The last few days, some national outlets, like the Washington Post and The New York Times, caught on to the news that it’s hot in Tucson.
“Extreme heat wave bound for Phoenix and Southwest could be worst ever,” said the Post’s July 7 headline.
Ironically, that’s the last day it hit 110 in Tucson, after six such days happening since June 25. It’s been downright tolerable at times since July 7, as monsoon moisture finally started flowing into southern Arizona, bringing occasional clouds, breezes and eventually, we hope, rain.
When you live in a hot climate, there can be a confusing disconnect between the global-scale reality of a world that’s getting hotter, with more extreme weather, and the fact that, here at least, it’s always hot this time of year.
It has to get extremely hot — like 115 degrees — for most of us to think the weather is really out of whack. Otherwise, we are used to it, and we adapt, even in a heating world that hit the highest recorded average temperature on July 4.
Tuesday morning, my wife and I spent hours nervously waiting for word from our 20-year-old son, who is leading middle-school-aged children in camping and kayaking excursions across New England this summer. They were driving across Vermont and camping in a state park Tuesday as deluges swamped the state, overtopping dams and flooding towns.
Unable to concentrate in the air conditioned indoors as we waited for word, I went to the area near East Drexel Road and South Palo Verde Road right at midday to talk to people about how they manage the heat. It’s an area where I’ve hung out in the heat before, because there are so many old mobile homes there, and some of them simply don’t hold up to it.
But down in the Palo Verde corridor, as that area is known, on Tuesday, all I met were people who do the Tucson thing and adapt. Yes, the heat is draining and distressing if you have to be out in it, but manageable if you can escape.
Clara Faust has owned the trailer where she lives since 1967, she told me, though she’s only lived there steadily since 1992. She’s convinced that summers are getting hotter. In fact, weather data shows this is the case: Arizona’s average temperature has increased by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1900, the state climatology office reports.
But Faust’s evaporative cooler has been up to the task. She hasn’t even cranked up her bedroom air conditioner yet.
Like most of us, Faust has a summertime routine that involves not doing too much during the hot hours.
“I get up at like 5 a.m. I go to the gym and work out. Then I come home and water plants.”
The morning routine goes on and takes two or three hours, she said.
“Then you’re in for the rest of the day, watching the boob tube,” Faust said. “I get mad at myself for not doing more, but it’s too hot.”
Around the corner at an adjacent business, Alberto Cruz was welding corrugated metal panels into place. He had the uniform of an outdoors workers in Arizona’s summer: Boots, long pants, a cotton long-sleeve shirt, plus a baseball cap and welding helmet.
Pulling the helmet back to reveal a sweaty face, he said in Spanish the heat has been, “Normal. We just have to bear it.”
In fact, clouds had rolled over and it was tolerable enough outside at the time, probably not even 100. Cruz and his colleague quit at 1 p.m., he said. Then Cruz goes home to sit on the sofa in the air conditioning.
It’s what we do — as long as you have access to cooling, you can be pretty sure you’ll be alright.
Further south, Russell and Carolyn Santos were sitting with the door open to their small trailer. Russell Santos had his shirt off — I was sure they must have cooling problems.
But no, he was just waiting for somebody to come back and do some work. Their two window air conditioning units, standing fans and ceiling fans were doing the trick.
“It is what it is, and we’ve got to live with it,” Carolyn said. “I’m not gonna sit around and worry about it.”
Russell was particularly emphatic that he did not believe the globe’s increasing heat is anything more than a cyclical warming that could eventually cycle downward to another ice age.
I held my tongue because I know to pick my moments with that debate. Suffice it to say that the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and increasing temperature is well-established and has been evident in the recent run-up in C02 measurements and global temperatures.
The increase in global temperature then expresses itself in the acceleration of melting ice near the poles, rising ocean levels and extreme weather events such as the excessive rain in Vermont. That sopping, warm atmosphere dropped up to 9 inches of rain over a day or two in a swath from northern Vermont to southern New York state Sunday and Monday.
It was just another one in the series of once in a century storms that come more and more frequently these days. The last time they had one there was in 2011, with Hurricane Irene.
By the time I left the Palo Verde corridor, our son had texted. The weather was good in Vermont Tuesday, but they were passing over and around raging floodwaters as they traveled.
Back home in Tucson, a National Weather Service meteorologist was cautious both in how he classified our recent heat and in what he expects over the coming “extreme heat wave,” as the Post described it.
“It’s not unusual to have a week, week and a half of hot temperatures,” he said. But, “This usually happens in June and not in July.”
What happens in the coming days could turn into more extreme heat, or the heat could be tempered by the welcome arrival of moisture, Hardin said.
Either way, Tucsonans will do what we do: Change our behavior to deal with the draining heat. Too bad that such simple adaptations probably won’t be enough for the overheated globe.
