You too Alfi!!

Hi, Jen - -

Where I live we're all OK, even though we're having a bit of a heat wave coupled with higher-than-usual humidity, which means that our standard evaporative coolers aren't working very well.  It got up to 112 F (about 44.44 C) in my back yard today, and inside the house it got up to 87 F (30.56 C.)

And we're having quite a bit of smoke blow through our little valley, but thank Heaven the fires haven't invaded.  So we're all being very careful, but at least in my town we're all right - - and we're used to the heat, if not the elevated (for us) humidity.

Thank you for putting out the call to ask our status - - many folks here in SoCal are having a really bad time of it, pray for them!

44 is a bitch to escape!  Especially if the minimum does not go down.  Do you get a sea breeze in the afternoons?

Currently London is complaining about a heatwave where the temperatures reach 33!  Makes me want to find the nearest Brit and slap them.

Do you have a fire plan?  Even if it's not close, clear away any brush, clean your gutters of leafy kindling and load a bug-out bag with the precious valuables so you're ready to evacuate at a moments notice.

I'm having another Mother hen moment.

OY!!! Check in, damnit!!

Well, let's see - -

I live in the Mojave Desert.  An ocean breeze would first have to go across the Coast Range of mountains, then across California's central valley, then across the southern end of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, and finally slide downhill into our valley.  Or it could come up across the Los Angeles basin, over the mountains to its east, then come up over the 4,000 foot high (1219 meter high) hills to the south of our town, then slide downhill into our valley.

Either way, by the time ocean air gets to us it's lost all its cooling capability.  And during our "monsoon" weather cycle, air usually carries a LOT of moisture.  By the time it reaches us, it can't generate any more rain, but it's still humid enough to keep our evaporative coolers from being effective.  So no, sadly, we don't get those wonderful afternoon ocean breezes to help us cool off.

There's a reason they call this the Mojave DESERT - - it's usually hot and very, very dry during our summer.  This week it just isn't as dry as it usually is.

But for the rest of the State, now that we've re-entered our more-or-less normal drought phase, fire season is in full roar.  I feel sorry for those folks!  Our own heat - we can deal with it.  Maybe not comfortably, but that's one reason we're not overrun with folks trying to escape Los Angeles - - they don't want to deal with our nice warm summers.

Just wait - - later on our daytime temps will get up into the 46-50 range, or a little above.  But at that time of year our relative humidity generally falls to under 2%, and we're fine.

Check in please!!

Alfi, you didn't check in after the last one!  Check in now!!

Hi Jen - - golly, and here I thought I'd checked in.  Oh well - -

Aren't there new fires raging?