"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Austin Plugged by a 44.

Austin got plugged by a 44 today. Celsius that is. Hottest damn day of my life. And tied for the hottest ever in Austin. But apparently they didn't cancel the hot sauce festival in Waterloo Park.

Here are a couple of tastes of Texas shotgun lyrics for Steve Bloom, who picked up on the Texas resonances of the number.





And though it looks like hell warmed over around here these days, there's this:




12 comments:

Steve Bloom said...

Nice music, thanks. The hot sauce festival thing is just weird. Not outdoors, I assume.

Michael Tobis said...

Oh, yeah, outdoors. I went last year.

You get free corn chips hot sauce samples. You go around burning your mouth until your tongue falls apart or you keel over from general heat prostration, whichever comes first.

Beer and music, too, of course.

Most of the good outdoor events in Austin are during the hotter half of the year. It's maddening.

Oale said...

44 degrees - can't imagine what it is. Hottest for me was 42 in Cyprus some 20 years back in June, all the locals were having a siesta (or whatever it was called in there) from 12 to 3PM, but the tourist guide had us moving in the streets of Nicosia. That was a bit hot back then even for the locals, but nowadays there has been much hotter days in there.

Anna Haynes said...

"Light a fire inside to match the fire outside", as the protagonist patriarch from The House of Sand and Fog said.

Presumably it must work, since he was from Iran (albeit a fictional character), but I wonder how you'd test it, empirically.

Anna Haynes said...

(though that was with tea, not spices)

Anna Haynes said...

44C being 111.2 F, for us old folk. Heck of a fever.

Pangolin said...

Meanwhile Anthony Watts has just enjoyed an unusually cool August with not a day over 100ยบ F and nighttime temps. in the mid 60's.

There ain't no justice.

It would be nice if you got some rain soon but I don't see how that's happening. Maybe if you paint every roof in Texas white ma nature will take the hint and relent.

Adam said...

Houston's average temperature for August will be over 90F, breaking the old record by about 3F. No doubt the same is true for Austin and many other Texas towns.

Houston also had a day last week in which the average temperature for 24 hours was 95F.

Michael Tobis said...

Actually sporadic rains started last week and the probability of precipitation is not bad over labor day weekend. There are some signs that the absurd heat is breaking and we will be in a period of just ordinary early-September stifling heat.

Again, understand that practically every building in Texas is air conditioned and everybody who is not dirt-poor is perfectly comfortable though their wallets are taking a hit. It's just the environment that is croaking.

Oh, and the electric system is creaking a bit, too, but so far so good. The voice of Mr. Scott on the old Star Trek series comes to mind. "Ah'm givven har oll she's got, cahpten! Ah don't know how much more o' this she can take!"

King of the Road said...

Sure Michael but remember...

Michael Tobis said...

Nice!

Anonymous said...

Have a look at where 2011 sits on this graph:

http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/08/texas-drought-spot-the-outlier/