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dirt_dew

NOW it is hot

dirt_dew
17 years ago

Official temperature in phoenix yesterday was 110°F.
Today they are calling for 112-114. They say maybe 120° this month.
The sunflowers smell sooo good!

Comments (11)

  • janw
    17 years ago

    You aren`t kidding !!! it was 110 about an hour ago on my thermometer here in casa grande !!
    jan

  • ankraras
    17 years ago

    Oh my gosh, it's that time of the year isn't it, Dah! Any change of rain relief any time in the near future any body know?

    {{gwi:271914}}

  • dirt_dew
    Original Author
    17 years ago

    Rain in the near future depends on where you are. I look for summer rains to start here in mid-July with the beginning of the monsoon season. May, June, and early July are normally DRY At my house.
    Other parts of Arizona might get rain anytime now.
    Remember to drink LOTS of water!

  • lindseylu
    17 years ago

    Whoa! You guys are baking! I thought it was hot in Albuquerque today at 105 degrees, but you folks in Arizona have us beat. Amazing that plants can survive the heat! Ain't nature awesome? :)

    Lindsey :)

  • dirt_dew
    Original Author
    17 years ago

    Lindsey
    The sugar cane is loving the heat! The pomegranite trees are thriving with no water! The sweet potatoes are taking off, but they need shade from direct sun.
    We have a cooling trend today and may get DOWN to 105° for one day later this week. 85° for morning low on Tuesday.
    Happy gardening

  • frdnicholas
    17 years ago

    I'm fairly recent to the Southwest, and just have one question: when does the, "Yeah, but it's a dry heat!" thing kick in?

  • lindseylu
    17 years ago

    Frdnicholas,

    Ha ha! That's what I always say :) I guess it depends on what you're used to. I am brand new to New Mexico, and where I used to live it was miserable outside at 90 degrees because of the humidity. Now I can be outdoors in this over-100-degrees weather with little problem! So I call this "the dry heat" :)

    What I'd like to know, however, is "when do the winds die down" so I can get all my new plants out of my kitchen and into the yard?!

    Lindsey, who LOVES Albuquerque in spite of the wind!!! :)))

  • abqpalms
    17 years ago

    I have lived in Albuquerque now for 2.5 years (this is my 3rd summer living here), and what I have observed is that while it is true that we do not get as unbearably hot as our lower-desert counterparts like Phoenix, Tucson, SE California, Las Vegas, etc., compared to much of the rest of our nation (besides Texas - it gets reeeeaaal hot there too), our heat is well above average from MAY-SEPT, and it is rather consistent. At least in my three summers here, it is fairly rare for a day below 85 degrees, and most days are 92-97, with a bunch generally in the upper 90s, lower 100s.

    Often times, our "official" high temperatures are, in my opinion, somewhat deceiving in ABQ, as while the Sunport (the official site) stays warmer in general in comparison to the rest of the city, the daytime highs there are no where near as high generally as the rest of the city - usually a 5 or 7 degree difference! (and this is in comparison to official weather stations, not just my backyard south-facing thermometer that daily reports 130 degrees!)...

    The one thing that can cool us in the summer is rain (what's that??), as this pleasant 85 degree day I write this on can attest to (well, it isn't raining, but a nice Low pressure system is bringing clouds - what are those??).

    I do have to say that I think the winds here are a hare overrated. It sure can get awfully windy, but in my experience, it gets similarly windy in most other parts of the country. It is just more visible here because - primarily - the wind in other parts of the nation are generally accompanied by rain, (the mythical droplets of water that fall from the sky that I seem to remember, but seem to rarely-if-ever encounter here). We get those vaunted New Mexican winds here when a High Pressure becomes a Low, or a front of some sort moves through, and in other parts of the nation, when that happens, the winds whip too, just with thunder, lightning, and rain. Here, just that dry wind.

    As for the dry heat v. humid heat debate, having come from a very humid place, I can attest that here in the desert on a 97 degree day with not a cloud in the sky, if I am out for a run or a bike ride, I sometimes YEARN for some good old fashioned humidity! Just to be able to sweat and find some relief. My theory is that under the sun, 97 degrees in the desert is much of a "hotter" feeling than in a humid place with generally many more clouds. However, in the shade, then yes, 97 degrees feels much more comfortable in the desert than in humidity.

    (I personally don't think humidity makes it feel "hotter" as the Heat Indexes out there would have you believe; just much more sticky and uncomfortable)...

    Just my $.02! Enjoy today and tomorrow when it is a bit cooler!

  • rockman50
    17 years ago

    I heard a comedian many years ago say this:

    "I just returned from Pheonix the other day. It was 122 degrees!! I don't know if it was a "wet heat" or a "dry heat"....all I can tell you is that the coyotes were bursting into flames"

    I always liked that one. If you want rain, could you take some of ours???? Please!!!! 6 inches the other day in 12 hours, 6 inches a few weeks before that, 18 inches in the last 5 weeks.......but it is lush.

  • dirt_dew
    Original Author
    17 years ago

    Rockman50
    It was a DRY heat! Probably under 5%. And the coyotes are smarter than many people. They stay out of the sun when it is too hot. I would like to have some of that rain. I would trade some dry air for it. 18" is almost 3 YEARS annual rainfall here!
    Abqpalms
    This time of year, we are happy in Phoenix when the LOW is under 85°.

  • jfr1107
    17 years ago

    One thing that is a real useful metric - but not perfect, by any means - is the AHS Heat Zone rating. I think the main premise is that most plants suffer some setback to growth and maintenance at temps above 85 F or so. So, by tallying the number of days above this temp, it is possible to compare relative heat levels from one climate to another.

    For example, the two hot climates I am most familiar with ABQ (Albuquerque, NM, USA) and AUS (Austin, TX) are very different heat zones, even though the summer high temps can be quite similar. (This is largely a result of humidity because the night lows are much lower here than in AUS.) This allows a lot of plants from going into dormancy in ABQ that either die or go dormant there. I can already see many plants blooming here now, despite the heat, (if given enough water) that really degrade there (even with water). I have seen differences in other places that can be related to this too.

    Has anyone been using the AHS zone map to make decisions on plants etc? Again, it is not perfect, but the USDA cold hardiness is really full of a lot of "holes".

    A good example of limitations of the latter metric is comparing places that have the same USDA cold hardiness - for example Portland OR, and AUS have the same cold hardiness. The big difference there is that Portland has many more nights at their USDA low (like weeks) and AUS has only a few (like days) and a much shorter period at those lows. First freezes often do not happen until mid/late Dec (in most recent 15 years or so) in AUS. So many zone 9 tropical/sub tropical winter bloomers can bloom in AUS in Dec and Jan for example, compared to Portland where they are killed to the ground by frost in Oct or Nov. Again, just a metric, but useful and unfortunately the USDA numbers are used so extensively that lots of people make decisions based on these and ultimately "burned" by the results. Microclimate is another big factor that is neglected (too complex to be represented by one or two numbers) that is a big fault in these guages. The Sunset zone is a more complex rating system (I am not aware of how these zones are calculated) that does, I believe, take into account some of these things. But again, for relative comparisons of climates of all of these zone methods can still be useful.

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