More than a week without power leaves Houston-area residents feeling abandoned | Hacker News Reader

More than a week without power leaves Houston-area residents feeling abandoned

cnn.com

22 pointspeutetre13 comments

I would hate to not have air conditioning in Houston this time of year.

Went to my cousins wedding in Houston about 25 years ago. Mid-June, 106 air temperature, humidity in the high 90s. I was having a smoke outside the airport exit to the parking garage. More than one person staggered as they left the building and a couple of them fainted. Grotesque does not being to describe it. And we were in suit and tie…

41 deg C

106 degrees fahrenheit = 41 degrees celsius

Youch! 106 is a rough temp to be out and about at!

Most cultures who are based off very hot areas have a culture of a siesta where after an earlyish lunch, everyone just sleeps for an hour.

Works when you live close to work, but gets very difficult very fast if you are farther out.

We have no such concept in the American southwest even though we have many immigrants from Mexico where they do siesta. Where I live, Phoenix, the hottest part of the day is like 5-7 PM. Most laborers start work early in the summer and are done by early afternoon.

Curious,

The Spaniards are famous for their siesta, and it used to be (until recently) that most businesses would close from 12:30-1:00 till 3:30-4 over here in small town india (and in some metros like Bengaluru)

I would imagine that every place would have some coping mechanism or the other, be it ac, a halt on work, design of living spaces with heat rejection in mind and so on.

Northern California in the central valley has been hitting 117F (47C) this summer, but the humidity is in the low 20%, so you're body can still cool itself. I can't imagine 90% humidity.

Yeah, some friends and I went to Las Vegas one spring. It was 118 outside but as you say, very dry. It was hot but by no means unbearable. Much more tolerable than the northwest Gulf of Mexico. We had a stretch in Austin back in 2011 where we were above 110 for like two weeks in a row, with the usual south Texas humidity. That summer broke my spirit, even as a native Texan.

In developing countries, loss of power or even water is common. America has simply forgotten what that reality is like. In reality, there’s only a thin barrier between what we consider modern civilization and a tougher life.

Most of America could be considered a developing country.

Only a few places in the Northeast and West Coasts along with isolated cities in the interior really qualify as modern when you look at metrics like good governance, maternal mortality, access to healthcare, and health of democracy.

I disagree (as an immigrant). In all of America, you will get your mail on time, you have fully developed freeways (although no public transit), you can flush toilet paper down the toilet, and the cars are new and clean - not to mention, drinking tap water and eating food won’t make you terribly sick. Most, if not all developing countries cannot meet those very simple standards.

Buddy, not even all of America meets all of those standards.

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