Bring the Snow

If past lives exist, then I must have lived somewhere very cold.  This summer has been one of the hottest on record.  I live in the UK and this has been our hottest summer since 1976 or 1975 - articles seem mixed on which it was.  The point being this was a hot one.  15 out of our 16 hottest summers on record have happened since 2001 in the UK and this was the hottest of those 15.  That's a lot of numbers to wrap your head around and so too were the weather forecasts and reports throughout the summer, numbers here and there of how hot it would be and one thing kept reoccurring throughout it all - the reported temperature and what it would "feel like" - why they need to make this distinction is beyond me, if it is 28°C [82°F] and feels like 30°C [86°F] then what it feels like is all I am concerned with.

I realise for many that live in hot countries, or countries that get hotter weather, this will seem low - I know in Spain their hottest day so far has touched 47°C [117°F] and Greece the last I heard was close to breaking its record of 48°C [118°F].  I can't even begin to imagine what it is like to live in a place like that.  The heat we got in the UK was insufferable for me personally.  The despair is amplified when we are told this will become the new normal for us and that we should expect this every year.  My genuine first reaction to that was I might have to move.  There's a problem with that though - practicality aside, in a perfect world where I could just up sticks and move - this summer wasn't unique to the UK.  The entire Northern Hemisphere experienced a synchronized heatwave, which I have never heard of before.  My understanding of meteorology however limited was that the jet stream ensured heat remains on one side and cooler air remains on the other, and when it shifts to an unusual extent it causes a heatwave in one place but caused unseasonably cool weather in another.  Yet this summer the heat has been felt from USA to UK to Sweden to Japan.  Short of going to live in Siberia - which I'm not going to do - there doesn't seem to be anywhere to escape to.

That begs the question, if there's no escape from the heat geographically, how do you cope with it, when you can't cope with it?  The UK isn't a hot country, we're woefully unprepared for this type of weather to be normal.  My bedroom has regularly been 30°C [86°F] at night, with windows in the house open, doors open, fans going.  We have air conditioning but it's not in our bedrooms and was primarily installed as climate control to prevent dampness, it wasn't installed to keep the house cool.  Portable AC units whilst useful for about half an hour, become a pain when you have to restock them with ice constantly.  As for taking cold showers, when you turn the shower down as low as it goes and it still comes out warm then there's little hope.  I drank so much water with ice in it this summer trying to stay cool.  We don't have the space for a pool even if I could afford to put one in, nor does anyone around us.  These houses were built in the 60s I believe, for a very different climate.

Speaking of climate, I don't want to get into the debate about Climate Change, we're suffering the effects now and whether you acknowledge that as the cause or not is inconsequential, we've reached a point now where cooling the planet would be incredibly difficult and would take years maybe decades to do - that doesn't solve the immediate problem of preventing heat exhaustion and heat related death.  I can understand some thinking that is an overreaction.  For me personally as someone who was born albino, has white hair, and is whiter than a bottle of milk, my immediate concern with heat is not dying.  I've almost passed out on more than one occasion this summer.  Having Sarcoidosis causing difficulty breathing makes things a lot worse when you can find yourself literally choking on air.

I can't wait for this Summer to end.  I can't wait for cold weather to come back.  I want the winter to end all winters after the summer we have had.  My idea of heaven would be to see the UK covered in a blanket of snow and to open my door and see a four foot wall of snow greeting me, after the summer we've had I'd be ecstatic.