HEAT WAVE

Global Warming, Doug 888, and Global Warning, SorbyRocks, flickr photos.

It's been over 35-40 celsius for weeks now in Starobilsk. That's high 90s and over 100F. Sunday it was over 40, close to 110 degrees. We get a few showers, then more heat, and more humidity. Over the top heat indexes. Intense, prolonged, sizzling heat.
The heat has not been good for Luba's garden. Squashes, apples, grapes, flowers are suffering from the heat and not enough water. "Everything's being fried,” says Natalia of her garden.

A walk or bike ride to the bazaar or store or Library or Post Office will roast you for sure. If a wind gust comes, sand blows through your hair and sticks to your body. We've been peeling off one set of clothes after another and showering several times a day. The heat is relentless, here as elsewhere.

All over the world, heat waves are shutting us down and making life miserable. My sister in Tallahassee, Florida, says it's too hot to go to the beach. "The kids are coming back home now; just can't take it." Hotter than St. Pete. Further north, my daughters in Toledo, Ohio, report it's too hot to go outdoors, "too hot for humans," says Elissa, who's been know to have heat breakdowns of sorts when it's in the 80s. Hates heat!

News reports tell the story. In Augusta, Georgia, eight people recently died from the heat, most of them elderly. Same in Chicago. In India it is so hot people cannot walk on the streets. In southern California, the heat wave has triggered wild fires, spreading across acres of land. Japan is scortching. In Moscow it's been over 45F (110+F) and smog covers St. Basil's and Red Square. People wear masks to walk in the city. If they combine the heat with vodka and swimming, a lethal mix, they drown. Now we read that hundreds of wild fires are raging outside of Moscow due to severe drought and record heat.

Is it global warming? Is it unusually hot everywhere? Luba says it is here in Ukraine. "Niet normal'no." And of course we don't have air conditioning. Some PCVs can't find fans at their local stores, like Jud, way up north in Konotop.

Sure it’s been hot before. Heat waves baked Europe in 2008. We've had lots of heat waves in the U.S. I can remember hot summers in Rochester when my mom made special dinners, all kinds of great salads, that we ate in our cooler basement recreation room. Lovely memories for Loren, Andy and me. One summer in Williamsburg, Virginia, the melons turned to mush from the heat. Washington, DC, like New York City, has had blackouts and metro electrical shutdowns due to intense summer days.

But the weather channel just commented that “the world is enduring the hottest summer ever." The world. Hottest ever. A blogger named Cynthia I think got it right: "Global warming makes heat waves the new normal."

Summertime, and the living is....hot, hot, hot. Global warming a myth? Pretty soon it will be like living on the sun. Can we survive this "new normal"?