Heat

Posted at 5:00 PM, Monday, February 2, 2009

Here in Adelaide, we are weathering our second annual once-in-a-century heatwave. Has it been a hundred years already? If you missed last year's record-breaking heatwave, I wrote about it at length in early March. That was when we had fifteen straight days with daytime temperatures over 95 degrees. It turns out that this was the milder form of heatwave. We are in day seven of our current odyssey, and the temperature has exceeded 104 degrees (40 F) every day. Wednesday was the third hottest day ever recorded in Adelaide--a breath-taking 114 degrees. Happily, the temperature has been dipping every so slightly since that day, and today it didn't even go above a balmy 104. To add insult to injury, the road crew which has been busily digging up our street for the last month or so picked last week to put in the new curbs, and so we've been exiled from our driveway until they finish. This may take some time, since at the moment the crew only works from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and knocks off when the heat becomes too intense. What this means is that we have to walk down the street or around the corner to the car. It only takes two or three minutes, but that's a long time when the heat is this severe.

I've tried to go about my normal routines, but I admit my brain isn't functioning fully. I needed to call a Jewish book publisher in the United States during their office hours, but didn't remember to call them until Friday morning. Others are equally foggy. I think there may be a survival function that kicks in, and bits the brain considers voluntary like remembering what to pick up at the supermarket get set aside. As I noted in my sermon on Friday night, I've become a great deal pushier than usual. I insisted on halting our Shabbat morning service before the Torah reading and called for a water break. I've actually told an elderly congregant off for failing to keep her air conditioner running all the time. What happened to the nice shrinking violet I usually am?

The kids don't go back to school until tomorrow, which means we have had the pleasure of their (grumpy) company during this time. Right now they're sleeping in the living room, although the bedroom wing of the house is much more livable than it was last summer thanks to the second window air conditioner we snatched up on e-bay on Tuesday night. (Just in time!) But somehow the cool air just isn't reaching their room, so they're enjoying a camping out ADVENTURE!

Water has figured prominently in our lives this week. We invited ourselves over to a friend's pool one evening, and yesterday afternoon spent a lovely 90 minutes splashing around at our public pool. It's tough when the temperature is over 100 degrees: I was cool from the neck down, but my head was quite hot, and I had to keep wetting down my face to remain relatively happy. On Saturday evening, we trekked down to West Beach to play in the surf. The parking lot at this normally quiet beach was absolutely packed. The beach wasn't. I have yet to see a crowded beach in South Australia; the beaches are just too big to fill up. There were hundreds of people there, but they were spread up and down hundreds of meters of beach, and there was room for all. The ocean water was incredibly warm, although the waves were rough enough that I got sand inside my bathing suit just from standing in the surf. The kids got to ride their body boards again and were happy, and the inside of our car is already hopelessly sandy, so no more damage done.

We are eagerly anticipating the arrival of a cool change sometime on Saturday, with temperatures early next week in the high 70s. Only four more 100+ days to go!