What is wet bulb? I’m from the dry Canadian prairies
Essentially, your body cools you down by sweating, but if you reach a combination of sweat and heat above a certain degree, your body is unable to cool you down by sweating, as the air already has enough moisture and its hotter than your sweat.
Then you lose the ability to regulate your heat and you rapidly head towards a heat stroke.
It’s the temperature a thermometer will get to through evaporative cooling. You measure it by putting a wet cloth on the bulb of a thermometer and letting the water evaporate.
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Ok I found this I think I get it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
One option, if you live somewhere where this is a likely event, is to prep an ice room - an underground room that is small, with thick well insulated walls. That alone will keep it ~5c which is good, but it can be lowered further by freezing blocks of ice and stocking the room up when the power goes out/heat waves hit.
Note this requires a number of things - a large Chest freezer to freeze big blocks in (small blocks melt quicker. Bigger the block, the longer the room lasts). It also requires a basement you can modify, and a floor drain for when the ice slowly melts.
It’s a lot of work and likely not worth it unless you Need to use it regularly, though with climate change it may become more useful. As always, consider radon readings in your basements, as well as a CO monitor. Bad air sinks, and the whole point of this is you don’t want to die
My greatest fear with the chaos and challenges that are going to happen over the next few decades in terms of environmental change is not the weather, not the heat, not the cold, not the tornadoes or hurricanes … the thing that scares me the most are people.
As the environment becomes more extreme and we experience more and more emergencies, people are going to start panicking … panicked people are going to do some crazy things … the worse conditions get, the worse people will become.
This sounds false. Aren’t there places in Africa where it gets to like 120⁰f and few have AC?
It isn’t the temperature, it’s the humidity.
Wet bulb is a way measure how much evaporative cooling you can have. Once wet bulb gets to 95°F even a healthy fit individual will die given enough time even in the shade with a fan. It might be 112 but as long as the wet bulb stays below 95°F your body can cool with sweat. Any higher wet bulb the human body only heats up from the environment and can no longer cool, eventually leading to fatal hyperthermia (heat exhaustion and heat stroke).
Interesting. Thanks for explaining
That is exactly the conditions humans are adapted for: high arid heat. We are the world champions of sweating to stay cool, but that does nothing in humid weather. At high humidity, the temperature only needs to be near body temperature to kill you.
That’s likely dry bulb temperature. Wet bulb temperature is lower except at 100% humidity
“It’s a dry heat” isn’t just a cliche.
a supply of chemical ice packs could work as a short term/emergency response. Use them to survive short term (hours/days) while you leave the area / get the power restored / AC fixed / or the heat breaks?
They have a shelf life, but it’s 1-2 years, so you would have to stay on top of expiration.
