Summer Heat of 1980 (Grand Prairie, Whitney: power lines, swimming pool, yard)

[Canine*Castle]

It's true, and you can find it on the internet as well. What reminded me about it was the article that comes out every year in the paper as the anniversary of "Satan's Storm." It's called a heat burst. I've scanned the article so you all would know I'm not making it up. It's a reality.

I do not make up stories about Texas weather; I either read it or live it.

Here are a few links to articles on the internet. One can find more by doing a search for "Kopperl ~ Satan's Storm."

Commentary: Forensic meteorology: Reconstructing Satan's storm | Daily Record (Rochester, NY) | Find Articles at BNET

Satan's Storm

[hypocore]

Originally Posted by beowulf7

You mean it gets hotter than this?! Congrats to all of you who had to endure it and survived it.

At least if such a heat wave were to strike today, I assume more homes have central A/C than back then. Then again, utility bills are a lot more now and there's a lot more demand in power, so we may have the rolling black outs that CA had several years ago.

We rarely have the typical rolling blackouts here like California does.
Besides having an agreement with some large businesses to shut down if an extreme need arises, they also have a process to help prevent outages. In essense, when the usage starts to becomes higher than the availablity or energy, they creat a tiny power loss in one quadrant at a time that actually stops enough usage to make a huge difference. Basically it's a tiny stopage that comes to us as a flicker, much like when storms are playing havoc with the electricity, except this is a controlled momentary thing. They can do this at any of the power stations and it's not unusual to see flickers on days of extreme heat.

So, if you do have one....just remember they are doing it to save electricity! haha

[beowulf7]

Originally Posted by Canine*Castle

It's true, and you can find it on the internet as well. What reminded me about it was the article that comes out every year in the paper as the anniversary of "Satan's Storm." It's called a heat burst. I've scanned the article so you all would know I'm not making it up. It's a reality.

I do not make up stories about Texas weather; I either read it or live it.

Here are a few links to articles on the internet. One can find more by doing a search for "Kopperl ~ Satan's Storm."

Commentary: Forensic meteorology: Reconstructing Satan's storm | Daily Record (Rochester, NY) | Find Articles at BNET

Satan's Storm

Wow! I still can't fathom 140-deg. And I wonder why that other link I posted didn't mention it when I Googled "hottest temperature on earth". It mentioned Libya @ 136 deg. and Death Valley, CA @ 134 deg. I still wonder how accurate that town's thermometer was when they claim to have registered 140 deg.

Originally Posted by hypocore

We rarely have the typical rolling blackouts here like California does.
Besides having an agreement with some large businesses to shut down if an extreme need arises, they also have a process to help prevent outages. In essense, when the usage starts to becomes higher than the availablity or energy, they creat a tiny power loss in one quadrant at a time that actually stops enough usage to make a huge difference. Basically it's a tiny stopage that comes to us as a flicker, much like when storms are playing havoc with the electricity, except this is a controlled momentary thing. They can do this at any of the power stations and it's not unusual to see flickers on days of extreme heat.

So, if you do have one....just remember they are doing it to save electricity! haha

That's good to know. So if the power being drawn meets a certain condition, they'll flicker us a bit to save on the power. Sounds fine and dandy, esp. since I have a couple UPSs.

[Canine*Castle]

[quote=beowulf7;4293227]Wow! I still can't fathom 140-deg. And I wonder why that other link I posted didn't mention it when I Googled "hottest temperature on earth". It mentioned Libya @ 136 deg. and Death Valley, CA @ 134 deg. I still wonder how accurate that town's thermometer was when they claim to have registered 140 deg.

The explanation lies in another article I found and it reads as such:

All of the above reports exceed the highest temperature recorded on Earth, generally accepted as the Death Valley, California report of 134 F and previously the Libya reading of 136 F. These heat bursts are not counted because (thus far) the worst heat bursts have been localized events, falling in-between local weather stations. Hopefully as organizations like WeatherMatrix encourage users to put up their own weather stations, the networks will one day be crowded enough to catch one of these rare events.

I have no doubt the thermometer worked fine. I actually know some people who lived in the area in 1960 and they said it was "something else."


If you'd like to read the entire story about the "not counted" heat bursts, here is the link. I believe the clue to finding out about highest temperatures and heat bursts is do a search on heat bursts. They don't usually show up if one just searches "high temperatures." Maybe another reason they don't list them as record highs is because they're rare. They may be rare, but they are real. I'm glad they're few and far between.


http://www.accuweather.com/mt-news-blogs.asp?blog=weathermatrix&partner=accuweather&p gUrl=/mtweb/content/weathermatrix/archives/2006/09/the_texas_heat_1.asp

[Lakewooder]

I was working part time my senior year of college at the same company where I work now (how weird is that). I remember walking in the parking lot on one of those 113 degree days and it was like walking on a freshly-flowed lava field.

Also don't forget the 1978-79 ice storm and power black out. In the 1983 Christmas freeze I had a picture taken of myself walking on White Rock Lake.

[BobTex]

Originally Posted by Lakewooder

I was working part time my senior year of college at the same company where I work now (how weird is that). I remember walking in the parking lot on one of those 113 degree days and it was like walking on a freshly-flowed lava field.

Also don't forget the 1978-79 ice storm and power black out. In the 1983 Christmas freeze I had a picture taken of myself walking on White Rock Lake.

I remember that freeze. Great duckhunting as all the water to the north was frozen. Only time I ever saw the ground freeze hard in SE Texas. 5 days of continous below freezing temps as low as 8 degrees here in SE Tx. . I am fearing an extrordinarily hot summer this year as we've had some unusually hot temps already.

[fitguru]

I was working in downtown Houston, not cool at all, and living in NW Houston. The commute was HORRIBLE! I wish I still had my I survived the Summer of 80' T-shirt. I remember that there were shootings on the Freeway (talk about road rage) and people were attempting to cook their dinners in their engine compartments while they were at work. My car, and many others, overheated constantly on the commute home. It was a tough Summer, but we somehow made it through it. Not to mention the 18% interest rates... and the bumper stickers that said "Would the last one out of Michigan please turn out the lights?" I pray that part of the 70's does not come back! Where is the Gipper when we need him? Good ole capitalism, I am afraid is going the way of the dinosaur.

[Canine*Castle]

Originally Posted by Lakewooder

I was working part time my senior year of college at the same company where I work now (how weird is that). I remember walking in the parking lot on one of those 113 degree days and it was like walking on a freshly-flowed lava field.

Also don't forget the 1978-79 ice storm and power black out. In the 1983 Christmas freeze I had a picture taken of myself walking on White Rock Lake.

I loved that freeze on New Year's Eve 1978 having only been living in Texas for 3 months. It was new to me, and fun. My husband was all crabby because he had to chip ice off the car to get the door open, poor baby. He was raised in MN, so I'm clueless as to what was his problem.

[jeffari-al-texani]

Hey, here's how stupid we were...the neighborhood kids were still outside playing baseball all day...

we were 11...we didn't know any better...we'd just hop the fence to my backyard, soak ourselves down and drink our fill from the water hose, then go back to playing...

If it got that hot now, I wouldn't even want to walk from my air conditioned house to my air conditioned car...

I guess I've gotten old and soft!!!

[Canine*Castle]

Originally Posted by jeffari-al-texani

Hey, here's how stupid we were...the neighborhood kids were still outside playing baseball all day...

we were 11...we didn't know any better...we'd just hop the fence to my backyard, soak ourselves down and drink our fill from the water hose, then go back to playing...

If it got that hot now, I wouldn't even want to walk from my air conditioned house to my air conditioned car...

I guess I've gotten old and soft!!!

Hey, you'd better not admit you can't take the heat because it's quoted that Texans are tough and not wussies.