About that Record Heat We Missed
Jul. 9th, 2024 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerA bit over a week ago we made the decision to pull the plug on our July 4 hiking trip in the Shasta-Trinity mountains. The weather forecast was showing extreme heat over the 4 days we'd be there, and we decided it would spoil the enjoyment of hiking. Instead we stayed home— in the milder extreme heat Silicon Valley got— and had a great time lounging around the pool 4 afternoons in a row. But what did we miss? News reports yesterday provided some of the receipts.
From Friday through Sunday numerous heat records were set in California. In Sacramento, on-this-date records were set with 110° on Friday and 113° on Saturday. The Saturday high blew away the previous record of 105° set on July 6, 1989. In Redding a new all-time high temperature of 119° F (48.3° C) was recorded. New records were set in plenty of other cities, too.
Redding's record is directly relevant to what we missed because it's the closest larger city to the mountains where we would've gone hiking. Now, 119 in Redding doesn't mean it was 119 up in the mountains. As a rule of thumb, the air temperature drops 3 degrees Fahrenheit per 1,000 feet of elevation. Redding stands at around 600' elevation at the northern end of the Central Valley just below the Shasta-Trinity mountains. The hiking trails we were looking at had us starting at elevations of 5,500-6,500. So 15 to 18 degrees cooler than 119— yeah, still over 100. 🥵
From Friday through Sunday numerous heat records were set in California. In Sacramento, on-this-date records were set with 110° on Friday and 113° on Saturday. The Saturday high blew away the previous record of 105° set on July 6, 1989. In Redding a new all-time high temperature of 119° F (48.3° C) was recorded. New records were set in plenty of other cities, too.
Redding's record is directly relevant to what we missed because it's the closest larger city to the mountains where we would've gone hiking. Now, 119 in Redding doesn't mean it was 119 up in the mountains. As a rule of thumb, the air temperature drops 3 degrees Fahrenheit per 1,000 feet of elevation. Redding stands at around 600' elevation at the northern end of the Central Valley just below the Shasta-Trinity mountains. The hiking trails we were looking at had us starting at elevations of 5,500-6,500. So 15 to 18 degrees cooler than 119— yeah, still over 100. 🥵
