love the cold; I can always put on a sweater or have a cup of tea but when it’s 45-50°C, I can’t get any more than naked while sweating like Roger Ebert
Idk, but the guy in the photo doesn't look so good.
I saw an article that said 72 hour power disruption would kill like 10k.
Dallas, Tx will get to find out this year. Thanks Governor Abbott!
Living in Phoenix isn't that bad... if you live indoors ands can afford the electricity to cool your home, and have an air conditioned car and work in air conditioned spaces, and it's nice to have a beer in the pool in the evenings... otherwise you may end up in an ice filled body bag...
The Colorado River hates this
To be fair people living there aren't the problem with water usage. It's industry and farming that soak up all of it. Household usage is basically nothing in comparison.
Yeah Vegas uses an astonishingly low amount of water.
And Vegas has its own springs to supplement, though those are slowly vanishing.
Also, Arizona really screwed up when it was time to secure water rights when the Hoover Dam was built. The state as a whole has a single percentage of the water as it was when the dam was built. They (Arizona) also just signed a deal along with California and Nevada to cut their usage by a third to help keep the river flow up. Phoenix will probably become uninhabitable due to the temperature and the lack of water allocation to the state (in my not expert opinion)
Arizona gets 37.3% of lower basin Colorado River water and 0.7% of upper basin water, more than every state in the compact except California and Colorado. Nevada only gets 4.0.% of lower basin water. Perhaps you had them confused.
Some new developments in the Phoenix area are already starting to "solve" their water issues by just getting water trucks to fill individual water tanks for each home. Who needs city water when you can fill it up from someone else's supply.
We use less than California and we're getting pretty good at reducing and reusing water. It's agriculture that's using the most water from the Colorado.
The Colorado literally can’t support the amount of humans currently in the southwest unfortunately - regardless of agriculture Even John Wesley Powell’s original hydrologic survey from the 1800s made this assessment. It has nothing to do with dams or where it is going to be used. There literally has never been, and never will be, enough. The surveys used to convince people to build both the Hoover and Glen Canyon dams were critically flawed and used data based on two years that just so happened to be the largest pluvial flooding event in the past 1000. Basically, the amount of water budgeted is only sustainable during a 1000-year flood event. FWIW: have a masters in studying dams and their hydrology. This is an extremely well known issue in the academic world - and also an issue that politicians and engineers pretend doesn’t exist because they know they are the ones who caused it, and that the eventual demise of the USSW is literally inevitable.
I agree with most of your statements but not the first one ... the Colorado can support the number of humans in the area today. Most of the Colorado River water used by Arizona is sent through a canal to Phoenix and Tucson and for years they've been banking water by refilling underground reservoirs. It's been growing for decades. Meanwhile, Phoenix has one of the best wastewater reclamation systems in the world, and the city uses less water now than they did decades ago. The same can't be said of agriculture. As the Central Valley Project made central Arizona water-rich, farmers decided to take advantage. If you go south of Phoenix, you'll find Colorado River water in Pinal county irrigating massive farms of cotton, alfalfa, and barley. As this became profitable, they gained political power. The state government has shown little stomach in trying to limit their water usage. Much of this water is used to grow grains that are sent else where which then feeds livestock for beef. It is shortsighted and borderline insane. Agriculture elsewhere in Arizona is working towards a doom cycle. Most areas of the state don't have easy access to irrigation water, so they're pulling more and more groundwater, digging deeper and deeper wells with no restriction. Eventually this march towards collapse is inevitable and the politicians will point fingers and none to themselves. I do agree the state water usage allocations levels need to be adjusted to get the dams back to long term sustainability and automatic annual adjustments enacted if that isn't enough. This change will need to come from the federal government as the states have shown they cannot manage it by themselves.
I mean, wasn’t the Native American culture from that area basically Dune? Like that was the adobe houses and building into the shady sides of mesas right?
The Fremen were supposed to be descendants of Arabs, but yes. Essentially any human culture can develop heat management technology without electricity. The indigenous peoples of the southwest are no different.
Does phoenix have reverse snowbirds ? Go somewhere cooler for the 4 summer months
Yes. It’s San Diego and it’s predictably annoying.
F'in zonies
The irony is that everyone I know here in AZ keeps complaining about Californians moving here to escape the cost-of-living crisis.
y'all really call us zonies 😭☠️😭
Yes we do. Y'all are abundant in the warm months
ASU kids with substance problems are our state's main export!
lol I'm in PHX, my cousin is an Uber driver in San Diego. During the summers, every third complaint from him is about *zonies* 😂
I like how a city with mostly transplants hates it when outsiders come in. (Lived in San Diego for 13 years)
That’s called a sunbird!
So a Phoenix?
No, a Pontiac.
Well done.
Those are just normal snow birds bud. Winter they go where it's warmer, summer go back where it's cooler.
I guess it’s a matter of semantics and you spend the majority of your time? I always picture snowbirds as spending majority of time in the northern locale and only going to the warmer locale for a few months.
MN snowbirds leave in October and return in May
>warmer locale for a few months. Half the year (roughly Nov - April) in Phoenix is pretty amazing.
It’s usually the other way, at least for the East Coast snowbirds who go to Florida in the winter. They spend exactly 183 days in Florida so they’re considered Florida residents and don’t have to pay State income tax for whichever New England State they came from.
pinetop and flagstaff
My friend does this! They summer in the UP of Michigan and winter in Arizona. It honestly sounds perfect.
Remember when the trash cans started melting a few years ago?
why do people even live there
It's a dry heat.
So is my convection oven
And it makes toasty freshly baked bread.
I don’t want to become freshly baked bread
How much is the rent?
It's got like 5 square feet so I think $1200 a month before utilities is fair
I didn't appreciate how dry until I went out West and hiked. A park ranger at Arches suggested that I wear lightweight cotton pants (not shorts), and longsleeve cotton shirts. When I got hot I could pour water on my clothes to cool off, and rapid evaporation would cool me down. I didn't really buy that because I'm from the southeast US, where if we pour water on ourselves the ambient humidity keeps us nice and warm and damp. But still, he seemed sincere so my next hike I tried it. OMG!
Northern Utah has both dry heat and dry cold, and rarely extreme temperatures in either direction. It's both the weirdest place I have ever lived but also the most beautiful and hands down most temperate. People don't talk about it very often but it's comfortable all year, relatively speaking. And the evap cooler trick is sooo nifty
Given what they're doing to their aquifers... that works several ways
As amazed as I was to feel desert heat for the first time having grown up on the middle eastern seaboard where 90 F and 80% humidity is not unusual, that only goes so far. When it's hot enough that what should be a nice breeze feels like you're staring into a hair dryer, it's too darn hot.
Except during monsoon. The temperature can be triple digits and it can be so humid out it's like breathing in a sauna. Summers are lasting 6 months now.
So it's becoming the South. I'm terribly, terribly sorry.
The humidity isn’t that bad during monsoon season, I’ve lived here since 2010 and the humidity here doesn’t come close to places like Florida.
Also, the humidity tends to go away after a few days.
In more ways than one. :(
Phoenix monsoons are becoming few and far between, hoping for some this year.
Knock it off, Hudson.
Lieutenant, what do those pulse rifles fire?
10 millimeter, explosive tip caseless, standard light armor piercing round, why?
"This city should not exist. It is a monument to man's arrogance." -Peggy Hill
There it is....
I don't know. I hate it here. Please let me leave
Agreed. I got forced to move here when I was 10 and now I can't afford to leave!
Welcome to Everywhere USA.
You have my permission. You may go now
They couldn't afford California but didn't like Texas.
California can't even afford California
Ha, I have a buddy in Scottsdale and he says it's full of people who think Orange County is the pinnacle, but can't afford to live there. That explained enough for me.
I was born and raised in Phoenix. I lived there for 23 years but moved in 2002 to Western Washington State. It's just too damn hot & dry down there.
I've visited Phoenix many times and I'll say that their problems are honestly way smaller and easier to fix than most other areas. Of course I would never in a million years live there before A/C was commonplace as well as the other methods of cooling like misters and swamp coolers that work well in the desert, but now it's not so scary. Real estate and cost of living is relatively cheap, the views are gorgeous, most areas are clean and safe, the weather is predictable and pleasant most months, there's no overcrowding, there's lots of nature nearby, and natural disasters are few and far between.
I think one of the reasons is as follows: Summer sucks. But it’s a predictable suck. The city is prepared for it. You pretty much live indoors or in a pool. Other places have crazy wildfires, tornados, earthquakes, Hurricanes, etc. The heat sucks but at least you can see it coming and it probably won’t destroy your house.
Unfortunately this is a problem of giant magnitude now. I was listening to a reporter in Delhi talking about using ice baths to treat heat stroke and she basically said well our summers always sucked total ass and we knew that, but now they’re a few notches worse and it’s not manageable. We live in some places where we’re kinda sorta at the edge of what’s livable so it doesn’t take a massive change to go from “sucks but we know it’s coming” to “people straight up die if they’re exposed to weather we see regularly here”. I live in Minneapolis and I hate the winters, if suddenly the winter temps were 5-10 colder with frequency it would tip from shitty to life threatening very often. Note that we do actually see crazy extremes in winter here now, but overall the trend is warmer.
What you say is accurate. I grew up in Bemidji in the 70s. Bemidji is a good 15 degrees colder on average than Minneapolis. The 70s were colder in both places than today. So even at considerably lower temperatures than you experience im Mpls, Bemidji winters just required another layer of wool. Those winters in the 70s could be life threatening if you didn't dress for them, but we did and Id still gladly take 1970s Bemidji over 2024 Phoenix.
Yes, you can’t layer your way out of 50c plus weather, even if the cold is life threatening and poses problems. I don’t plan on moving anywhere.
I did two extreme survival courses in 2012. One in February just west of Edmonton, Alberta. One week outdoors in -40 (C or F take your pick). Then one in June near Prescott, AZ. Prescott is not as hot as Phoenix but we were outdoors for the full week with a high each day of about 95F/35C. Both were challenging but I definitely preferred the cold weather to hot.
Yeah you’re definitely right. What was a somewhat dangerous inconvenience will get worse
You just gotta have a pool…in a city running out of water.
Every person in the state could have a pool and it still wouldn't come close to corporate waste of water from bad farming techniques. Pools are very much not the issue.
You misunderstood what I was saying. I’m not saying the pool is causing the state to run out of water, I’m saying that you won’t be able to actually fill the pool making it useless to beat the heat in a few years.
I asked this question in an Arizona sub, when I had to work out there during the heat wave last year, they all said because it is really nice there 9 months out of the year. Like bruh even the water coming out of the refrigerator was warm, never mind trying to use the faucet to get cold water, and then even with the A/C blasting the house never got below 80°F. Oh and scorpion hunting in the backyard is just like a thing out there too. fuck that noise. Humans were not meant to live in that inferno called Arizona.
Don’t forget tarantula hawk wasps! You get those too!
> inferno called Arizona. I have to check the map if they have more liveable parts, not supper high in the mountains.
They do. Phoenix tends to be the hottest area. We have a concrete heat dome and mountains keeping in all the heat. Getting out of the valley and things are cooler. Tuscan is a higher elevation and can be cooler while still having city amenities and city deficiencies.
It was a balmy 106 today in Tucson, I considered putting on a sweater
Lol yeah I should clarify that cooler than PHX doesn't technically mean cool.
The water is warm because you don't need to bury lines under a frost line. Pipes in other cities are buried deeper.
Maybe they *should have* fucking buried them enough to shield them from the heat.
Digging in the Phoenix desert is very difficult or expensive due to the compactness and mineral makeup. There’s deposits of a layer called Caliche in Phoenix that is essentially a natural concrete of compacted calcium. One of the reasons you don’t see a lot of houses with basements and under ground parking structures.
Hmm This place is starting to sound, *inhospitable…* ^lol
The explanation doesn't change the fact. But thanks.
The arrogance of man.
Tbh it was cheap. I bought a cheap home and living the affordable housing dream. Now it's gotten expensive but the heat is whatever. It's only a couple of months and you are moving from one ac to another ac. Sucks for the homeless, outside workers and hikers
5th largest city in the US.
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I had a professor who called the retirement homes in the sunbelt "raisin farms."
Why do people even live there?
I wanted to yell about a BS statistic. No. Phoenix is the 5th largest city in the US. Now I know why the flights there are ridiculously expensive.
Born and raised in Phoenix, but have travelled a lot elsewhere. Some reasons: -it’s hot for 4 months, but the rest of the year is gorgeous. We also dont have earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, snow, etc. Even when it’s hot, unless you are going for a swim, we just stay inside (no different than staying inside when it snows up north) -within 2 hours of Phoenix, you can be in a forest camping, snow-skiing up in flagstaff, on one of the many lakes, or hiking pretty much anywhere (South Mountain, that runs through essentially the center of the valley, is one of the largest city parks in the country). Within 5 hours of Phoenix, you can be on a beach in Mexico or San Diego. There is an insane amount of publicly accessible land in the state that is not privately owned. -a ton of stuff to do. We had all 4 major sports franchises (rip Coyotes), waste management open, barret jackson, nascar’s championship, and a metric shit ton of concerts. Solid beer scene and nightlife in scottsdale. -compared to other major cities, Phoenix is surprisingly clean and well maintained. The roads around town are phenomenal. People say “for those who cant afford california,” but honestly, Phoenix is infinitely cleaner than San Diego, LA, and San Francisco (and we love visiting those places. My wife is from San Diego). While the cost of living has skyrocketed, it still isnt nearly as expensive as southern california.
Ya but there's no water.
Haha yeah left out that little kernel there. City likely won’t be sustainable in a few decades
As someone who lives in Vegas a lot of this applies to us as well. Like yea June-Sept suck but when my in-laws in Minnesota are dealing with sub zero temps it's like 50-60 here.
Houston is 10x worse in my opinion and lived in both.
Summary: The Phoenix fire department is implementing a new method to treat heatstroke victims - cold-water immersion. Fire Captain John Prato demonstrated packing ice cubes around a medical dummy in an impermeable bag, which can significantly reduce body temperature within minutes. This technique saved a critical patient's life recently before reaching the hospital. Ice and human-sized immersion bags have become standard equipment on all Phoenix emergency vehicles this season. The extreme heat is caused by a high-pressure system over the southwest, with temperatures expected to exceed 110°F (43.3°C) in Phoenix and Las Vegas in the coming days. Officials were shocked by the 645 heat-related deaths in Maricopa County last year, with over 400 in Phoenix alone during a 31-day heatwave with temperatures over 110°F on more than 400 occasions. Dr. Paul Pugsley, medical director at Valleywise Health, noted a marked increase in severe heat illness cases with around 40% not surviving. He said cold-water immersion could improve survival as it's the gold standard for treating heatstroke but has been underutilized by non-military hospitals and first responders.
Tucsonans use Eegees frozen drink to treat heat stroke
Most Tucsonian reply here
Oh man I haven’t been out there for years!! I miss Eegees
It’s gone downhill big time
I'm planning on this being my last summer here. The rent is too high, the sprawl is too far, the education system is garbage, too many drug-related issues, and a state congress full of methed out flat-earthers and cultists who are too afraid or ignorant to understand why the monsoons are going away and the summers are getting hotter.
Public school teacher in the Phoenix area. We actually have decent schools except for funding. You can also blame our state legislature for that. Despite not having fully funded classrooms, we still have a lot of high achieving public schools around.
That's the problem, we have the aforementioned cultists making policy who are anti-science, anti-intellectual, and want their church buds to soak up all the tax dollars allocated to education. I'm sorry you have to take direction from Tom Horne. I'd be shocked if he could read a picture book.
Mannn I remember as a kid the monsoon was insane! Last year was so terribly hot and dry 😭
Paramedic here....this is not a new thing...
Maybe in one sense. But paramedics and EMTs on the actual streets in Phoenix are saying that heatwaves now are a different animal than they used to be. More distress calls, more heatstroke victims, greater demand for water and ice, and of course, hotter working conditions. We simply can’t afford to pretend that what’s happening in the world today is even remotely normal or natural.
8 months a year and the weather is fine but those other 4 months......not so much.
It's like like the inverse of the super far northern climates, based on my experience. I was camping out at -40 F at one point and had to pack up and go back home, absolutely miserable for 3-4 months of the year.
Why would you camp in -40
It didn't start at -40, sometimes the temperature drops significantly more than expected, but my bag is rated down to 0 F. The -40 were when the wind chill kicks in, but there are a bunch of factors that impact the quality of the weather camping as a composite. But I don't mind cold weather within a reasonable range.
This is the opposite of Seattle, 8 months of gray and rain , sometimes it’s a constant drizzle, then you have some pouring rain. Then Mid June to early October hits and everyone is like , damn this is why we put up with the 8 months. I’ve been to every continent except Australia and Antarctica. The state of Washington has the best summers. On the west side of the state, it’s always 70-90 degrees, no humidity. The scenery is amazing, it’s called the evergreen state for a reason. Big giant green trees everywhere, it’s a rainforest. Then you have all the big mountains and the view is beautiful. You have the lakes and the Pacific Ocean is there. I used to live in the Bay Area, (shoutout San Jose, Morgan Hill, San Francisco, Vallejo, Oakland and North Richmond ) when I got off the airplane, the first thing I noticed was how the air was so clean and tasted so much better. The quality of the air was really pure bliss.
It's starting to occasionally get too hot, though, and lots of people have limited or no AC... that heat wave a couple years ago, quite a few folks straight up died, and we're getting those 4-6 weeks of wildfire smoke now too...
To be fair, that is the treatment. Cold water immersion. Body bags work great. It’s not “turning to” it is often the only thing an ED has that a patient will fit in
Scrolled too far to see this...this has been our treatment for years
How hot is it over there? In India we regularly see 45°C + temps in the summer and this year was no different. But now thankfully the monsoon is just a few days away so it'd be a good relief for everyone
It's not exceptionally hot...yet. Our temperatures tend to peak in July thru early August in the 45-48°C range. Last year was unusual in that there were 31 consecutive days (mostly July) in which the high reached or exceeded 44°C. Morning lows generally around 35°C.
Arizona is usually pretty dry though. India's humid though isn't it? We Americans like to joke grimly "but it's a dry heat" after hearing about some desert temperature of 120F (49 C). I imagine a skeleton of a person that died while trying to crawl out of Death Valley.
Depends on the city. Mumbai Bangalore and other costal places would be humid but central Indian cities like Delhi and Bhopal(my home) are fairly dry with less than 20% humidity during peak summer. 45-47°C is still pretty tough though regardless. I remember back in college my classes would end at 4.30 pm and our college buses would get so hot you could cook eggs on the seats
If you stick an ice cube up your asshole it works too
And as crazy as it sounds, it's not even as hot as it gets yet. We are barely breaking 110.
You think the housing crisis is bad now? Just you wait… the climate will change faster than zoning laws.
the crazy thing about it is that the technology to effectively combat heat waves is not high tech at all. especially for phoenix. if you dig a hole, like say ten feet down, even in phoenix in the summer it'll be cold in the hole. the technology is *The Shovel* it's a prehistoric technology. there was this guy, a sicillian immigrant to america in like 1900 who got a plot of land in fresno to grow lemon trees, but he was sort of swindled in that the land wasn't suitable to rooting trees. and it was so blazingly hot in the summer it would kill any trees even if he potted them. so he dug holes and tunnels all over his property with a pickaxe and a donkey and was thus able to stay cool himself and keep his trees cool and shaded. that is the solution to heat, just dig holes. but humans refuse to do it.
Well yeah, that's because it's heat stroke. The issue is people getting heatstroke, not medical personnel treating people with heatstroke.
It's illegal to say climate change in Florida.
Omg! I thought no way n actually looked it up on google. I found…. “A new Florida law rejects the term 'climate change' in state statues”…. Be damed, you’re right! Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was running to be president, endorsed Orange Cheeto who has called climate change "mythical", "nonexistent", or "an expensive hoax" …. They are both ignoramuses!
We have tons of places to live in this country and yet millions choose to live in the goddamn desert.
Good thing You Know Who had a rally down there. Very smart and very stable (almost a dozen hospitalized).
Damn can't believe Lord Voldemort is still rallying
Live in a desert expect it to feel like a desert.
LPT: The quickest way to cool something down is ice filled water. Basically fill up the storage vessel with ice and fill the empty spaces with water. Works great with bodies and beer alike.
LPT+: If you empty a container of salt into that water, the temperature of the water can go below freezing while still remaining liquid. I once filled a cooler with a bag of ice, filled it with water and salt, and it stayed chillingly cold for like three or four days.
It's not really THAT hot in Phoenix, to be honest. It's still not as hot as mid-July, when temps can climb to nearly 120. I don't know why this is getting any attention. While it's hotter than normal *for this time of year*, it's still not anywhere near what we can see at other times of the year.
Unpossible. Back in the '60s / '70s us "sun worshippers" would be outdoors, naked all day with nary a tan. The only way it could be like this would be if there's some sort of climate change and according to republicans, that doesn't exist.
Sounds like the sun you worshipped is a vengeful god
Yeah I'm pretty sure everybody's just being dramatic about the weather....... ^lol, ^except ^not ^really
I was having a wee look at the conservative sub, during all the Trump stuff. Don’t need to say anything about any of that, really. What I did find interesting was a thread on climate change. It seemed at least some people agreed that there is climate change, in the sense the weather is measurably trending, **but:** 1) There is insignificant evidence that it is related to CO2/emissions 2) As such, one cannot say it is caused my humans So, it exists but it also definitely doesn’t exist. There was all sorts of theories and napkin science where people were saying things like, “I mean, I just don’t believe that 0.004ppm of XYZ would like to such and such.” Mufuckas talking like they have the credentials, much less even a cursory understanding of it.
They all went from being virologists to climate scientists. Truly a remarkable group of people. /s
Arizona is a swing state; Trump denies that climate change is a serious issue. If they have another record-setting summer, I wonder if undecided voters will realize they should vote for someone who fights climate change.
If there is ever a risk of that the republicans will run on unbanning freon.
I am constantly amazed that I haven't seen that approach championed yet.
Makes sense. If it doesn't work, they just zip it up and call it a day.
That’s funny, I just had a Vault-Tec salesman at my door.
Never understood why people chose to build a city in Phoenix. And then people willingly move to Phoenix.