www.msnbc.com/news/948415.asp (http://www.msnbc.com/news/948415.asp)

umm...Water AC and shorts? What's the problem? Or do they not have AC in France? /boggle


:evil

They're setting heat records in Europe practically every day. Don't know if you remember it, but we had this problem in the Midwest a few years ago. What was it, 1999? There were 90 or more heat related deaths in Chicago; it was a record number.

And, sure enough, France is having the same problem Chicago was. Record heat means record A/C usage, which means record electricity usage, which causes problems.

Many people can't afford Air Conditioning. It happened in the US several summers back as well, though not on as large a scale. Heat waves always hit the elderly the hardest, and shorts just aren't gonna cut it when you have 100+ degree weather. Nor will swimming to be honest, because some people may not be able to make it to a beach on their own, let alone every day.

The heat in England right now is like nothing we've ever encountered before.
Especially for this duration.
Which is a shocker to a country that spends most of its time drenched in rain.

The heatwaves seems to have left Sweden now, can actually get some cold air during the nights.. but it was *really* horrible for awhile (like a month and a half, almost 2) and as for AC, that's really not a common thing around here atleast

I know very few that has AC at home.

It'll be 109 here on Monday. It's a cool 102 right now. We had a 116 or 118 last week. Said they would have broke our 121 record last week, but they moved the weather station to a slightly cooler location after 1995.

We did, however, break our record "high low" with an overnight low of 94. (Or was it 96?) Well, lets just say that swimming pools cool down to the temperature of warm bathwater this time of year.

My father is in Phoenix now, having moved there from Alaska a few years ago. "I don't care if it's a dry heat, dad, I'm not visiting until at least November."

Oh, and this (http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/14/power.outage/index.html) isn't helping things here in the states, either.

this is a big problem in mexico, people are still dieing to fumes their stoves create, that they use as heaters

The heat + a whole load of old people = a lot of dead old people.

On one hand it's cool that from what I saw while I was there, there is a lot of older pople still alive in france, but on the other hand most of them live in smaller (than the average here in the US) apartments, and from what I remember AC wasnt too common there, so they overheat, and their bodies cant handle it any more, and they unfortunately die.

I think the reason France is having so many heat fatalities, is it's just not something they're used to, so they're not prepared for it.

The problem is not the heat really, the problem is heat paired with humidity.
In switzerland we had like 115 degrees and it was hot. Hotter then ever. For months.
But as I drove to Nice it just was like 95. However, as I got out of my car, I almost fainted. The clima was so insanely humid, so unspeakable sticky that it really gave me an insanely hard time. For 3 days I was there I had problems breathing really or moving ini any way faster then at 2 mph. Seriously it was hell.
Now I am in Toulouse and it was again around 110 degrees and it was quite ok, since Toulouse is not on the sea and the air is dry.

I can sure understand why people die in the clima of Nice.

And for all those that dunno those cities, its cities in France, one at the southers coast and one at the south east; not on the coast.

d00d u wusses, only people that have a right to say anything about heat is black people, since darker colors attract more sunlight. Dem poor black ppl.