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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

The Portland weather forecast shows a high of 114° F today and a high of 118°F tomorrow. Today was an all-time record high, by one degree, and tomorrow will be hotter.

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Datlyum that's like 48c? Getting up on the peak of tolerable temperatures for work that is. Worst I've copped was around that with 53 measured in some areas on-site due to additional plant equipment radiated heat.

Toasty af, keep your hydration up. Don't be surprised if you go through a liter an hour and still don't piss.

That's highly dependent on humidity. If it's dry your body has means to cool itself through perspiration, but if the air is saturated in water vapor, temperatures as low as 35 or 36C can be deadly.

Fortunately, we are not on the east coast. I don't know about Portland but Seattle's humidity is < 50%, which means normal human cooling systems will be efficient assuming you drink prodigious amounts of water to replace the evaporative losses. Also some electrolytes.

It reminds me a bit of when I would go on expeditions in the southwest deserts. I am constantly drinking prodigious quantities of water throughout the day but rarely need to urinate. But with more sweat than the southwest deserts, which have extremely dry air (you mostly don't sweat at all because it has no liquid phase).

As long as people drink enough fluid, they should be fine.

I grew up on the east coast, and was always baffled by the notion that sweat kept you cool. In my experience, sweat just made you slimy. I knew the physics of it, but it just didn't seem to work.

Then I visited the southwest, and noticed that I was perfectly comfortable on 100F days. Then I noticed that I wasn't slimy, either. And then it all clicked into place: the basic physics explanation doesn't apply if the air is already saturated.

Almost 45c-48c! I already have trouble functioning at 35c with an A/C. I couldn't imagine +10c and no power, crazy.

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