Dealing with the painful cold of Phoenix, Arizona


Since it's July, and the temperatures here in Glendale (a suburb of Phoenix) will be over 100 again (probably over 110), I'm thinking about a very common misconception about Phoenix - that it never gets cold. But believe me, it gets very cold. Painfully cold.

If you're an early riser, like me, you know that the the temperatures here in the desert plunge in the wee hours of the morning. For example, this morning at sunrise my patio was about 80 degrees. Two hours later it was 100.

However, in the winter, it's even more extreme. Temperatures can go below freezing, even down into the twenties, or teens. That's why you'll see overnight freeze warnings for plants. And freezing temperatures can be hard on human beings, too. Especially the type that the desert gets, with low humidity.

Back in the early '90s, I rode my bike to work, which was less than two miles away. And while mostly it was a pleasure, it was only the cold temperatures that stopped me, and made me decide to take my car that morning. No one ever asked me about the cold, they always asked me if it got too hot. And from that I knew that they had never been there, never done that.

Yes, it gets hot in Phoenix. I was on my bike riding home on the day Phoenix hit 122 in 1990. I remember feeling my eyes burning. I was anxious to get home. But it wasn't like the cold. And the clear blue skies of Phoenix create some very painful cold. As a kid in Minnesota, clear days that didn't have any cloud cover were very painful - we called them the "look but don't touch" days.

In December and January I tried to bundle up enough to ride to work even in sub-freezing temperatures. I got heavy gloves, and a knit beanie. And if you've ever ridden a bike in temperatures below freezing in Phoenix, you know that the wind just cuts right through you. I would have needed a parka for it to even be reasonably comfortable for me.

But this is Phoenix, and I knew that it would warm up again.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more