Picture this:
It's the day before the 4th of July and the sun is out in full force. Your bare feet hover just above a smoldering concrete platform as you languidly slump into the dusty cushions of a high-backed patio chair. Hot air floods your lungs like the humidity in a sauna. Clouds of bitter, grey smoke waft over you, accompanied by the sizzling of raw hamburger patties and turkey sausages. The plastic water bottle you fished out of the cooler is wet with condensation, forming a small puddle on the surface of the steel grated table before you. You watch helplessly as the glistening droplets slip through the diamond-shaped cracks and drip onto your sunburnt legs. With the weight of the stagnant summer heat anchoring you to your chair, there's nothing you can do. What sympathy you feel for the poor soul attending the grill evaporates as you slowly succumb to the delusion that you might be stuck in this chair forever.
If this scenario sounds at all familiar to you, there's a good chance you're currently in California.
Throughout the state, residents are experiencing record-breaking heat waves ranging from 108 degrees in Downtown LA to 118 in both the Riverside and Woodland Hills areas.
To put this level of heat into perspective, consider this: the highest recorded temperature in Death Valley - commonly known as the hottest place on planet Earth - was 136 degrees. That's only 18 degrees hotter than the temperature in Riverside and Woodland Hills! Furthermore, the average summer temperatures in Death Valley generally peak at around 120 degrees. 120 degrees! That's only two degrees hotter than Riverside and Woodland Hills. And, only six degrees hotter than the weather I was baking in on July 3rd in the scenario above.
So, forgive me if I don't appreciate the menagerie of memes highlighting this apocalyptic heat wave that is currently circulating the social media frontier. Because from where I'm standing it feels like my entire state is trapped in the Devil's armpit.
