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Heat Wave to Hit Two-Thirds of the U.S. Here’s What to Expect.
Dangerously hot temperatures are expected to spread across the Central and Eastern United States on Wednesday through the weekend, with temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the hardest-hit places, the National Weather Service has warned.
And even when the sun dips below the horizon, temperatures in many places are expected to remain in the 80s.
The hottest part of the country? Smack dab in the middle.
Everyone living in the region stretching from northern Oklahoma and central Nebraska through Iowa, Missouri and western Illinois should brace for a “prolonged period of dangerously hot temperatures and high humidity,” the warnings say. People in central and south central Kansas should expect to endure highs of about 102 degrees; the temperature in Des Moines was expected to hover around 100.
Excessive heat warnings have also been posted farther east, for parts of New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania.
All told, at least 15 million people across the United States are currently being warned of dangerously high temperatures that could affect human health between Wednesday and Friday.
By the weekend, what meteorologists are calling a “heat dome” in the middle part of the country is expected to spread into the Great Lakes and the East Coast.
Extreme heat can kill. Here’s what you can do to stay safe.
“The combination of heat and humidity can take its toll on someone who is outside and overdoing it,” said Richard Bann, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center. “It can be life-threatening.”
Last year, 108 people died from extreme heat, compared to just 30 who died from cold, according to statistics on weather-related fatalities released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Here are four safety recommendations from the National Weather Service:
Drink plenty of fluids.
Stay in an air-conditioned room.
Stay out of the sun.
Check on relatives and neighbors, especially the elderly.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by stormreaver on Thursday July 18 2019, @01:07PM (19 children)
I clicked on the article, hoping for a soundly reasoned argument for Celsius over Fahrenheit. Instead, all I got was a sea of bulleted logical fallacies.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday July 18 2019, @03:16PM (18 children)
Okay, how about this:
First, the problems:
- Temperature is a bit funny compared to all other measurements, because the natural zero point (absolute zero) is so far outside human experience as to be irrelevant for most things, and we almost never measure anything where precision is important (outside of certain chemical reactions in the lab)
- In isolation the scale we use is really pretty arbitrary. Inches, centimeters, or hands - so long as we all agree that's all that really matters. Except that it makes things "cleaner" if the base unit is just slightly smaller than the normal amount of detail that we care about so we can mostly avoid both decimals (or fractions) and large numbers.
My argument
- For air temperature, Farenheit is indeed probably a bit closer to an ideal "just slightly too small" unit size, but you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference between 75F and 77F without a thermometer anyway, so the larger units of Celsius aren't actually that big of a big problem.
- For pretty much everything else, Farenheit units are a bit on the small side to avoid large numbers, but still too large to avoid decimals for temperature-sensitive work
- Celsius offers much more natural endpoints for working with water at atmospheric pressure - and water is probably the single most widely worked and biologically relevant substance on Earth (and it's working with things where measurements become particularly relevant) cooking, disinfecting, storing food, casting cements... the phase-transition points of water are highly relevant to pretty much anything even tangentially relating to biology or weather.
- Celsius is integrated into the SI system, where all the unit sizes are interrelated in an easy-to-work-with fashion. The value of that cannot be overstated. Admittedly not directly super relevant to most people most of the time, but extremely relevant to engineers and scientists, and you really want to make those people's work easier, since their work tends to make your life better. Farenheight just sort of exists as a completely arbitrary system of measurement, just like the rest of the imperial units.
Basically, Fahrenheit admittedly has a modest advantage in offering more detailed air temperatures without decimals, but is inferior in every other respect.
And if you really want your weather forecast without decimals, they could always simply offer temperatures in dC instead of C: A slightly cool day is ~200dC, 400dC is a seriously hot, water freezes at 0, and -200dC is seriously cold
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:32PM (10 children)
Imperial units are a bit off, but the U.S. customary units are not completely arbitrary. Meanwhile, SI units are not as perfectly coordinated as you learned in school.
For example, 1 pint of water weighs roughly 1 pound. One oz of water weighs 1 oz. On the SI side, 1 ml of water has a mass of 1 gram, but only at 3.98C. (there's a nice round number!). At any other temperature, the measure is approximate. Metric is based on ten, customary is based on 2 and 3.
Until recently, the Kg was based on Le Grand K. Completely arbitrary. Now it's based on physical constants (we're pretty sure they're constant anyway) but in such a way that they agree with our best guess at the old artifact based measurements (kinda like the argument that the Space Shuttle's SRBs were based on the width of a horse's ass).
When it comes down to it, both systems have merits and demerits. It's just a matter of picking one and being clear about which one is in use.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stormreaver on Thursday July 18 2019, @08:21PM (6 children)
That's my opinion, too. I use Metric where I'm used to using Metric, and I use Imperial where I'm used to using Imperial. I don't share the fervor with which some people insist that everyone must use one or the other, and I have seen nothing compelling about either that isn't offset by some other imperfection in the same. They both have cases where they are better than, and cases where they are worse than, the other.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday July 19 2019, @03:25AM
Thank you. Some sanity in these unit discussions. They all have merit, and frankly, I can and do use any / all.
The one measurement system I really like but rarely gets used is inches with decimal. 2.34" for example. But most tape measures are in fractions, which can be tedious.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 19 2019, @03:18PM (4 children)
I've been familiar with both all my life, yet which gets used for what seems to automatically happen in my brain. Frex, temperature outdoors is in F but inside my PC is in C. Body temp can go either way (exact temp in C, fever in F). They're both useful, depending.
Conversely, forced change is just annoying, and removes a useful metric. (Yeah, I see what I did there...)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:04AM (3 children)
Oh, so now you're saying metric is useful?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:10AM (2 children)
Depends :D
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 20 2019, @05:45AM (1 child)
Wha? You buy Depends in metric size?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Reziac on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:16PM
Nah, don't need 'em that small ;)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:08AM (2 children)
Can you offer an example of a non-arbitrary customary unit? Obviously, the specific unit of measure called "1 unit" will almost always be arbitrary - most measure have a natural "zero point", but very few have any other point where a specific numerical value makes sense - angles are the only ones I can think of offhand, with 1 revolution and 1 radian both reflecting fundamental geometric relationships. Time actually has several natural reference points, though they're kind of planet-specific: day, year, and lunar month, and unfortunately there's no straight-forward relationship between them, and in fact none of them are even a constant length. So we've all settled on the completely arbitrary "second" as a common reference time.
The choice of unit subdivisions is to a large degree a combination of aesthetic and practical choices SI chose base 10, which is certainly easy for calculations, but admittedly lacks some of the graceful subdivisions that come in usfeul in so many situation. Some of the choices in customary are *still* really questionable though - for example 5280 feet to a mile? really? 5280 = 2⁵ × 3 × 5 × 11... why exactly is there a factor of 11 in there? Do you often need to subdivide lengths 11 ways? At least they have one 60 in there - those are beautifully sub-dividable (by 2,3,4,5,6,and 10) - and they could have added a second 60 by using 15 instead of that weird 11 (would have made the conversion 33% easier too, at a cleaner 7200ft/mile)
I should perhaps clarify that by nonarbitrary SI units I mean that unit sizes are chosen so that their fundamental relationships are expressed cleanly, without having to add arbitrary constants. The BTU and calorie both demonstrate that relationship in the specific context of water at reference conditions and I'll leave them alone as their own weird calorimetry domain thing - except insofar
For example, length and volume are closely related, so your units should convert without any arbitrary constants. In SI 1 cubic hand(decimeter) = 1 L, while in customary 231 cubic inches = 1 gallon, or 7.49052 gallons = 1 cubic foot.
Or take power - one of the most common ways to calculate mechanical power is force*distance/time, and in SI: 1N * 1m / 1s = 1W.
Now do that in customary, where hp is the common unit of power: 1 foot*1lb/1s = 1/550 hp (again that awkward prime factor of 11, which in this context means that there are no smaller units ...) ... and I'll say nothing more about the fact that the US already uses metric for pretty much everything related to electricity, which makes for a constant ugly conversion between mechanical and electrical power.
I think a big part of the problem is that the fundamental relationships between different measurement domains wasn't really well understood until quite recently - Isaac Newton only published his laws of motion, which were the foundation of those precise interrelationships, in 1687 - long after the customary units had been established, and the customary units were sort of jostled into something at least offering somewhat subdividable integer ratios.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday July 20 2019, @02:15AM
11: length of the average marching soldier's foot.
Well, it makes sense to me...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday July 20 2019, @03:16AM
I did name some non-arbitrary relationships in my original post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @07:14PM (2 children)
Here’s the deal: having multiple systems leads to mistakes, sometimes fatal mistakes, or lost satellites.
Even for something as simple as drive on the left or right
https://fox13now.com/2014/09/25/british-tourists-driving-on-wrong-side-of-road-cause-fatal-motorcycle-accident/ [fox13now.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @08:27PM (1 child)
Tell you what. If I want to do some chemistry experiments, I'll use Celsius or Kelvin. If I want to know how hot it is outside, Fahrenheit.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:17AM
Of course modern weather prediction relies on a on lots of complicated physics modeling - for which metric is much better suited. So it's a pretty good bet that they're basically converting their results to "yokel units" at the last minute in order to broadcast to the ignorant masses.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Thursday July 18 2019, @08:31PM
Except for moms. They're all granted a vision of 0K sometime during pregnancy, of which they retain a distant perception upon waking. That's why they're always telling you to wear a sweater.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday July 19 2019, @02:01AM (2 children)
I think the main argument is that there are only 4 countries in the world that use Farenheit (the others being the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and Liberia). By standardising on Celsius, we'd be able to eliminate all of that effort that goes into conversion - providing F and C options in software and hardware, printed scales on thermometers, different models of devices like ovens (which may need to have C and F versions for sale, potentially resulting in increased inventory cost for businesses), making journalists and writers have to include both temperatures etc. It's a lot of wasted effort for no particular good reason.
I agree that the two scales are largely arbitrary - therefore there's no inherent reason to maintain a different system to the rest of the world just for the sake of it.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 19 2019, @02:39AM
Why have two different models? nowadays it should just be a switch on the controller, or in the software as the case may be.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:21AM
An excellent point.