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Comment by seattle_spring | Hacker News Reader

I still think it's crazy that the heat wave in Portland, OR (116 deg in 2021) had higher temps than places like Austin, Dallas, Miami, etc have ever had in recorded history. An area of BC recorded over 121.

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Maple Valley in Washington was allegedly 118 too - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_North_America_hea...

Super fun considering relatively few homes in western Washington have AC…

I had just moved into the home we bought a week before that event, about 30 miles south of Maple Valley. The AC was old (original unit from when the home was built in the early 1980s) and we knew it had to be replaced. But with everything (new appliances, etc.) we decided "we'll take care of that before next summer". And then four days of 105+ temperature, and of course, the AC died forever[1] a couple of hours in. We had a portable AC, but an elderly dog with a double coat, and my partner and our dog and I ended up hunkering down in the living room with the portable AC running 24/7 (took the edge off, but still got to mid 80s inside) and us periodically running towels under water, putting them in the freezer and using them as a "blanket" for the dog.

We thought about hotels, but anything in our town was booked. That was not a fun time.

[1] Miraculously we managed to find an AC tech who would come out to look at it. "It's dead." I don't know what he did then, but he did something else (maybe removed a cutout valve?) and said "Here, this will keep it working but might only be for a couple of hours or a couple of days and is absolutely not warrantied or guaranteed or anything". It did keep working for about four more hours before giving up completely.

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