Too Hot

Photo source: Merlina McGovern

It’s almost too hot to type this blog post up in my stifling upstairs office. It’s 86 degrees (F) where I am, with a heat index of 91 at six in the evening. It looks like we won’t get down any lower than 70 degrees tonight before we heat up again tomorrow.

This heat is everywhere across the country. Heat.gov shows that a whopping 150 million people across the US are under heat advisories, watches, and warnings, which covers a range of time for excessive heat (more than 100 degrees). 

And unlike tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, the US federal government doesn’t include extreme heat in national emergencies, even though more than 2,300 people died due to extreme heat last year, according to CDC data analysis by the AP (a number they predict will increase in 2024). That’s an amount more than four times larger than the number of deaths, 492, attributed to weather and climate disasters last year. 

Today, I still went for my daily walk, but I made sure to drink a lot of water, and I carried water with me. I also walked in our wooded park, staying in the shade as much as I could. Even still, as soon as I walked out of my house, it felt like I was hit in the face by a heavy, wet, sodden wool blanket. A sheen of sweat covered my entire body as soon as I started walking. Even my feet were sweating in my socks!

And I watched a meteorologist explain how we were in a neutral climate pattern (in between El Nino and El Nina), which equates to high heat for a long period of time, so no respite from this awfulness for a while. 

To me, this feels dire. Climate change is the number one topic, to me, for not just the US but the entire world. I know that we moved away from the phrase “global warming” because of politics, but it is undeniable to my senses that we are indeed warming globally. 

I pray that our pundits, influencers, and the media stop focusing on things like debate performance and on things like climate change, something that is actually a matter of life and death. It is something that can only be changed through policy and concerted global effort.

And now, if you’ll forgive me, I think I’ll go over and stick my face in a bowl of ice water to cool down.