‘Hell on earth’: Phoenix’s extreme heatwave tests the limits of survival
Residents of Arizona’s capital are used to scorching heat, but the summer’s unyielding sizzle is making it harder to live there
ARE THE GOLF COURSES OK????
What about the Saudi alfalfa farms????
That city ain't right, I tell you whut.
I'm of the position that anyone who moves to Phoenix is stupid and I'm not gonna feel bad for them for being the first victims of climate change you did this to yourself.
Phoenix never should have been the cite of a major city. Whoever is there right now has to be thinking - how the hell do I get out of this hellfire?
I'm literally thinking of leaving in five years time. The colorado will run dry and this place will be unlivable. Oh, and we just appointed some Saudi pocket mongrel to handle our water. Ahould be fine trusting our life source with the corpos.
The fact that there are so many tournament class golf courses there is what always perplexes me
There's money and land there. Which are the two big needs. While it obviously costs a ton to have the grass, they really only have grass where it's absolutely needed and everything else is super cheap to maintain, also less grass increases the difficulty.
Apart from the views, desert golf is vastly overrated though.
Lived in vegas for a few years once. Every year around June I’d start seriously planning my escape. Then summer would end and I’d hate it less. And get back to my routine. Repeat.
Leaving that place was one of the best feelings. Instantly happier.
For those of us that have been here for many years (half my life and I'm in my 40's), its not bad. Yeah, its very hot and very dangerous, but we know how to live in it and take care of ourselves for the most part. By mid-morning, all the humidity is burned off and I actually think it feels kind of nice.
But it's been like that for two solid weeks. A lot of people simply can't handle long stretches of heat that simply don't stop.
The only time I've been was during a layover our way to California. It was 105F outside on the tarmac. It felt weirdly nice. I get the whole dry heat thing now (I'm in Atlanta).
The fact that there are so many tournament class golf courses there is what always perplexes me
I live here. A couple weeks ago my AC went out and I had to have an after hours/emergency tech come out - blown capacitor. The next day one of my co-workers had his AC go out - blown capacitor. Yesterday my mother-in-laws AC went out - blown capacitor. It’s so hot that these units are running basically nonstop. AC companies are making money hand over fist right now.
If it helps at all, AC capacitors are extremely easy to replace, so if you had an extra or two on hand, that might save you some headache and money later. Tell you friends. I hope you can stay cool!
Do be carefully though, capacitors can store an electrical charge, even broken ones can still be dangerous.
Def did this one by one to all of the caps in my old AC unit. Amazing how resourceful you become when faced with a night of discomfort and a huge repair bill.
Mine died. $12,000 to replace. It's insane!!
Y'all lucky to get a quick fix... Can't be cheap tho
I bought a book a few years ago and I think it is called Climatopolis. The first chapter talks about how major cities in certain parts of the world (focused mostly on the U.S.) are fast becoming super heated islands because of all of the steel and glass and concrete in densely packed over urbanized areas and furthermore, that there will be no escape for the poor and disenfranchised because the asphalt absorbs the heat so night gives no reprieve.
It blows my mind how homes in the desert hardly use swamp coolers. It's just a sign to me how unprepared people are. If the grid becomes unstable, this place almost immediately becomes uninhabitable due to how inefficient ac is. Homes are hardly built with efficiency in mind. I see homes painted black, with floor to ceiling windows, set on top of sand stone cliffs. Nobody out here seems to realize how dangerous this all is or that they're living in a desert.
Ffs if it were me id dig into the ground and paint my walls white, and only put windows on the north/south sides, use geothermal cooling/a swamp cooler, etc.
I can't help but laugh. Isn't Phoenix home to some of the most vocal climate change deniers? Must be just local weather as it's not happening anywhere on the world. Sicily experiences these kinds of temperatures on the reg.
What do you call those people who remove the filters from their exhausts? Smoke-drivers or something?
They can control the exhaust. It's called "rolling coal." They do it to me because I have a Prius. I don't get it. "Haw haw! Yew pay less for gas than us!" Sorry I'm such an evil liberal for doing that?
You know why they think that. They believe, truly, that God made the world for man to exploit and use up, and anyone who says otherwise is spouting the Devil's lies.
Some will claim to believe that it doesn't matter one way or the other, that this is the only life we have, and that there's no point in sacrificing our own joy for the future of others. This apathetic stance is held by many, but it is wielded as a shield and reinforced by those who believe that Earth is just a toy for us to have fun with and break, but won't say it openly.
Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, this conflict is a religious one, and anyone who denies that is only enabling the wingnuts destroying this planet.
Put that way makes it even more hilarious. Look at this dummy that cares about the environment. Carbon footprint? Is that when I stick my size 13 up your namby pamby ass, boy?!
Lol, wait till they drain the last of the aquifer. That will be hell on earth. Actual mad max.
Sad, grim story aside, check the article out for a picture of the worlds most ripped homeless guy. The dude should be modeling swimsuits.
Ridiculously photogenic unhoused man
Damn you weren't kidding...
MF is 49 years old.
My man is jacked.
Holy ffff...what did he look like before he got homeless?? Seriously though I could see him going down the Jeremy Meeks (photogenic prisoner turned runway model) path with this kind of exposure. He looks ridiculously healthy despite his living situation which probably can't be easy to maintain.
So true 😅
Overpopulated, overpriced, no water and temps that would make Satan cry it's hot. How many more signs do people need before they will stop moving there?
Attraction for the abyss? Isn't Miami also having a population boom despite of all the signs of floods incoming?
Florida is falling apart. If it's not the floods then it's high inflation. Soon people won't be able to insure their homes in the sunshine state.
Why don't more people move to Flagstaff if they want to live in Arizona? Further north and higher altitude means more reasonable temperatures. They have actual pine forests in the middle of the martian-looking desert. It's really cool. Plus, they're closer to both the Grand Canyon and the Antelope Canyon, not to mention the Utah national parks. But for some reason everyone moves to Phoenix and Tucson.
Flagstaff is a nice area. Phoenix's problem is the artificial house scarcity problem. So many companies seen the crazy growth after 2008 and bought up a bunch of houses for AirBnB.
"AirDNA found that from February 2017 to January 2023, Airbnb and VRBO listings in Phoenix more than quadrupled, growing to 21,000 from 5,000. A request for comment from Airbnb was not immediately returned on Friday."
Removing that many homes from an area will make prices skyrocket. Ashville NC, Myrtle Beach SC, Nashville TN, are some other areas dealing with it as well. Minus the extreme heat.
I feel sorry for anyone born there or brought there as a child. They didn't choose this.
People who moved there voluntarily are another matter. I don't have much pity for them.
I'm a dumbass in group 2. I'm hoping in the next couple of years I'll be able to find a good job in the north and move back out of hell.
But...but they told me global warming was a hoax....
The entire city of Phoenix told you that? Must have been pretty loud.
Why is migration not happening on a larger scale yet? I thought world at large would be more chaotic than now. People are just this stubborn? Every summer they’ll now literally risk dying.
Moving out of hell is cheaper said than done. Most Americans can't even afford an emergency $500 expense. Vacancy rates are near historical lows but housing costs are at all-time highs. Finding somewhere to live is hard, especially if you don't have middle or upper class income. Most of the people risking their lives by not moving don't have a choice.
I had to take a job that would move me from the southeast to the northwest to get out, it’s the only reason I was able to
If living in an earthquake zone has taught me anything, it's that humans are very ill-prepared.
What is wrong with living in New Zealand an earthquake zone?
How long until cities like Phoenix empty because everyone moves north?
I am in a small town in central NM and we are discussing moving north.
Phoenix is still one of the fastest growing cities in the US. I can’t imagine that the homes these people are buying are appreciating assets as a result of climate change. A lot of people are going to be completely fucked financially whenever the climate eventually forces move and it turns out they have just been lighting tens of thousands of dollars on fire.
It is absolutely bonkers to me that people still aren’t considering this sort of thing whenever they choose to move to a new city.
The price of housing is scaling rapidly there too. A house that cost about 120k in 1988 now Zillows around 500-600k, and even the new developments in fringe areas start in the 400s.
I almost wonder if there will end up having to be some catastrophic buy-down programme. Maybe people stop coming to Phoenix. Maybe we'd end up just infrastructure abandonment of areas-- "we can no longer guarantee services because we can't actually have workers fix the electrical wires/sewer/etc when it's 55C" which likely reduces the property value to near zero. Someone is going to have to eat the loss, and none of the obvious targets (a bunch of elderly landowners who vote in every election? Suing the fossil fuel industry who wrecked the place?) are easy political targets, so the most palatable approach might be to buy people out to get their problem off the table; pretend the house still appreciated like it wasn't in a hell-dimension, and take this buyout to move to Montana while we demolish the entire city of Mesa for a giant solar farm.