It is too hot.
Really.
Too hot for just about anything except swimming.
Even if I wanted to brave the heat, I can't do my outdoor painting projects because paint doesn't work right when it's this hot and humid.
Luckily, it sounds like the east coast heat wave is going to end this weekend.
Until then, thank heavens for pools.
The humidity drop is coming your way. Our drop arrived, in northern Indiana, yesterday morning, it felt so good. The high temp was 91* but with lower humidity the heat wasn't a problem. It is great that you have access to a pool. Blessings, Gretchen
Phew! It's upwards of 100 degrees here in Texas and it's soooo hot.
It's hard to be frugal when the temperatures are so high! We've installed a Nest thermostat in our apartment and try to use ceiling fans instead of so much A/C, but we're still seeing stupid energy bills. Hopefully those will improve once we're in a home and we can control our energy efficiency
We don't have air conditioning in the house except for one window unit in the baby's room. So we've been sweating it out, mostly. Unfortunately for us we were out of bread so I spent my evening last night with a 425 degree oven. At least I now have four loaves which should last us a few weeks.
I have been using my crock pot outside, up high, so the dogs can't reach it to avoid heating up the house. Probably wouldn't work for bread though, lol. We are in Mississippi and it is sweltering here also. The air conditioning at our business has been not working well so I have been washing my hair in the mornings then leaving it wet in a bun on top of my head to help keep me cooler. We have a pool so that helps cool us down every evening. I do think we eat less when it's so hot too which is a plus.
I made yeast bread in the crockpot last summer. Not as tasty as oven-baked bread, but very passable--the fault may have been with the recipe rather than the baking apparatus.
oh, maybe you can find a bread machine!
It's been over 100 here most days for the past two or three weeks, but yesterday we got RAIN. I couldn't believe it when I heard the thunder. My back yard is toast (the fig has officially thrown in the towel for the season), but the front really loved the water and looks green and lush this morning. I haven't gone to the pool even once. I should!
I hear you. It's summers like this that make me long for a pool. If the humidity would go down, the 90's aren't that horribly bad, but who am I kidding? I live in Florida!
Our yard needs so much work; it seems the weeds have no problem with the heat. But we just can't make ourselves get out in it when just walking a dozen feet outside means being damp with sweat all over. The air feels almost thick to breathe. And since it stays quite warm and extremely humid all night, plus we have the mosquitoes from Hades, we can't get out in the evening or early morning, either. You do what you can. I'm trying to do some inside projects.
Great shots of the pool! So fun! Yes, hot and humid finally here, but thankfully the humidity is dropping a bit. This week happens to be the week I am out and about quite a lot though so I have been feeling it. Overall though, I don't feel like we've had such an oppressive summer with the humidity... Perhaps I'm more used to it, or I just don't get out in it enough to be bothered! I am very thankful for our A/C!
You guys are gonna hate me but the very highest I've seen in Anchorage, I think ever, has been 80 degrees this summer. It's been a warm summer, even the mid to high 70's are fairly warm for here. Having lived here for 23 years now I've acclimated so that the 70's seem very warm. (I grew up in Northern MN also) I do however, volunteer at our city visitor center & visitors are quite relieved at the relative coolness here. I find it interesting to see visitors from places like Asia wearing jackets. If it's in the high 60's you see visitors sometimes wearing puffer jackets even. I'm in short sleeve T shirts of course in even the low 60's. It's really interesting how the body acclimates to different localities. I empathize with you all!
Wow, we Brits can only dream of a pool! It must be amazing to grow up with a pool in the back garden - lucky kids!
We had a 'paddling pool' - basically 1ft water in an inflatable bathtub. Not the same!
Oh, it's not our pool! That's at my parents' house, which we drive to. 🙂
I'm in your neck of the woods-ish (Pennsylvania/NJ) this week, from Colorado. This humidity is BRUTAL. Ugh!!!
We were in Illinois/Iowa over the weekend and experienced your heat wave with the wretched humidity ... we attended a wedding and the church didn't have AC. Were we glad to get to the reception site where they had the air conditioning going full blast!
Here in the SE it is even too hot to go to the pool: the water is tepid, and you sweat as you swim!
It was feeling like that yesterday...the pool was cooler than the air, but not by much!
I live in North Florida (just below the Florida/Georgia line and it is HOT here too!! Our pool water is tepid but still cooler than the outside temps so we have spent a lot of time in it the last few weeks. I have been using my crockpot all week, and just the stove top (one pan) for supper tonight. Leftovers the rest of the week to eat up everything left in the fridge--chicken philly meat, Pot roast, beef-a-roni and taco meat. Anything to keep the house cooler.
Big Bend area of Florida here. So you and I know what we are talking about! It's been a miserable summer.
I often tell my husband that I was born in the right era ... I can't imagine summers without air conditioning, and am so very thankful for it!
I know! I mean, if it wasn't invented, we wouldn't know what we were missing, but still....
There was an article in Sunday's Washington Post that was widely shared, which addressed how pre-AC houses used to be built. Specifically, they had more carefully placed windows (to avoid hot summer sun but let in winter light), the right kind of shutters, wide porches and big eaves to shade the windows, windows aligned to create breezes when open, operable transoms also for breezes. They installed room and whole house fans; in less humid areas they used swamp coolers.
People instituted non-permanent changes as well. They also tended to be in the cooler rooms in the summer (basement or lower levels) and the warmer rooms in the winter (upper levels). Many North African and Middle Eastern cultures have the tradition of literally moving from one floor to the other for the seasonal change. Some households had winter and summer linens, furniture coverings, curtains, and other household fabrics. Every day they would open their houses to the relative cool in the night, and close it off as the temperature rose.
People were also more acclimated to the heat. We still adapt to the weather, depending on where we live, but not nearly as much as a couple of generations ago. Finns are in shirtsleeves in the 50s, Arabs wear long pants in all weather - of, you'll note, loose lightweight fabrics. Western-syle jeans haven't really caught on.
that is some good information! thanks for sharing it
No AC for us. Fortunately we only have a few really hot days (can get into the 110's!) and it usually (but not always) cools down at night. A heat wave of a few days is inevitably followed by what I call "natural air conditioning"--a few days of fog where the temps can be in the 70's. The trick is to remember on those hot, miserable days that the fog is coming. When we have 2 weeks in a row of hot weather I start fantasizing about buying an AC.
We close the house up tight in the morning and open it as soon as the air outside is cooler than inside. With a combination of open windows and fans its usually tolerable at night (unless the skunks are roaming the neighborhood in which case open windows make it very unpleasant). We also installed two solar attic fans which have been one of the best expenditures ever. They silently draw hot air out of the attic as long as the sun is shining, and it keeps our house pleasantly cool with no expense for electricity (people often compliment our AC, but we don't have any). The only problem is that we live in a valley, so the sun is behind the hill before the air outside cools down. Those last few hours of daylight are when our house heats up.