Comment by jimmytucson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jimmytucson | Hacker News Reader

I feel like extreme weather is right up there with super moons and other astronomical events when it comes to generating headlines, so I did a time constrained Google search for "heat dome" and here's what turned up:

2020-07-10 - "How a ‘Heat Dome’ Forms—and Why This One Is So Perilous (A massive, intense heat wave is settling over the continental US. The ravages of the Covid pandemic are going to make it all the more deadly.)"

https://www.wired.com/story/how-a-heat-dome-forms/

2019-07-29 - "What exactly are heat domes and why are they so long-lasting and miserable? (Since late June, bouts of extreme heat have scorched both the United States and Europe. To blame are large, stagnant zones of high pressure known as heat domes.)"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/07/29/what-exact...

2018-07-29 - "Scorching, long-duration heat wave to roast much of U.S."

https://www.axios.com/scorching-heat-wave-hits-us-millions-a...

2017-07-22 - "Meteorologists keep mentioning the 'heat dome' - What is it?"

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/What-s-a-heat-dome-11240...

2016-07-22 - "'Heat Dome' Causing Excessive Temperatures In Much Of U.S."

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/22/487031278...

I don't mean to make light of important meteorological events, especially as they relate to climate change, but can anybody with better knowledge tell me if this is a significant incident, or just another "super blood worm moon to appear larger than it has since 1944"?

I mean, it was 108 degrees in Seattle on Monday. The previous record was 103. Not sure what more information you need to determine significance-- it's literally never been hotter

Yes, the absolute values being seen here are breaking past records by up to 10*F. This isn't media just making something of nothing.

We're up to 1.78:1.00 ratio of hot to cold record breaking events in the past year. In the decade of the 1950s that ratio was 1.09:1.00.

https://www.climatesignals.org/data/record-high-temps-vs-rec...

https://skepticalscience.com/Record-high-temperatures-versus...

If the same headline comes up every year then it's easy to construe it as headline-generating pandering.

But the facts are, that the earth is warming more and more every year, and if you are under 40 then you have never experienced a year of below-average temperatures. The headlines are repeated because we break new records every year.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/10/if-you...

The same headline is not coming up every year, at least with regards to the weather event the article is about. Seattle's previous record was from 11 years ago in 2009. Seattle also hit triple digit temperatures two other times, in 1941 and 1994. Source: https://www.seattlepi.com/local/weather/article/10-years-ago...

There were pretty significant heat records set in western Canada

> The ravages of the Covid pandemic are going to make it all the more deadly.

Yeah... um... call me skeptical on that claim. So far as I can tell, Covid didn't break anybody's air conditioners. It didn't (so far as I know) leave people more susceptible to heat. That article seems like attention-grabbing nonsense. (I'm not blaming you, just commenting on what your search turned up.)

I agree it's probably just attention grabbing nonsense, but I'll note there are a bunch of communal shelters being used by people who don't have facilities otherwise to get out of the dangerous heat levels. Bringing a bunch of strangers together into a communal heat shelter isn't ideal in a pandemic.

In Miami a few days ago, an apartment block collapsed. Around 150 perished. In the heat wave that hit British Colombia, 230 people perished.

When heat waves hit Europe in the summer, there are thousands to tens of thousands of deaths. It's nothing to sneer at.

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