hot summer

Southern

Well-Known Member
I was working outside today, and could not drink enough water. Temperatures have been 97 to 104 or higher every day for the last month.

Someone died of heat stroke not far from my farm today. When the rescue squad arrived, his body temperature was 109 F. With a humidity in the 80s, just breathing will make you pop a sweat.
 
I was in Georgia a couple of years ago. Even at the end of November the humidity was outrageous. For the first few days the only way I could get comfortable was to stand inside my friends walk-in chiller! I used to live in Australia, and the heat there was at least dry. High humidity is a nightmare
 
High humidity can be dangerous in cool weather, too. Like on a warm November day, where it falls into the 50s at night and the humidity goes to the mid 90s, campers and boaters die of hypothermia, because they don't have the clothing to keep warm and dry.

A few years ago, I was working on the Georgia border, in Aiken, S.C.. and posted a photo here of a big rattlesnake which came into a latrine and wrapped itself around the toilet to cool off on a three digit day. When its too hot for a rattlesnake....
 
Hi Southen.
Do you have Air Conditioning in your House? I would find that heat unbearable to Sleep in.

Yorkie.
 
Temp hit 34.5 (94f) here the other day in Blackpool crazy warm for north of England. Personally never seen it that hot in my 34 years. Humidity is the killer when it's dry like in the desert you can cope with pure hear but once it's humid it's just rank.
 
Hi Southen.
Do you have Air Conditioning in your House? I would find that heat unbearable to Sleep in.

Yorkie.
Yes, I have air conditioning, but keep it about 76 in the summer and 62 in the winter.

But I grew up in a colonial farmhouse built in the 1780s, with no central heat or air conditioning. And being a large farm, we worked at least 10 hours a day, year round. Some things you can try to schedule with the seasons, like logging, but sometimes, you just have to do it. Swinging an axe and dragging timber out of the woods behind a team of mules on 100 degree days will make you appreciate other ways to make a living. But I enjoy working outside, even work like fence building and pitching hay.

In the Old South, larger homes had sleeping porches, up on the second floor, where they could catch a breeze through screens on three sides. Everyone would sleep out there on nights where the temperatures never got down to 85. I used to sling my hammock on the porch and let the overhang catch the breeze for me.
 
drove across Australia in my youth
when we hit the Nullabor in the middle of summer we had to take some of the trucks in out party off the road in the daytime as the asphalt was too hot and was sticking to the tyres and flicking up on the truck body!
 
As Southern says, it is hot here. This is 2 showers and 3 changes of clothes daily weather.

That being said, many of the Antebellum (pre-Civil War) homes that survived show some unique adaptations that made them quite comfortable, even in the worst heat of the summer in the Deep South. Most had 10-12 foot ceilings to allow the heat to rise, and they were also oriented to allow prevailing winds the ventilate the home. Lastly, nearly all had a "summer kitchen" off from the main house. This kept the cooking heat out of the main house.
 
And many were a Columbia Cottage or "shotgun hallway", where the porch roofs catch the breeze and funnel into a hallway running through the house. This flow draws more air in through bed room windows and over transom a, into the hall and then out.
 
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