Cheap cold air
For nearly half a century the tune “but it’s a dry heat” was number one in places like Arizona where summertime heat frequently topped 110 degrees.
Folks said it so much they actually believed it and they encouraged others to leave the chill of the north and head to the land of the sun and affordable housing.
“It’s different here,” they said, “it’s a dry heat with low humidity and not much moisture.”
A new tune is now showing up on the charts and quickly replacing the old dry heat song with 31 days in a row of temperatures above 110, topping out at 119 degrees, is having people in Arizona begin to worry if this kind of heat is the new normal.
The other problem this year has been the delay of the summer monsoon season, which brings some thunderstorms and cools temperatures a bit, but increases the moisture and then the dry heat turns humid and we all know what that feels like. Rain has not fallen in Phoenix for 140 days. It’s hard to imagine not having any rain for that long of a period. After a few days below 110, this coming week will see temperatures climb back over 110 degrees.
Thanks to a man named John Gorrie, who lived in the humid swamps of Florida 90 years ago, who found a way to manufacture cold air called “vapor compression,” people in areas of extreme heat and humidity can at least survive in these extreme climates.
A few years later, Willis Carrier actually invented the air conditioner and the rest is history.
A lot of this new technology centered in Houston, Texas. Houston and the whole southwest, as well as Florida, would not exist had it not been for the invention of air conditioner. Movie theaters got chilled beginning in 1926 and by 1949, Houston’s Shamrock hotel had all 1,100 rooms air conditioned. The Astrodome became the first air conditioned stadium in the world in 1965. By 1980, even the Alamo was cooled.
There were those who disliked the new AC, including writer William Faulkner, who died of a heart attack brought on by excessive heat and humidity. He refused to have his Mississippi home cooled.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was another who disliked air conditioning. He would throw open the windows of the Oval Office and work in his shirtsleeves. Most people, however, who tried AC loved it and the rush to the south and west began. The warm climate states gained 29 Electoral College votes between 1940 and 1980, while the cooler northern states and the rust belt lost 31.
Unfortunately, all this air conditioning has a cost and the hotter the planet gets the more AC is needed. Twenty percent of our electricity is now used to cool our buildings. With the planet facing increased heat, the demands on the electric grid continue to grow and when the power goes out, people die. Cheap cold air fueled the migration southward. Perhaps the ever-increasing heat will have people heading back to the relative cool climates of the north, including our own Southwestern Pennsylvania.
(Information from “The Heat Will Kill You First” by Jeff Goodel)