Heat Dome Over America

[elfismiles]

Bridge closes for heat-related repairs (Video)
http://www.wfsb.com/story/15108611/brid ... ed-repairs

Heat 'dome' traps much of US in pressure cooker
http://news.yahoo.com/heat-dome-traps-m ... 41732.html



Heat Related Violence?
http://www.google.com/search?q=heat+related+violence


[PDF] Heat and Violence
www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/ ... 04/01A.pdf
by CA Anderson - 2001 - Cited by 65 - Related articles
Does excessive heat increase violence? Social commentators have long noted effects of weather on human behavior and have used heat-related imagery in their ...

Temperature and Aggression
http://ewot.typepad.com/files/tempandaggression-1.pdf

Analyse this: the psychology of climate change - Climate Action ...
http://www.climateactionprogramme.org › News and Analysis › News - CachedJun 9, 2011 – The second are indirect impacts, such as anxiety and uncertainty “which may cause heat-related violence, conflicts over resources, ...
http://www.climateactionprogramme.org/n ... te_change/

Climate Change Psychology: Coping and Creating Solutions
http://www.apa.org › News & Events › Press Room › Press Releases - CachedApr 18, 2011 – ACT Against Violence APA Education Advocacy Trust APA Style Practice Central ... and psychosocial impacts, including heat-related violence, ...
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/ ... hange.aspx



Not really related but ...

Chicago man kills another over dripping air conditioner
http://wlsam.com/Article.asp?id=2240381&spid=

[Stephen Morgan]

Sow the wind.

[82_28]

By contrast, Seattle has experienced exactly 78 minutes of temperatures above 80 in the last 330 some odd days. WORST SUMMER EVER!!! I have rarely even taken my layers off this year. I have no tan -- most of us white boys don't for the first times in our lives. I would gladly split the difference between what the rest of the country is experiencing.

Tomorrow's high is expected to be 61 and off and on drizzle. Ugh. . .

[NeonLX]

Freakin' dew point temperature was 82 degrees on Monday evening--that was a record for this neck of the woods. It's still 77. My polar bear blood ain't made for this sh!t.

Oh yeah, and 82_28...wish I could trade places with you--RIGHT NOW!

[Nordic]

Here in Los Angeles we're having a nice summer so far. Pretty great weather. At least hear the beach, where I am.



(don't worry we'll probably get cooked like a tamale come the fall)

[Project Willow]

Tomorrow's high is expected to be 61 and off and on drizzle. Ugh. . .

I love it. I love Seatown. If only the art world here would lose some of its high school kid neuroses it would be perfect, except for the fallout.

Don't despair, come August you'll get a few days of toe-warming 90's, along with the pirates and screaming Blue Angels (ugh).

[Pele'sDaughter]

N Texas is at day 20 (lost count; it may be more by now) of 100+ with no rain. The ground is bone dry and cracked. Very dangerous conditions for fire and for heatstroke.

[Jeff]

Much of Canada, too. Toronto's declared an Extreme Heat Alert and opened emergency cooling centres. It's expected to feel like the high 40s tomorrow with the humidity (that's approaching 120 F), and no sign of it letting up.

[Luther Blissett]

It's very humid here, like a jungle. Very much not looking forward to my bike ride home.

The chef bought us a round of Prairie Fire shots at lunch today. I thought that was ironic.

[elfismiles]

Doctors Link Anger, Crime To Summer Heat
July 20, 2011 1:06 PM

ROYAL OAK (WWJ) – Do you find yourself a little irritated this week? It’s probably the heat.

Beaumont Hospital psychiatrist Dr. William Miles says there’s a lot data showing that the heat makes us angry and irritated, crime and suicides go up, but no one really understands why.

“You know, this is not unique to humans. I have dogs and … when my dogs are hot, they wanna be left alone,” said Miles, in an interview with WWJ’s Sandra McNeil.

“I think one of the reasons that we get more irritable when it gets hot is that we’re just not sleeping as well. I know that’s certainly true for me, personally. I don’t sleep well when it’s hot, even with the air conditioner on,” he said.

Miles said another theory is that heat stimulates a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, tricking the body.

“The hypothalamus is hyper-sensitive to external stimuli. We’re going to perceive those stimuli as a threat, when normally we would not perceive such stimuli as a threat,” he said.

“And, the natural response to a perceive threat is anger. We’re hard-wired that way,” Miles said.

Are you more easily angered or annoyed in the heat? Comment below.


http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2011/07/20/ ... mmer-heat/

[elfismiles]

Miles said another theory is that heat stimulates a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, tricking the body.

“The hypothalamus is hyper-sensitive to external stimuli. We’re going to perceive those stimuli as a threat, when normally we would not perceive such stimuli as a threat,” he said.

Police Say Man Killed At Zoo Attacked & Bit Officer
July 19, 2011 7:39 PM

DENVER (CBS4) – A man is dead after allegedly fighting with police officers at the Denver Zoo on Monday. Now Denver police are investigating whether the officers responded appropriately.

Officers said the man attacked and even bit an officer and zoo employee, and violently resisted arrest.

Officers said they tased the man using a stun gun that doesn’t cause a shock to the whole body, but rather pain only to the area where it is placed. After the man was tased police said he began having convulsions and stopped breathing. CPR was performed, but the man died.

As police sort through the bizarre chain of events leading up to the man’s death a woman who says she is his girlfriend and saw everything claims he was suffering from heat stroke. She told a local radio station her boyfriend was putting his head in a fountain to cool off when security showed up.

“That’s when he was like, ‘Okay, hit me, hit me, you want to fight?’ And that’s when I screamed to him, ‘Babe, you’ve got to stop if you love me, you have to stop right now,’” said the victim’s girlfriend, whose first name is Elena.

But it would escalate. Denver police say the man attacked and bit a zoo employee and when officers tried to arrest him he turned on them.

“This is a situation where you’ve got an individual who you can’t get to comply,” Sonny Jackson with Denver police said. “You can’t just let him walk off for fear he might injure somebody else. So you have to take whatever actions you can to stop the situation.”

“They were trying to grab him but he was so aggressive. There was like five zoo keeper securities and seven cops on top of him,” Elena said. “I didn’t see from behind but there was tasers going, snapping all around and I was just freaked out. That’s when he was like, ‘Baby, I’m dying, help me.’ And I couldn’t help him.”

Elena admitted he resisted arrest and even tried to grab an officer’s stun gun. But she insisted officers overreacted as well.

“We feel for the family, we’re very conscientious of that,” Jackson said. “We also feel for the officers, they don’t feel good about what happened last night; no one does.”

While Elena said her boyfriend wasn’t on drugs, police said they did find drugs and drug paraphernalia on him.

The family met with the chief of staff for Mayor Michael Hancock on Tuesday wanting more information. But until an autopsy comes back, the cause of death isn’t known.

Three Denver police officers and one zoo employee suffered injuries in the incident that required treatment at a hospital.

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2011/07/19/p ... t-officer/

[wintler2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:H ... ted_States

• 1896 Eastern North America heat wave
• 1911 Eastern North America heat wave
• 1936 North American heat wave
• 1980 United States heat wave
• 1988 North American drought
• 1995 Chicago heat wave
• 2000 Southern United States heat wave
• 2001 Eastern North America heat wave
• 2006 North American heat wave
• 2007 Western North American heat wave
• 2009 Pacific Northwest heat wave
• 2009 South Central United States heat wave
• 2010 Northern Hemisphere summer

Anybody see a pattern yet?

NOAA: Heat – the number one non-severe weather related killer in the United States

[wintler2]

Where i grew up (Perth WA) 40C is common in summer, 46C is just 'pretty hot'. My personal cooling strategies...
-STAY OUT OF THE SUN. If absolutely must go out in it, wear proper hat, polaroid sunnies, & thick but loose cotton longsleeve shirts & pants.
-get your gear off - clothes are hot, underwear too, loose shorts & a singlet are plenty. Short hair is cooler too.
-carry a water mist-spray bottle & use it, continuously if needs be. Not just face but hands & arms, feet, back of neck the lot. Really need a breeze of some type to benefit most.
-lie flat on any cool thermal mass, like a concrete slab. I know people who sleep in the bathroom in high summer, often coolest part of the house.
-follow the critters - cats and dogs will find the coolest part of house or yard, possibly that'll be under vegetation, cos plants are of course massive evaporative coolers. Sleep in the yard.
-if your home is hot, can you do anything about that? external shade on windows & walls, block hot winds from entering, don't use the stove, move the fridge away from main living area. If have any cool period overnight, open up the house then to cool it down, and battern down the hatches again after sunrise.

The current US heatwave may last into August.. adapt or suffer and, conceivably, perish.

[justdrew]

Climate change and U.S. heat waves
The heat index--how hot the air feels when factoring in both the temperature and the humidity--has been exceptionally high during this week's heat wave, due to the presence of very high amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere. That has made this heat wave a very dangerous one, since the body is much less able to cool itself when the humidity is high. The high humidities in the Midwest were due, in great part, to the record rains and flooding over the past few months that have saturated soils and left farmlands flooded. Today's extreme heat index values over the mid-Altantic are due, in large part, to near record warm ocean temperatures off the mid-Atlantic coast. According to the UK's HADSST2 data set, sea surface temperatures between 35° - 40°N and 75 ° - 70°W, along the coast from North Carolina to New Jersey, were 5.4°F (3.0°C) above average during June 2011. This is the warmest such temperature difference for any month in the historical record, going back to the 1800s. The most recent sea surface temperature anomaly maps from NOAA show that the July ocean temperatures have not been quite as extreme, but ocean temperatures in this region during July have averaged nearly 2°C above average, the second highest July ocean temperatures on record, behind 2010.

During the 1930s, there was a high frequency of heat waves due to high daytime temperatures resulting in large part from an extended multi-year period of intense drought. By contrast, in the past 3 to 4 decades, there has been an increasing trend in high-humidity heat waves, which are characterized by the persistence of extremely high nighttime temperatures. In particular, Gaffen and Ross (1999) found that summer nighttime moisture levels increased by 2 - 4% per decade for every region of the contiguous U.S. between 1961 - 1995. Hot and humid conditions at night for a multi-day period are highly correlated with heat stress mortality during heat waves.

Not surprisingly, the frequency, intensity, and humidity of heat waves is expected to increase dramatically in coming decades, if the forecasts of a warmer world due to global warming come true. A study presented in the U.S. Global Change Program Impacts Report, 2009, predicted that by 2080 - 2099, a heat wave that has a 1-in-20 chance of occurring in today's climate will occur every 2 - 3 years over 95% of the contiguous U.S. (Figure 3.) I estimate that this week's U.S. heat wave has been a 1-in-5 to 1-in-20 year event for most locations affected, so heat waves like this week's will be a routine occurrence, nearly every year, by the end of the century. According to a study published by scientists at Stanford University last month, though, this may be too optimistic. In their press release, lead author Noah Diffenbaugh said, "According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years."

[elfismiles]

Frakkity FRAK it's HOT!!!

Just after 11 pm and it is over 90 degrees !!!