
Hottest Rain on Record: Rain Falls at 119°F in Imperial, California - curtis
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Hottest-Rain-Record-Rain-falls-119F-Imperial-California
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beefsack
To save a conversion, that's 48°C.

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ksec
Off topic Question.

What is the story behind Celsius and Fahrenheit? What US continue to use F
when the rest of the world is now on C?

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sam_goody
Fahrenheit is great for measuring weather.

0 is roughly the temperature on the coldest series of days in most of the
continental United States and Europe, and 100 is roughly the hottest.

Celsius is great for measuring water while cooking. 0 is freezing (at sea
level, assuming a normal room temperature) and 100 is boiling (again, with
caveats).

The metric system has everything evolving around a cubic meter of water, so
Celsius is easy to grok, and feels logical.

But, having lived in the U.S. and Europe roughly an equal amount of time,
Fahrenheit is much much more accurate to estimate outdoor temperature with.

And as it turns out, that's what most people are doing.

Cute asides: The meter is based on a miscalculation of the distance between
the equator and North pole. The SI couldn't find anything absolute that
actually matched their arbitrary size, so made it dependant on a bar in the SI
building, and then realized the bar is changing sizes with time! (This is
finally being rectified with some atomic measure.)

On the other hand, my sixth grade teacher taught us that 0 is the freezing
point of beer, and 100 is the body temperature of a cow. So, the theory is
that some drunk scientists thought a cow had fever..

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nl
_Fahrenheit is much much more accurate to estimate outdoor temperature with.
And as it turns out, that 's what most people are doing_

Which most people are you talking about?

I don’t know anyone outside the US and occasionally the UK who uses
Fahrenheit. That’s not “most people”.

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dmoo
It's just a unit of measurement, neither is more accurate, they both mean what
they mean. Also it is surprisingly easy to switch. In Ireland we moved from
speed limits in miles to speed limits in kilometres. It was easy and people
adjusted without any problems.

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boxcardavin
I wonder what this would have felt like since it would not stay humid for more
than a few minutes after it stopped raining. Humidity of 100% above 90F feels
like 130F+ so this must have been wild.

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icananswerthat
I can answer that. Ive worked in this region many times, in summer, with
extreme humidity due to riparian veg and monsoonal weather.

It feels like dying. At 120 with over 80% humdity walking more than a couple
hundred meters induces nausea and tunnel vision.

The lede is sort of misleading because extreme temps can coincide with rain
all over the SW, especially in the Sonoran and Mojave deserts. It’s not that
weird. However, the imperial valley is definitely the worst for working
conditions. Even in dry air, shadeless work is tough. Your feet can be burned
through a boot sole because the surface temps are much higher than shade air
temps. If windless, your sweat fails to cool you; too much wind and you cannot
possibly drink enough water to be hydrated.

It’s a tough place. Now try working in that and writing code in basic so your
sensors resume coms to loggers.

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kev009
This is a bit on an exaggeration, it's not pleasant but it takes time and
effort to overheat. At 80% perspiration and evaporation are still working so
keep damp.

If you have access to a steam room at a gym you can experience a likely higher
temperature depending on the room's thermometer (pour some cold water on it
:)) and full condensation for yourself.

The primary issue with extreme humidity on top of extreme heat is that
perspiration can become nearly ineffective. High heat, lower humidity isn't
that bad provided you have enough fluids to stay hydrated.

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WalterBright
Ming the Merciless must be at it again. The last time he tried hot hail was in
1980.

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kchhina
I have family/friends that visit often from Celsius using countries and every
time the weather comes up, they ask me what xx F is in C. Tired of trying to
answer them, I figured out a quick, ballpark conversion --

50 deg F = 10 deg C

For every 10 def F, there's roughly a 6 deg C change.

So (approximately)

40 deg F = 4 deg C

60 deg F = 16 deg C

etc.

I find that it works reasonably well for frequent requests from said Celsius
understanding visitors.

*Edited for line breaks

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CarolineW
Very close over human ranges:

    
    
        C = (F-30) / 2
        F = 2 * C + 30
    

Exact conversions:

    
    
        C = (F-32) * 5 / 9
        F = C / 5 * 9 + 32
    

Table:

    
    
        C     F
      -40   -40
        0    32 (Approx water freezing point)
       10    50
       20    68 ( ~ 70)
      ~21    70
       30    86
       37    98.6 (body temperature)
       40   104
       50   122
      ...   ...
      100   212 (Approx water boiling point)

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incadenza
Death Valley almost broke the highest recorded temperature ever.

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topmonk
I would think the Big Bang would probably hold the record for that...

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Digit-Al
Possibly, but no one was around to record that so it can't be the highest
'recorded' temperature ever.

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topmonk
I disagree.

Whether we record a temperature on earth or estimate the temperature of the
big bang, we are dealing with the same class of rules and laws, of physics,
and performing the same basic task of coming to a conclusion about the some
hidden property based on some other observable properties.

The machines we make to measure temperature come from the same stuff as the
universe does, so there isn't anything special with regard to reading a value
from a machine vs. calculating a temperature based on the properties of the
stars and galaxies in the universe. Therefore, regardless of _when_ the
temperature has occurred, or _where_ it happened, we are still measuring it.
And as long as it was written down, it has been recorded.

~~~
cimmanom
Ok, but by being pedantic you’re deliberately ignoring the obviously implied
“on earth” of the original statement.

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shmerl
That's 48.3°C for those who prefer the metric system. Weather reporting is one
of the cases still quite stuck with imperial one.

~~~
yellowapple
Fahrenheit makes sense for weather. 0° is really cold and 100° is really hot;
most weather-related temperatures will fall within that range. 50° is chilly
but manageable. 75° is almost in the sweet spot, while 25° is cold but not
ridiculously so.

Compare with Celsius, where 0° is pretty cold and 100° is painful death (and
also unprecedented as far as meterology goes). Even 50° is absurdly hot.

I'm all for using Metric units everywhere else, but they ain't exactly
intuitive for weather reports.

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scarejunba
Honest to God, mate, you're just comfortable using your system. That's fine,
to be honest, but all this is invented justification. The intuitiveness of
these units is overrated.

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ubernostrum
I will stand up for Fahrenheit as originally conceived, for the convenience it
was intended to provide: easy calibration and marking of thermometers. As
originally designed, the reference points -- a self-stabilizing brine mixture,
and human body heat -- make it easy to set up a situation where the difference
between any two adjacent already-marked points is a power of two, after which
filling in the rest is just a matter of marking halfway points between
previously-marked points.

Unfortunately, that got ruined by a later reaction to Celsius; the Royal
Society redefined in terms of freezing/boiling of water, fixed those at
exactly 32F and 212F, and as a result the original second reference point was
no longer exactly 96 (it became 98-ish).

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iFred
Monsoon season during a heat wave in SoCal. I doubt that this extreme was
unprecedented, we were just lucky enough to have gear on the ground that
recorded precip.

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blondie9x
When will we start sacrificing to prevent climate catastrophe? There isn't
enough global concern. Especially in the US. Everything else aside no
President should be able to deny reality.

~~~
themagician
When Manhattan or Miami get hit by two mega storms back to back in consecutive
years. When the damage is such that we can’t rebuild fast enough then it will
be a wake up call.

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ars
> When the damage is such that we can’t rebuild fast enough

Never gonna happen. People are far far far more resilient and capable than
that.

~~~
themagician
It definitely will. Sandy caused so much damage to southern Manhattan that it
took 6 months just to get back to functional. Had another storm happened the
next year it would have destroyed things still being rebuilt.

And once the pumps fail on Miami Beach it’s game over for a while. Hit it
twice in a row and who knows what will happen. Miami Beach will likely be the
first wealthy city in the US that will have to be abandoned. They’ll build a
wall to protect Manhattan and the subway, but no one is building a wall for
Miami Beach.

And look at Puerto Rico. If it gets hit again this year you might as well just
evacuate the island. The power grid is still being repaired as we speak from
last year. Another massive storm and certain areas can expect to have no power
or running water for years.

