Weather: Heat Wave

It's been hot here in SoJo. I mean, not exclusively here. It's been hot all over the place. I give credit where it is due. We're no Death Valley or anything.

But I have to admit, part of my brain reels, "Really?!?" when the forecast shows not cooling temperatures, but that it's going to get Even. Hotter. Tomorrow.

I have one of those little weather bug thingies on my Firefox browser. In the bottom right-hand corner of my window, Accu-Weather provides me with symbols cluing me in to the weather (as though the 6'x4' window roughly eighteen-inches to my left can't do that).


It's a pretty nifty gizmo, all told. Mouse-over access to weather radar maps, and weather alerts, and clickable access to an hourly forecast and 5-day forecast. Plus, there are icons representing the weather now, later and tomorrow, with mouse-over details. I'm pretty familiar with most of the little icons. There's a sunshine, a sunshine behind a cloud, a cloud, a lightning-storm cloud, etc. (I get especially giddy when the snow icons pop up in the toolbar!)

Anyway, looking ahead to tomorrow ... there's a flaming red thermometer icon. I don't know if I've ever seen this one before. It's rather threatening. My mouse-over tells me that we're expecting high temps around 96°F, with a heat index (like reverse wind chill, right?) of ... 109°F. 109? Really? (for perspective, Death Valley is supposed to have a high of 117°F tomorrow)

109.

109. Unreal.

May I just say how grateful I am for air-conditioning?

[UPDATE] Friday's terrifying little red, flaming thermometer has now appeared on my toolbar. 99°F with a heat index of 117°F. Did someone relocate my house to Uganda when I wasn't looking? Actually, it's only going to be 84° in Uganda on Friday. And, the hottest place on Earth (according to a not-at-all-exhaustive-Google), Wadi Halfa in the Sudan, is going to be 108° on Friday. That beats South Jersey by 9°. I would feel better about that, but the Sudan has a dry heat, resulting in a heat index of "only" 102° versus our 117°.

117.

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