Slashdot Mirror
Heat Wave Kills More Than 1,100 In India
An anonymous reader sends word that a week-long heat wave in India has resulted in the deaths of more than 1,100 people. Temperatures reached 47C (117F) on Monday and are expected to stay dangerously high throughout the week. The heat and extreme dryness are being accompanied by strong westerly winds. "About one-third of the country's 1.2 billion people have access to electricity, meaning millions are enduring the blistering heat without relief." The local power grid has been struggling under high demand from fans and air conditioning. In some states, citizens are being advised to stay indoors during the middle of the day, when the sun is at its peak. Many hope the upcoming monsoons will return temperatues to less dangerous levels.
i visited bangalore in 2006, to see a friend living there. he explained that when the trees were cut down in the cities (so that more housing could be built), temperatures soared by an additional 10 *centigrade*. so, the ambient temperature surrounding the cities would be 45 degrees, but in bangalore it would reach *fifty five* centigrade. the point of mentioning this is that it's a much more direct version of how man has an effect on his immediate environment. change the landscape, you change the weather, it's as simple as that. we can learn from that... or simply die. it's our choice.
You know you live in the wrong place when you're looking forward to one horrific weather pattern to replace another.
The monsoons are not horrific. They are a normal part of the annual weather cycle. Complaining about monsoons in India is as silly as complaining about snow in Minnesota. Far more horrific, is when the monsoons are weak, which has historically led to famine.
Actually it's not, that's the problem. The humidity is around 30% during the day, which may not sound like a lot, but at 47C that's a heat index of over 55C! That's well into the extreme danger zone, you will get heat stroke extremely easy, even without being in the sun. And then of course the humidity will jump up during the night, so it may only be 30C outside, but the heat index is still in the 40s.
This weather is a very nasty combination of heat and humidity. You're basically looking at a sauna at times. Which is all well and good when you can leave the sauna, but even in the best of health the human body struggles to deal with these kinds of heat indexes over an extended period of time.
Knock it off, Hudson.
Minus: You failed to use an obscure unit of measurement. I propose Congresses. This heat wave has killed 2.056 Congresses of people.
Plus: You used a decimal comma instead of a decimal point, allowing people to respond saying that you're adhering to a regionally specific custom that differs from their own regionally specific custom, and therefore are clearly doing it wrong.
Overall i rate your slashdotness at 77.3%, by means of an obscure personal rating system which i can't describe succinctly but will argue about endlessly if anyone disagrees with my conclusion.
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Um, no.
For the period 1999-2003, the average # of US deaths due to heat was 688 per year, which is not at all similar to 1100 per week.
Once again, posting false information on Slashdot proves to be no impediment to being modded +5 informative.
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