This ain't hot

Anyone else feeling summer yet? The towncentre of my job is full of pale topless men, my office has no air con and my husband rolls around all night turning up the fan. Not to sound like a lizard but its not that hot. Anyone else amused or bemused by the weather the last two weeks?

Anyone else feeling summer yet? The towncentre of my job is full of pale topless men, my office has no air con and my husband rolls around all night turning up the fan. Not to sound like a lizard but its not that hot. Anyone else amused or bemused by the weather the last two weeks?

I come from Philadelphia (not too far from where you come from), and yes I agree, this ain't really all that hot.  But people here just aren't used to temps in the low 80's.  For us that's ideal sleeping temps, for them it just sucks the life out of them as my manager at work said to me yesterday.  One of our volunteers was telling about a summer vacation she had in Canada and how blistering hot that was!  Must have been all of 75 degrees up there!

what gets me here is the humidity and the lack of air conditioning to deal with it. I have never coped well in humidity and although the temperature is only at 80ish, the humidity levels bring that way up and make it horrible. In minnesota when we'd get 80ish with humidity levels over 80% everyone put the ac on, here the only place that has ac is my office and it actually makes me WANT to do overtime!

It's not hot, it's just close.

It's not that hot, but it's just about as hot as it gets here. I've spent several summers in the sweltering heat of the southern US and two summers in the New Mexico desert, so I get that it's not hot compared to the temperatures in parts of the US. However, the UK is not equipped to deal with high temperatures (lack of A/C and no fans), so I do struggle here... I've spent the last few days sweating at work because the A/C is broken, and I can't sleep because I'm too hot in my room and the sun keeps waking me up at 4 a.m.

There are several reasons for UK people treating this weather as if it's the hottest ever:

- many people in the UK have never experienced temperatures higher than the 80s, so to them it feels boiling hot
- there's very little air con here and people are not used to the stuffy heat
- our 'hot' weather is unpredictable and we never know how long it will last, so we make the most of it by dragging out all our summer wardrobes, even if it's not really that hot... because who knows how long they will have to sit in the closest waiting to be brought out again... everyone's making the most of it now in case the rest of the summer brings weeks of torrential rain and temps in the 50's and 60's (as it did a couple of summers ago)!

I lived in Louisiana, and I'm finding this incredibly hot and uncomfortable. Not where I am because we have a nice sea breeze and it's generally a few degrees cooler in any case. But I was visiting a friend 'inland' over the weekend and it was far too hot for me.

I work in a tiny office (just big enough to hold three desks), and I sit with my back to the window so I have the sun beating down on my back and the back of my neck all day (and the sun is high in the sky past leaving time).  All I have to cool myself off is one table fan.

I live in a house that is designed to retain heat - wall-to-wall carpeting, double glazing - and I also have just one small table fan for the whole house.

I'm hot.

Although it rained last night so hopefully it will be cooler today.

Not having A/C makes a huge difference.

In New York City, it got much hotter, but you could limit the amount of time you spent outside and escape from the heat by going somewhere air conditioned.

80 degree weather all day long is more uncomfortable than 100 degree weather for an hour.

Our flat is cool (thankfully), but some buildings don't even have proper ventilation which would help.  Last year during the week or so of hot weather, I remember just finding no relief anywhere because everywhere we went, places had their doors propped open because the climate control doesn't do hot.  Windows that open would help a lot.

Of course, I have lived most of my life in places where a week of 90+ temperatures was considered a heat wave, but it was a lot more humid.  I don't really find this humid at all and I get puzzled when people call this humid.  It actually feels a bit dry.

The first summer I was here, my MiL wouldn't let me play with her cat one day when it was 75 because it was "too hot."

Yes. I don't think it's humid at all.

Yes. I don't think it's humid at all.

The humidity here is 97% at the moment.

It depends what you're used to - compared to the very humid summers I experienced in Arkansas, the UK seems barely humid at all, but compared to the dry summers in New Mexico, the UK does feel humid. Even though the UK has 97% humidity right now, I don't actually find it all that bad (especially not compared to Arkansas, where it feels like you're stepping into a steam room every time you leave the house).

A couple of years ago I went to an academic conference in Northern California... a few days before the conference we got an email from the organisers to warn us that the area had very dry heat and to be prepared for that (it was 108 degrees when we landed and 112 degrees the next day - and there were tons of forest fires around in the area). However, since we were flying in from New Mexico, the air in California actually felt quite humid to us!

I loved the heat in the desert.  I was only there in the autumn (daytime temps of 100-110), so I might hate it full on summer, but the only thing that felt uncomfortably hot were my feet.

Re: Air conditioning, I've never owned one.  I always used fans whether I was living in cities in the north east (including NYC although my summer time was limited to the begining and end of summers as I was gone for most of July and August each year I lived there.  Admittedly, if I was there late July, early August, I might have broken down and picked a air con up) or out in the country.  The only exception was when I lived with my ex who worked nights and needed the coolness.  During that time, I hated summers because I couldn't tolerate the heat at all because I was used to the air conditioning.

I love this right now...Sunday was a bit warm-ish, yesterday was lovely in Derby...but I will miss the cooler summers when we head back to California and are back to 110-115 F for summer...that's the only thing that I hate about living in Cali, the stinkin hot summers...but like my mom says 'it's a dry heat' about 5-7% humidity in the summer.

There are several reasons for UK people treating this weather as if it's the hottest ever:

- many people in the UK have never experienced temperatures higher than the 80s, so to them it feels boiling hot

The summer of 2003 was unbearably hot in Europe, including the UK. From Wikipedia:

United Kingdom
The United Kingdom in general was suffering from a warm summer with temperatures well above average. However, Atlantic cyclones brought cool and wet weather for a short while at the end of July and very beginning of August before the temperatures started to increase substantially from 3 August onwards. Several weather records were broken in the United Kingdom, including the UK's highest recorded temperature - 38.5 °C (101.3 °F) at Brogdale orchards near Faversham in Kent on 10 August. London also recorded 38.0 °C (100.4 °F). Scotland also broke its highest temperature record with 32.9 °C (91.2 °F) recorded in Greycrook in the Scottish borders on the 9th August.[16]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave#United_Kingdom

That being said, I'm finding it to be miserable inside - most places I go into (including my apartment) feel like a wet washrag that's just come out of the microwave.

I loved the heat in the desert.  I was only there in the autumn (daytime temps of 100-110), so I might hate it full on summer, but the only thing that felt uncomfortably hot were my feet.

Re: Air conditioning, I've never owned one.  I always used fans whether I was living in cities in the north east (including NYC although my summer time was limited to the begining and end of summers as I was gone for most of July and August each year I lived there.  

There were summers in NYC when I didn't own an air conditioner, but I spent most of the day in an air conditioned office.

I remember in NYC there was a rule that if the temperature reached a certain point and the A/C in your office wasn't working, they had to send you home for health and safety reasons.

There were summers in NYC when I didn't own an air conditioner, but I spent most of the day in an air conditioned office.

Same here (in Philly), but I worked in a food market.  Looked forward to getting on the bus to go to work.  It was so nice to walk into the freezers at work, too!

In later years when I lived with my ex who was a baker he insisted on AC because he was hot all day at work.  It was so cold at night I need thick blankets.  It was so nice, but it does make the heat that much more hard to handle.  Walking out of the bedroom in the morning was like walking into a wet, hot wall of hell.