If Portland can hit 116 degrees, so can San Francisco. We're not ready | Hacker News Reader

If Portland can hit 116 degrees, so can San Francisco. We're not ready

sfchronicle.com

40 pointsmmettler25 comments

Actually I don't think San Francisco can ever be that hot given its on the ocean. The prevailing ocean breeze does a lot to keep temps down. In LA, 15 miles from the ocean can easily mean 15 degrees increased in temperature throughout the year. When it was 110 inland in Oregon, it was still in the 70s on the coast due to the prevailing ocean breeze: https://www.beachconnection.net/news/excessheat062321.php

I live a couple hours north of San Francisco, about a mile from the ocean. There is pretty much always a prevailing ocean breeze. Last summer, about 10 in the morning, I walked out on my lawn, and couldn't believe how hot it was. There was no breeze, pretty high humidity, and I could just feel the sun beating down. It was so bad that I couldn't stand there.

Sounds like where I live in the Deep South except it’s 8am. The other day I woke up and it was 97% humidity and I could literally see the moisture in the air (not quite fog).

Apparently SF has hit 106°F before, which, given that the city is surrounded on three sides by the Pacific Ocean averaging around 56°F, is pretty amazing.

The heatwave last year was pretty bad, and with climate change the heat waves are supposed to get worse so the article seems intuitive to me.

Normally, in the SF summertime, the prevaling wind is east by mid-afternoon and continues strong well into the evening. Thus the city hardly ever heats up or experiences bad air until August, when the weather system changes and the winds calm down.

This also leads to a distinct pattern with wildfire smoke; so long as there isn't a buildup over the ocean, the city gets some relief until there's a day with no wind, at which point it gets as socked in as the rest of the Bay. Last year was particularly bad since the ocean air eventually did get polluted and it circulated until precipitation cleared it. So far things are holding up better this year, but we have a few months to go.

Sadly, Twain never actually said the first thing that comes to ones mind about SF in the summer: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/and-never-the-twain-shall-...

But yeah, I eventually moved out of San Francisco because of exactly this: I missed real summertime.

Vancouver BC hit over 42C this year, and hundreds of people died because the region is not prepared for heat. Victoria, which is facing directly out to the ocean, hit 39C. Houses and apartments don't have A/C, and businesses' A/C is not robust enough to deal with that much load. I would bet on it happening in SF too.

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/temperature-record-from-1895-among-59-...

May I introduce you to Perth. City on the ocean, regularly gets temps >45 in summer or 116 as you'd say. We had a week where it didn't drop below 40 at night when I lived there :)

San Fran could easy hit it.

Ocean temps by Perth are hotter, though. 69 on average in Perth from what I've read, whereas SF ranges from 55-60 depending on the season.

To be clear, I'm not saying that SF can't hit 116, just that we should be wary of compare SF to Perth in this regard.

A big issue is whether or not our power grid can handle all these new air conditioners coming online. Historically, it hasn't been able to handle it well in the past two years.

I guess in the near future we'll be having partial blackouts to power the emergency "cool shelters", where everyone will have to go to, to keep cool...

Let's just go full on mole people, tunnels underground, all we need is a surface antenna for the 5G. It's not like most of us see much sunlight as it is.

I would totally rock a hobbit hole, however I don't think that is a scalable solution for massive population bases.

Which will be just lovely depending on the covid situation.

Not sure if you're aware but we literally had cooling centers here in Seattle during the heat wave.

Isn't the pivot to EVs more of a grid stressor than 120VAC window rattlers

I’m not sure what your point is. My point is that the existing system can’t even handle the current load and the author is proposing to add even more load at scale without addressing our power infrastructure.

My point is that AC additions doesn't seem like the major grid capacity issue on the horizon. If the grid is getting upgraded sufficiently for the imminent EV transition, won't that more than cover daytime AC demands?

The grid is currently getting upgraded for transmitting power safely. I may have missed something but I don’t think it’s being upgraded for capacity.

Solar generation peaks roughly at the same time that air conditioning loads peak.

Making commercial buildings put solar on their roofs and over their parking areas would help a lot.

Giving people incentives to put in battery storage to do load shifting would also help a lot since AC load is local to a building.

Who’s working on new heat pump tech other than Gradient?

46C

Right, MORE air conditioning will solve our problems with global warming…

> Right, MORE air conditioning will solve our problems with global warming…

I'm not sure that it will be optional, given where we're going with the climate crisis. We can probably mitigate most of their impact by reducing the impact of electricity production to zero, at which point we can hopefully address the refrigerant-issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com