Daily temperature records will tumble as sizzling early season heat from a summerlike heat dome sends thermometers skyrocketing into the triple digits in parts of California and the West this week.

The official start of summer is just a few weeks away, but it will feel like July in much of the West as temperatures climb 20 degrees or more above average, the highest temperatures of the year so far for many locations.

Excessive heat warnings are in effect for more than 17 million people in California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona this week. The warnings are the most extreme form of heat alert issued by the National Weather Service and are used when widespread, dangerous heat is expected.

The soaring temperatures are being caused by a heat dome, a large area of high pressure that parks over an area, traps air and heats it with abundant sunshine for days or weeks. The resulting heat becomes more intense the longer a heat dome lasts.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          5 months ago

          I’m sorry but I’m not taking anything seriously unless it’s measured in half a giraffe.

      • Venia Silente@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        US temperatures

        what… is that? Temperature is measured in Celsius. Maybe Kelvin if you want to be fancy or are doing really cool stuff with really cool states of matter.

          • Venia Silente@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            Escusé moi I don’t believe in fuhrers or fahrers or whatever the Germans are inventing these days.

            (alas, not completely sarcasm, but that’s the modern world for you.)

          • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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            5 months ago

            Fahrenheit is wrong. He just has over inflated opinion of himself.

            Who measures temperature according to what one person considers to be how all other humans feel is normal, was this ever independently verified? What an arbitrary temperature scale, what if I want to measure something that isn’t personal body heat, like, oh I don’t know, maybe some water?

            All in jest of course, but seriously it’s a terrible temperature scale and scientific consensus is to always use SI units.

  • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Here’s hoping those ass fucks in Texas get to see their fair share this bullshit. While they sit around climate denying they can fucking roast.

    • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Well that’s pretty misanthropic. Maybe don’t take your frustrations out on the average citizen that probably has nothing real to do with this, and who are the only people who will suffer from the climate issues. Cruz sure won’t.

    • Phegan@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The residents of Texas are not completely to blame. Texas has the highest rates of voter suppression in the country. Secondly, the Texas education system has been built in a way to persist the current leadership in the state. And finally, many of the people live in poverty and will likely die for what oil execs and politicians have done.

      Wishing this is short sighted and is blaming the symptom and not the root cause problem.

      • JeffKerman1999@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        That’s the problem. We poors are going to pay the price while the rich will be on their yachts circumnavigating the poles to keep fresh

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          One of the reasons why I went into infrastructure. I get to provide hospice care to the bulk of the human race and my chances at personal survival are pretty decent. The powers-that-be will still need someone who knows how the machines work.

      • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        The people I’m mad at are the ones who vote these fuck heads in. Honestly if them dying makes it likely that a republican won’t pull a seat in the house or the Senate, I count that as a good thing. Fuck those assholes. They vote based on insignificant and petty issues drummed up by the conservative think tanks and not on any real issues. Critical race theory? Bullshit! Trans people trying to convert your kids or competing in sports “unfairly”? BULLSHIT! Illegal immigrants coming to kidnap or kill you or your family? Absolute HORSESHIT!!

        These fucktards deserve ever extra degree of heat they get. I only feel sorry for the liberals who are stuck living with them. But only a little bit cause they need to light a fire under their asses and fight these bastards where they live.

        • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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          5 months ago

          I have a lot to say about how partisan politics turns decent people into rabid sociopaths who cheer for the violent deaths of people who fall on the other side of an arbitrary distinction, but I’m afraid saying so might put you squarely inside the picture you’ve just painted.

          • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            partisan politics

            arbitrary distinction

            Oh, you mean the who “both sides are terrible” argument? Let us see. One side thinks we should invest as much government money as we can into education, the other wants to gut every dime and put all kids (who can afford it) into private schools. One side wants to ensure that children do not go hungry, the other is canceling student lunch programs everywhere they can. And, to the point of this thread, one side wants us to acknowledge our hand in climate change and find a way to mitigate it, the other wants to pretend it doesn’t exist.

            I’m not a radical for believing what I believe because what I believe is based in scientific fact and compassion for humanity. The “other side of the coin” is afraid that their tax money might, at some point, help a poor person in need.

            Fuck your moderate ass. People like you are half the problem.

            • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.social
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              5 months ago

              It’s genuinely a bit shocking being called a moderate on a platform where I routinely get accused of being a tankie, and even more shocking to realize that I find the former to be more offensive somehow.

              I’ll say the same to you as I would any blood-thirsty liberal: no war but class war. I don’t root for the deaths of my fellow working class americans simply because I suspect them of having supported a political movement based on a false premise, no matter how much their politics repulse me.

              So go off I guess, but just be aware that while you’re sitting where you are thinking of me as a part of the problem, I’m thinking the same of people like you who wish death and destruction against people who are under the same marginalization as you are.

              • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                I’m thinking the same of people like you who wish death and destruction against people who are under the same marginalization as you are.

                Except the difference is I’m not voting for it. They actively choose to vote for the marginalization. They’re happy to be slaves to their corporate masters.

                And yeah, I do a hoop and a holler every damn time somebody dies a fucking covid when their Facebook page and every bit of social media they’re on is telling everybody in the universe how much they won’t use PPE or get vaccinated and will vote for politicians who tell everyone that the covid vaccine is some kind of poison.

                I sing a song of praise to all the karma in the universe when one of these fucktards who thinks that global warming is a fucking conspiracy to push everyone into green energy for profit somehow dies of heat stroke or freezes to death because global warming is turning our climate pair shaped.

                And I jump for fucking joy when a shitty old person who has consistently voted for a republican who has, yet again, gutted medicare and social security cries about being left in the cold with no money and no medical care. Cause FUCK every single one of them. They can rot in hell cause they are the cause of not only their own suffering, but everyone else’s as well.

                • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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                  5 months ago

                  You realize the entire political system is a game right? And it’s rigged? Realistically the Republican party has a 0% chance to get elected ever, if we just go based on popular vote. The average citizen has roughly 0 influence on the election, with how heavily gerrymandered districts are, with how heavily certain areas are “encouraged” not to vote…

                  The people in Texas don’t want you to be in a heat wave either, in general. Only the mega rich who have no skin in this game, who can fly out to whatever tropical paradise has the best climate this time of year. And the ones who say they DO want that are, 9 times out of 10, just parroting whatever their favorite billionaire wants them to.

                  I support anger, I support aggression. Make our voices heard, but aim it at the right people. Fighting internally is what they want us to do.

    • Halosheep@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      As someone from Texas who isn’t a climate denier, fuck off.

      Also we’re having severe thunderstorms nearly daily… I am not ready for the rebound of heat that’s about to come.

    • Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      They’ve always been a thing in Texas. The difference is now it moves around and the rest of you get to experience the miserable heat as well.

    • criticon@lemmy.ca
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      I was discussing that with my parents a few nights ago, they claim that I’m a pessimist because I don’t want to bring children into this world but my hometown used to have about 5 snowdays a year, now is one every 5 years. The summer was hot but bearable and now the “heat dome” is a normal thing every year, and even when it rains it’s usually catastrophic with large hail and flooding

      • Land_Strider@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        From summers when we slept under quilts to ones we can’t even sleep almost naked in spring/fall, just in 15 years. From 2 weeks of snow each month on December, February and March to a day of light snow for 3 years and one medium snow once a year, if it comes once again.

        Yeah I’m definitely not optimistic about the next 15 years, let alone thinking of raising children beyond that.

      • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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        5 months ago

        I remember them from the 90s in Europe, they just weren’t called heat domes back then. It was just a “blocking area of high pressure” or some metrologic words. These days the media want to hype everything up, so it needs a catchy name.

        Now I don’t mean global warming isn’t real. These things happen regularly now where they were a oddity in the past and things will get very bad in the next 50 years. But it did happen in the past.

        It’s more a case of the once in a thousand year storm has become a twice a year kind of thing. But hey, we millennials are used to that right? I’ve personally seen three once in a lifetime economic crashes, with plenty more on the way.

  • motor_spirit@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    “this stuff just happens in waves. As long as it’s not cold!” - some people we’ll be sharing eternal beds with

    At least I’m not wasting my time with children or church

  • BossDj@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I for one welcome the news spicing up weather forecasts with catchy yet threatening labels. We’ve gone from atmospheric rivers to heat domes. Maybe this is what’s needed to get people to consider climate action. They’ll be movie titles soon enough.

    • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      Yeah, is ad that American outlets covering American weather for the benefit of Americans use units Americans are familiar with.

    • TipRing@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I’m American but I grew up in Europe. When it comes to metric units I am absolutely in favor of meters, liters, grams, etc. since they make more sense than Imperial units and are easier to use in most situations.

      But for temperature scales while Celsius is great for scientific measurements, Fahrenheit is better for describing the temperatures humans live at.

      • Burstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        Celsius is just as good at describing temperatures humans experience. Every 5o is ‘category’:

        < -10o Cripes it’s cold!

        -10 to -5o Cold

        -5 to 0o Snow/ice will melt

        0o ‘true’ freezing/melting temperature

        0 to 5o Cool

        5 to 10o Brisk, jacket optional

        10 to 15o Cool, Comfortable to work

        15 to 20o Cold house

        20 to 25o Typical house temps

        25 to 30o Shorts recommended

        30 to 35o Hot

        35 to 40o Severely hot

        '> 40o Crazy hot.

        It’s simply just getting used to the values which you have to do with F too anyways, and IMO the C scale just makes far more sense. With F none of the values are intuitive and require you to learn them all.

      • fireweed@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Agreed. I tried to adjust to Celsius when I moved abroad from the US, and my biggest issue with it was actually in temperature control. I lived in a tiny studio apartment with an in-wall A/C unit, so I had really accurate, nearly instantaneous control of the room temperature except that often it would be too hot at one temperature setting but too cold if I reduced it by a single degree (Celsius). Had the system been in fahrenheit I would have had around three times as much sensitivity to control, which would have been perfect.

        • QualifiedKitten@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I’ve seen a few climate control systems that have options for both celsius and farenheit, but they never give more actual control in one system vs the other. One system I’ve seen adjusted by increments of 0.5 if you had it set to celsius, or increments of 1.0 when set to farenheit. Another adjusted by increments of 1 for celsius, or 2 for farenheit.