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The Hindustan Times reports:
An unrelenting heat wave has killed more than 1,100 people across the country over a fortnight with southern neighbours Andhra Pradesh and Telangana bearing the brunt, as torrid temperatures melted roads in the national capital and have forced people indoors.
Authorities said on [May 26] most of the victims were construction workers, the elderly, or the homeless, as the weather office predicted the mercury will continue to soar this week with substantial relief expected only when the southwest monsoon hits the Indian mainland around May 31.
[...] The meteorological department issued "red box" warnings for Odisha, Jharkhand, and coastal Andhra Pradesh, signalling high chances of heatstroke, dehydration, and fatality with temperatures inching upwards of 45°C and conditions worsened by constant dry, sweltering winds.
[The state of] Odisha continued to reel, with [the town of] Titlagarh in Balangir district clocking the highest temperature of 47.6°C [117.7°F], while authorities said they received reports of 67 deaths in the past week.
[...] Experts warned [that] no let-up in the heat wave would lead to large-scale power outages in several parts of north India, bringing back memories of a horrific blackout in 2012 that affected nearly 600 million people.
In a separate story, Arne Winguth, Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Texas-Arlington led a study on future environmental conditions in central Texas in the year 2100.
The professor was interviewed by KERA TV:
Winguth's study predicts more cracks and potholes, even buckling and melting of roadways in extreme 125-degree heat.
"The 125° Fahrenheit is a prediction for the future that is predicted for the year 2100. That would be the extreme temperature--that is based on most recent climate assimilation from the National Center for Atmospheric research."
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Thursday May 28 2015, @01:45PM
It's not too difficult to live at that temperature but you have to drink like 15 liters of water a day. You will pretty much never stop drinking. Even then your urine will be so dark yellow that it is practically brown.
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(Score: 1, Flamebait) by ikanreed on Thursday May 28 2015, @02:32PM
I appreciate your considered opinion, as an educated medical professional.
That's what you are, right?
Because otherwise I'd say you're talking out your ass about a heatwave that left over a thousand dead who certainly didn't find it "not too difficult to live".
(Score: 5, Touché) by tibman on Thursday May 28 2015, @02:47PM
Not a medical professional, just a quasi-medic. I have stuck IVs into over 20 people who have either fallen unconscious or became delirious from dehydration. If you don't drink then you will die.
Staying hydrated is not difficult but some people will always fail to do it. I am not speaking ill of the dead, some may not have had access to clean water or had other complications.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Thursday May 28 2015, @03:52PM
Question: why would your urine be dark yellow? My blood doesn't need more cleaning when I drink more because of heat. As I overdrink, I usually produce clear urine.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jcross on Thursday May 28 2015, @04:15PM
Because your body is prioritizing sending the water to your sweat glands over sending it to your kidneys, since the heat will kill you faster than a toxic bloodstream. Or another way to put it is that you lose so much of the water you're drinking to sweat that you never manage to get very hydrated.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday May 28 2015, @04:33PM
jcross is spot on. Even after 15 liters of water you can't pee enough to fill a coffee cup : ) You sweat so much that your clothes become encrusted like some sort of smelly exoskeleton. I highly recommend the experience!
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by KGIII on Thursday May 28 2015, @05:47PM
I spent a couple of months in Morocco and, while outside, I would sweat so much that not only did what you describe happen but I would find that there was a layer of salt on the inside brim of my hat and on my socks. It was new to me but it turns out that others experienced this on a regular basis. I dislike the heat, there is a limit to how much clothing one can remove while still remaining socially acceptable in most areas.
I retired to Maine, quite north and to the west of the State. I have lived in the southern US before. My observation is that we are now getting weather similar to the NC and VA areas of the country much of the time now. It has steadily been moving to this point. I dare say that AGW is a problem and is real. I make no comments about the veracity of the conclusions drawn by climate scientists but I do say that I, personally, have observed a definite warming trend that has been noticeable for a number of years in my specific area and, while not always warmer, the weather has been altered a great deal since I first wintered in Maine, when I came here for school. in my youth.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 5, Informative) by mrchew1982 on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:06PM
When you drink that much water you also have to be careful about hyponatremia, a.k.a. not enough salt in your system. Most western diets have an overabundance of salt, not so sure about Indian diets.
I first learned about this when my dad worked in a mine in southern Utah. They had areas that were around 120°, they provided "salt pills" to take with their water. He had to stop each hour out to dump the sweat out of his wader boots. Luckily they had showers and laundry on site, so we never had to see that aspect, but the salt pills were interesting. They weren't just straight NaCl, I would imagine that it was pretty much gatorade minus the sugar- in pill form.
Which brings up another awesome thing that *everyone* should know about, WHO oral rehydration solution:
Ingredients:
- 3/8 tsp salt (sodium chloride)
- ¼ tsp Morton® Salt Substitute® (potassium chloride)
- ½ tsp baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
- 2 tbsp + 2 tsp sugar (sucrose)
- Add tap water to make one (1) liter
there are regional adaptations to locally available ingredients, but that stuff is magic for people suffering from dehydration due to vomiting, diarrhea, or heat exhaustion...
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Thursday May 28 2015, @10:25PM
It's got what plants crave! It's got electrolytes!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 28 2015, @04:58PM
The CDC (NIOSH) agrees with tibman.
Heat Stress [cdc.gov]
Drink water frequently. Drink enough water that you never become thirsty. Approximately 1 cup every 15-20 minutes.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday May 28 2015, @05:22PM
eating is also critical. i've seen lots of people who kept drinking water and wondered why they were still dehydrated. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday May 28 2015, @05:52PM
More accurately, salt is needed in addition to water. If you lick your arm and it tastes good, you need salt. (And you can get enough to scrape by from licking it off your skin.) Those flavor packets that come with ramen work great for the purpose, and slip handily into a pocket.
As to the notion that you promptly sweat to death in such temps, millions of humans have lived in hot climates since time immemorial, and survived the experience. I myself lived in the SoCal desert for 28 years, where the average summer high was 115F (and the peak was 122F), and it's hot from sunup to sundown, and I work outdoors. Yes, you need to stay hydrated, but it's not nearly as difficult as various comments here make it sound. Your body is adapted for reasonable conservation of water, and while constant hydration is ideal, a few hours between tanking up is not typically a huge problem. If you get to the "brown urine" stage, you've been seriously underhydrating for considerably more than a few hours.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:49PM
if you're going to go for accuracy, you need sodium, potassium, calcium, and chlorine (commonly referred to "elecrolytes") for your nerves to work. there's more than just salts required to stay hydrated though. speaking from personal experience, if i get dehydrated, simply drinking gatorade or something won't fix it, i have to eat to get rehydrated. this (myth 5) [care2.com] is the best i can quickly find to back up that hydration is more than just water and electrolytes.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday May 28 2015, @08:22PM
The fact that we need more than just sodium salt is probably why ramen flavor packets work so well... my guess is they contain a lot of potassium, that being the critical element when someone is to the nauseated stage; consuming a ramen flavor packet and some water effects a cure in about 10 minutes. (I had the fun of beating a former Seattle resident with a cluestick til she figured out life in the desert....)
That article doesn't strike me as very balanced either, in fact looks to me like it comes from the vegan agenda side of things... eating carbs, and more critically, fibre, helps dehydrate you: water is required to metabolize carbs, and fibre retains water in the gut rather than letting the gut resorb it; that water is lost.** Conversely, metabolizing fat releases some water into your system.
Gatorade doesn't rehydrate well because it's too "thick" -- too much salt (here meaning sodium, potassium, et al.) and especially too much sugar; overall, it makes you more thirsty, not less (well, that sells you more Gatorade, eh?) Dilute it by half and it's not so bad. The stuff made as livestock electrolyte (made to treat scouring calves) works best, but tastes like pee.
The formula used to rehydrate kids by relief workers in Africa is one cup of water, a three-finger pinch of salt, and about a spoonful of sugar. I remember when this was first promulgated by relief outfits some decades ago, and how much better it worked than water alone. Suddenly their save rate went way up, IIRC something like 90% vs 10% for plain water.
** Realworld example: Raising fibre in dog food by just one percent =doubles= the amount of water the dog needs to drink. And substituting soybean meal for meat meal doubles or even triples the dog's water requirement, if not more -- I've seen the water needs of a medium-sized dog go from about a gallon a day to over FIVE gallons a day, just from being put on a high-fibre, soy-based diet. Conversely, substitute fat for some of the carbs and the dog's water intake will shrink by up to half.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @02:53PM
I can speak as someone who was deployed to Iraq.
Yes, you certainly can live in 115 degree heat, you just drink a lot of water. People routinely live in places like that.
Hell, the vehicle I drove would get to 140 inside of it on some days.
You don't need to be a medical professional to know that drinking lots of water will help prevent many heat related injuries. The people that are dying here are those with not enough access to potable water and elderly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @03:50PM
A thousand in a country of well over billion individuals is a rounding error.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday May 28 2015, @04:05PM
Approximately 1% of the deaths in a given week being directly attributable to a sepcific cause isn't a "rounding error".
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @07:56PM
Funny how you ignored everyone that proved your hostile ignorant snark wrong while openly challenging someone else on a technical issue that is not related.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday May 28 2015, @09:06PM
And you have an extremely disturbed notion of "proof" if you think that a young, fit military deployment into an arid desert with an air conditioned base is "proof I'm wrong". This shit kills people. It objectively was listed as a cause of death for thousands of people in the last week.
Jesus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @08:45PM
WRONG!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2015, @09:49AM
Blah blah blah. Seriously, this news has two "noteworthy" items:
- Holy fucking shit almost 50 degrees!!1
- Holy fucking shit only 1000 casualties!!1
To put things in scale, in an Estonia-sized country this would be 1 lost life, and if there was that hot, I'd expect something much worse. Add to that that much of India is extremely poor, which should inflate the count even further.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @10:23PM
You, sir or madame, are a pompous horse's arse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 28 2015, @03:13PM
Assuming you are able to obtain 15 liters of drinkable water per day without difficulty.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jcross on Thursday May 28 2015, @04:12PM
It does also depend heavily on the humidity. Not sure what the humidity looks like in this part of India, but if it's high enough, then no amount of water is going to save you because your sweat won't evaporate fast enough to cool you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Thursday May 28 2015, @04:40PM
That's a really good point. What a bad way to go
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(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Thursday May 28 2015, @11:42PM
Why would heat darken your urine? There should be less toxins in your bloodstream with the constant drinking and pissing. Whenever I drink that much by pee goes pure crystal clear.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday May 29 2015, @02:11AM
So much sweat : ) https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=7663&cid=189142 [soylentnews.org]
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(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday May 29 2015, @01:44AM
It's not too difficult to live at that temperature but you have to drink like 15 liters of water a day. You will pretty much never stop drinking.
I lived in Death Valley for nearly three years, including two summers. My first summer there I worked at night and I did not see the temperature drop lower than 92 F from June to late September. Usually by 9 a.m. the temperature was in triple digits and we usually had daily highs in the 110's and several long stretches where it was in the 120's. At that temperature, simply walking the half mile slightly uphill to the housing was taxing, particularly if the wind was blowing. Without drinking constantly, you would feel your heart start pounding harder as your blood thickened. You would not notice the dehydration as sweat evaporated as fast as it came out. If you had a backpack on, underneath would be wet but everything else was dry. When you got inside however, where there was more humidity, it seemed as if the sweat would start pouring out of you. I used to start guzzling water and literally sit naked on top of the AC unit until I stabilized. In Death Valley, with summer humidities sometimes in single digits, the primary risk is dehydration, with heat stroke and death as a final result. I imagine that it is quite a bit more humid in most of India, so the risk of heat prostration, where the sweat does not evaporate fast enough to cool the body, is the greater risk. Same end result though...