If anyone was able to avoid last Friday’s scorching heat wave out in the real world, they were very, very lucky.
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Last Friday’s outdoor in the sun peaked at 50C, and lasted for many hours after that.
But this heat isn't anything new. Way back in my primary school days at Central Lansdowne, we had six hot, dry and dusty hills to push the bike home on Hogan’s Road in heat often like this.
The last hill to the house was the steepest, and it sure felt like it.
A quick gulp of warm Camphor Laurel leaf flavored water, then off we went, until almost home for another gulp of this time kerosene flavored warm water out of a tank which was in the sun all day, at a farmer’s dairy. Kerosene was used to kill the mosquito larva. The dead larva probably added some body to the water for free!
I use a digital recording indoor/outdoor thermometer (pictured) with the outdoor probe in the very same sunshine that most of us have beaming relentlessly on anyone or anything in the open, like animals, birds or those parked cars lining the streets, often for many hours at a time.
I know we are rarely informed of the extra heat of direct sunshine upon things, because the ‘experts’ seem only intent on passing on the shade only temperature out of a specially pampered box called a Stephenson screen.
The real outside in the sun temperature is always around 10C higher than what is quoted in the shade, which is fully understandable.
Max Bennett
Taree