142 Degrees

[Mike Circo]

142 degrees. That is the difference between the temperature in Adelaide Australia where my friend is living and here in the Chicago area.

Bill says it hit 116 in Adelaide today. It is -26 here this morning in the Midwest.

Crazy.

[Jim Becker]

Yea, I have friends in Australia not too far from there, too...like an oven right now and really nasty when compared to the current air mass that didn't stay where it's supposed to stay at this time of year.

[Edwin Santos]

How about a quick poll? Given a choice between 116 and -26, which would you prefer?

[Malcolm Schweizer]

How about a quick poll? Given a choice between 116 and -26, which would you prefer?

Death by fire or by freezing? I’ll take fire.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

As a wise old person once told me. You can always put more clothes on. There is only so much you can take off.

Frankly I think one would be as miserable as the other. But then again, I am in this wretched east coast humidity that makes warm into hotter and cool into much colder.

[Bryan Lisowski]

I would take the cold over 116*. I played baseball in Australia and it was so hot, my feet practically got burnt from the ground through my cleats.

[Rich Engelhardt]

142 eh?
That's less than half of what it takes to join the "300 Club". (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/on-getting-naked-in-antarctica/282883/)
:D :D

[Jim Barkelew]

Read 2 books, Shackleton's account of his Antarctic expedition and Lawrence of Arabia. Then contemplate the hyper-ventilation about 2 degrees of global warming. The hottest it has been here is 114 in 1980. I drove thru Barstow and Needles in the late 70s and it was about 125 deg. About -5 is the coldest I've been.

[Lee Schierer]

I'm in the you can always get warm camp. I don't function well in the heat.

[Steve Demuth]

142 degrees. That is the difference between the temperature in Adelaide Australia where my friend is living and here in the Chicago area.
Crazy.

That's in the vicinity of the total seasonal temperature change record on our farm, where it has in the same meteorological year been 101F in July and -44F in January: 145F total. Over the span of existing records rather than in a single year, it goes to 109F in July (1936) to -44F (1988), or 154F total spread. We beat that spread regularly when using the sauna, of course.

-44F is memorably cold. One interesting feature of that temperature is that propane boils just above -44F at atmospheric pressure, so if it stays that cold long enough to lower your entire supply tank to ambient temperature, your propane no longer produces propane "steam" and the propane gas won't move effectively through your pipes to your range or furnace.

My daughter has taken us dog sledding in the Yukon Territory somewhere in the -50s F - an experience I wouldn't trade for the world. The crystaline quality of air at those temps is marvelous. Water freezes instantly. The First Nation folk she lived with up there said that at -50 you could take a leak and lean on it.

On the other hand, you could have every day I've ever endured in Midwest humidity with temps about 90F back. Not fit for human habitation. Good for growing tomatoes, but not much else.

[Mel Fulks]

Strange how so many have such different thermostats. When I was in high school I had a week end job working in a
greenhouse. Stayed 130f in there, I drank 3 gallons of water and 6 cokes a day. But heating to 70 degrees in my house
makes it hard to change clothes in such frigid air. Australia has been mentioned here, I 'll just add a comment I heard on
some TV Australia thing. Aussie guy said the English thought they were sending us to hell,but this is paradise compared to England.

[Andrew Seemann]

I've worked in greenhouses where the temp was around 120F, and last night when I was out with the dogs here it was about -30F with winds of 20mph gusting to 30mph, windchills peaking around - 60F. I'll take -30F any day over 116F.

The crazy thing here is that it was almost 100F warmer in the house than outside. The deck has been making popping noises like someone shooting a 12 gauge. Right now we are a balmy -16F, the high for the day. And then this Saturday, highs are supposed to be in the upper 30s, nearly 70 degrees warmer than it was this morning.

[Adam Herman]

When I was working in Australia in the Simpson desert and flying home to Denver, there were a few times I would leave a world above 50 C 122 F, get in a plane and land in a world below 0 degrees F 20 some hours later. my crew and I would drink 20 or 30 liters of water between the 4 of us in a shift, and we used electrolyte mixes made for marathon runners.

They really are boiling down under. other problems with super cold include the brittleness of steel. our cranes are rated to have a capacity down to 20 below, de-rate after that and we are not to use them at all under 35 below zero. We have had several crews shut down for the last few days because of this.

[Myk Rian]

USPS stopped delivery today and tomorrow because of the cold.

[Wayne Lomman]

Its been an interesting spring/summer. There are the temperature records here in Australia that have already been noted. There have been bushfires where the trucks had to drive through snow to get to the fire front. Tasmania is currently on fire in many places including in our immediate vicinity. There is 1300km of active fire front as I write. Tasmania broke its record for consecutive days above 20C. It was 25 days. I have no wish to endure the cold many in North America are enduring. Extremes either way are life threatening. More Australians are killed by heat than any other natural phenomenon. I have worked in all Australian climate zones and will quite happily remain in Tasmania where the island climate moderates its latitude and the air is so clean you sunburn to a crisp at any temperature. Final random fact - last week there was a day when the hottest 15 places on the planet were in Australia and 13 of them were in South Australia. Stay warm. Cheers

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Interesting responses. I think it's all about what you are acclimated to. We have friends coming to visit from way up north. Our house stays a constant 80 to 85 degrees, except in the heat of summer when it sometimes gets around 88. That's normal for me. They will likely be suffering. I sleep under blankets at those temps. If it gets below 80, I'm wearing a light jacket and adding a blanket. This may sound crazy, but when I visit friends even in the southern US, and they keep their thermostat between 68 and 72, my fingers and toes are freezing. It's all about your body getting used to whatever temperature. After a week or so up north, I start to not feel it as much. I personally think we spend way too much energy on air conditioning and should just acclimate more.

As for the "you can always get warm" theory, I used to do a lot of mountain climbing. I have to disagree. I will never forget one night when it started to sleet and my fire went out, and no matter how much I bundled up, the cold went through it. I was never so happy to get back to the car and turn on the heat. I find it easier to acclimate to heat than cold. To be fair, however, it's a much shorter gap from 85 to 115 than it is from 85 to -20.

[Al Launier]

Cold is better than hot, at least one can do something about cold.