Comments on: Ah, Phoenix in the summer!

By: Amy

Amy — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 02:10:20 +0000

We flew to Arizona rented an RV to drive around the state and see the sights, years ago. It was August. We were descending into Phoenix and I said to my husband, “Did the pilot just say it was 114 in Phoenix?” I looked out the window. My youngest daughter was 5 or 6. She looked out the window at the sprawling city below and, having never heard the word ‘Phoenix’ before, confused it with a more familiar hot place and said, “Mommy, is that Venus?”

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 22:19:52 +0000

I believe you’ve mashed together two common words, humungous and jagunda to create the new “jumungous.”

It fails to embiggen the language. And really, the first two were perfectly cromulent, Ms. Neo-Con!

😉
‘

By: Occam's Beard

Occam's Beard — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 19:27:59 +0000

An odd thing i recall from a visit to Phoenix once was encountering a rail road tie i could lift with one hand. There was zero moisture in the big piece of wood.

Helps bat speed!

By: SteveH

SteveH — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:14:15 +0000

An odd thing i recall from a visit to Phoenix once was encountering a rail road tie i could lift with one hand. There was zero moisture in the big piece of wood.

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:03:42 +0000

oldskater: I’ve been in the South in the summer. I even spent a week or so in New Orleans in the summer, and it was plenty hot and humid. But I could still function outdoors, although not well. In Phoenix, however, being outdoors in the summer seemed potentially deadly, and in fairly short order. It was around 115 or so during the days the whole time I was there. I don’t care how dry it is, it was still nearly unendurable.

Your mileage may differ.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 17:36:46 +0000

I heard that, every year, 100,000 people move to the Phoenix area, presumably retirees who visited during the Christmas holidays, and 80,000 leave.
My wife and I visited some redwood forest park or other north of San Francisco, having arrived there by the coast highway from LA. Got into the car in bright, beautiful sweater weather and headed east to pick up I5, wanting to see some of central CA.
Three hours later at a rest area, we got out into what felt like standing in front of an oven. Hustled through our stop there and drove until about ten in the evening, needing gas. An interchange with a couple of warehouses, a motel, four huge truck stops. A viciously hot, dry, busy wind from the west, no lights beyond this technocratic island of life, the rumble of idling semis, and I felt as if we were on another planet. Got into Bakersfield an hour or so later.
San Luis Obispo, though….
Been to Flagstaff in winter and summer. Pleasant each time.

By: oldskater

oldskater — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:58:41 +0000

It really isn’t quite as bad as it sounds.

I grew up and still live in PHX. In PHX, you know summer is finally hear when you step outside and it smells like hot tar.

The Monsoons are the break from it, not the plague of summer.

Temps will drop 20-25 degrees after a good rain. It’s a wonderful relief. Dust storm the other night? Not so much.

Wife and I were skateboarding at the park when it hit. Talk about a gritty ride! Had to wait 20 minutes before it was safe to drive home.

Dad used to say they should outlaw air conditioning, and then only the folks who loved PHX would stay. True enough, but then Air makes this place totally livable (I should know, didn’t get air conditioning until I was 35).

Tucson? Forget Tucson, liberal paradise on it’s death throws for all the obvious reasons (Sorry to you folks down there, but all you have to do is drive the 2 cities to see the diffence).

Don’t let the heat scare you, really. Almost the entire south is worse then PHX in the summer, honest.

Dry heat means getting wet works like it should, you cool off.

Oh, and I skate year around, even when it’s 105 at 9pm, as does the wife. And no, I’m no kid at 46, just immature…

By: Ariel

Ariel — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:41:32 +0000

Occam’s Beard,
Consider Tucson if you need a moderate sized city to be comfortable, it does run 5-10 degrees cooler. Otherwise there is Prescott-Prescott Valley (pop. about 75000 total) which has all the amenities, an elevation of 5500 feet, and moderate/light snow in the winters. If you want real heat, try Bullhead and Lake Havasu City where 125 degrees isn’t unusual.
Really though, Phoenix isn’t a hell of a lot worse than San Bernadino/Riverside, and or that hellhole of an Imperial Valley.

LabRat,

I grew up going between Phoenix (summers) and the San Gabriel Valley, finishing HS in Phoenix. Used to joke that if it wasn’t 110 or better it wasn’t hot. Don’t anymore because after about 45 summers here, it just isn’t funny…

By: Surellin

Surellin — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:44:56 +0000

I spent quite a few summer vacations travelling across Arizona when I was a kid. I remember mostly that peanut butter sandwiches are terrible things when they start to melt and that when my brother and I (again!) complained about not having air conditioning in the car, Dad cheerfuly told us we did so have AC – we had “470” AC. That is, we rolled down all four windows and drove 70 miles per hour.

By: SteveH

SteveH — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 10:10:51 +0000

People are always saying Phoenix isn’t so bad because it’s a dry heat. But isn’t inside your oven a dry heat?