The Great Phoenix Bake-Off

 

by Pa Rock

Former Phoenician

Unless, like former President George W. Bush, I somehow managed to misunderestimate the situation - and I don't think I did - today marks that 30th consecutive day that my old stomping ground - Phoenix, Arizona - has seen temperatures in excess of 110 degrees F.  I spoke to a friend out there earlier this week, a lady who has lived in the "Valley of the Sun" for many years - and she is righteously miserable.  The leather-skinned people who inhabit the area are used to the heat, they just are not used to it being so damned unrelenting.

Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes the nation's fifth-largest city of Phoenix, is reporting 25 heat-related deaths during this current climate-change-induced crisis, and they are "investigating" 249 more.  The county has brought in refrigerated storage units to act as make-shift morgues until the crisis passes.

Phoenix may get a reprieve on Monday when there is a chance of an Arizona "monsoon" rain blowing through that could lower the temperature to around 105 degrees F. on Monday and 106 degrees F. on Tuesday, but on Wednesday it should be right back up at or above 110 degrees F. and and then reach a high of 117 degrees F. on the weekend.

At least two global climate organizations have proclaimed that this July has been the hottest month ever recorded, and likely the hottest thirty-day period on earth in at least the past 120,000 years, but some US politicians remain highly skeptical of science.  Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, a former football coach without scientific training, told Huff Post, "There's a very scientific word for this:  It's called summer."  After launching that humorous distraction, the smarmy politician went on to declare:  "The world's not heating up, come on."  Spray paint that on those make-shift morgues, Tommy!

Tommy Tuberville is, of course, a Republican, and he knows better than to believe in science, but the rest of us must figure out ways to live and survive in the real world, the one that IS heating up!

Stay safe, Phoenix!