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When I was a kid, we used to get relatively frequent power outages during the stormy parts of the year. I remember thinking they were kind of cool. My parents would break out the flashlights and candles. We would go to bed early (but it didn't feel early, since it was so dark). Once, the power stayed out for more than a day, and the extended family gathered around our wood stove and just hung out while these crazy winds went on and on outside.
Last night our power went out at about 6:30. I first noticed when the light in our fridge didn't work. Oh, well. I just wouldn't open the fridge anymore.
Then I remembered that the air conditioning wouldn't work, either. Or the ceiling fans. And we have been having record heat in Vegas lately. Crap.
Over the next few hours it just got hotter and hotter. It eventually got almost up to ninety degrees. I gave our kids cool baths, and had them go to sleep on a blanket on the floor downstairs, since their upstairs bedrooms are the warmest rooms in the house. Although they resisted, I made them leave off their pajama tops. I kept reaching up to the ceiling fans and spinning them around with my hand.
It was really miserable. Fortunately, the power company was faster than their estimate, and power was restored about 11:30 pm. I carried the kids up to their own beds, tidied up the house (which I normally do after they go to bed, but couldn't do in the dark), and finally got to bed myself when the temperature had gone back down to bearable.
Power outages really suck when you depend so heavily on air conditioning.
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It really makes me wonder how people survived in places like Las Vegas and Phoenix before air conditioning. I can't imagine just suffering through 100-degree-plus heat waves. I guess modern society has made me soft.
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A lot of Las Vegans actually remember and celebrate the inventor of air conditioning. In a very real sense, that was the thing that made this city habitable, and able to draw visitors.
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We don't have water without power either because we have a well. Gotta love having no flush toilets!
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If you add a storage tank up high, you can use the pump to pump water up to the tank when the power is on, then use gravity to feed water to the house when the power ever turns off. Just saying. Of course you can also buy a natural gas (or diesel) generator to be backup power if the utility goes out. You can even get the cool switchgear that cranks it up automatically and switches over to generator power, then back to utility power with engine shutdown a set amount of time after the power comes back online (usually 30 seconds to 1 minute, to ride through those blinks that sometimes happen when they're trying to restore power). All that stuff is expensive, of course, but it's very cool. Someday I'm going to get my own combined heat and power generator system for my house and be independent of the power company most of the time.
That way we won't really have to worry about power outages.
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UoULG, the power outage may well have happened because of the heat wave. Air conditioning puts the greatest demand on power systems of anything, and when it's running at close to 100% capacity, any little thing can cause an outage. Hope your power comes back on and stays on for the remainder of the heat wave. It's no joke, especially if you aren't adapted to it, to suffer extreme heat.
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quote:It really makes me wonder how people survived in places like Las Vegas and Phoenix before air conditioning. I can't imagine just suffering through 100-degree-plus heat waves. I guess modern society has made me soft.
Surviving is easy. You just suffer a lot.
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I would like a solar-powered house one day. I know someone who has panels on his roof; the city of LA reimbursed him 70% of the initial cost, he only pays about $15 a month in winter (to heat a HUGE house), and in the summer, the power company actually sends him checks. Sweet.
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I'll have to admit, since our house has no air conditioning (although plenty of fans) the very hottest days of the year (like today, when it will be 101) do become quite miserable. We survive it fine, but it isn't exactly fun. Luckily there aren't that many days of the year which are so unbearable.
And our escape on the really bad days is to get into the air-conditioned car and drive to the air-conditioned movie theatre during the hottest part of the day, and relax there for awhile.
Yes, I know, I must be getting soft and lazy in my old age. The heat didn't used to bother me hardly at all when I was a kid.
Of course, now I work in an air-conditioned office -- too airconditioned! They keep it cold! Makes it very hard to adjust when I go home...
posted
Our outage wasn't caused by the heat wave, i.e. overuse of A/C. Somebody crashed a car into a power pole down by the substation, and it blacked out quite a large section of the city for several hours until the repairs could be made.
Speaking of the heat wave in Arizona, and the deaths, some of us in Vegas are wondering why they are having that problem when we have been several degrees hotter than Phoenix lately. We have had no heat-related deathes, AFAIK. And, wonder of wonders, nobody has left their kids in the car to roast (yet) this year.
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I've heard of a couple people that have tried, but luckily someone found the kids and called 911. Every stinking year! Are people really that stupid and careless?
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Most of the deaths these recent deaths have been homeless people. A couple were elderly people who had not turned on their airconditioning (doesn't make much sense to me, but that's what's being reported). Maybe Las Vegas has a better system for care of the homeless or a smaller homeless population in general. Part of the difference between Las Vegas and Phoenix is that Las Vegas cools down at night, Phoenix (due to urban sprawl) does not, so it's above 80 degrees even at night. As far as I know daytime temperatures here have been over 105 the entire month.
I know all too well the fun of power outages in the heat. Because we are in a rapidly growing area with lots of construction, there have been numerous outages lately. We've been averaging about 1 a week for about a month. Most of them are relatively minor - power is back within an hour or two. The most recent one was caused by a transformer failure at the power station, so power was out for about 6 hours while they worked to bypass it. Luckilly for me, I went off to my airconditioned office (I did have my mother go by around lunch time to check on our cats and make sure the airconditioners came back on). They then had a planned outage over the weekend from about 2-7am while they replaced the transformer.
It's interesting that, at least in Phoenix, "back in the day" when there was no airconditioning it literally wasn't as hot. With the technology of airconditioning available, the population of Phoenix has grown rapidly as has it's physical size. Because of the sprawl of the city (and all its suburbs) there is a "heat island" - all the asphalt and concrete literally trap the heat making it hotter during the day and at night that it had previously been.
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quote:the very hottest days of the year (like today, when it will be 101)
Luck-ee! [/Napoleon Dynamite]
Yeah, 101 is normal summer weather to me. Anything up to about 110 is just "kinda hot out". Hottest days where I grew up used to be 120 or above (up to 127 on record days.) My dad grew up in Phoenix; they used to literally fry an egg on the sidewalk every summer.
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ludosti:"Maybe Las Vegas has a better system for care of the homeless or a smaller homeless population in general."
Las Vegas is one of the most unfriendly cities in the country to homeless people. The mayor, generally a very popular guy, is criticized very harshly for this.
ludosti:"Part of the difference between Las Vegas and Phoenix is that Las Vegas cools down at night, Phoenix (due to urban sprawl) does not, so it's above 80 degrees even at night."
This doesn't sound right at all. I heard just this morning that we in Vegas have been hotter than Phoenix even at night. And I'm not at all sure that Phoenix has more urban sprawl than Vegas does.
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my guess would be that the old folks are trying to save money. They are so focused on saving cash (on their fixed incomes) that they leave the AC off, then, because they are old and forgetful, forget to turn it on when they really need it.
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quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen: Yeah, 101 is normal summer weather to me. Anything up to about 110 is just "kinda hot out". Hottest days where I grew up used to be 120 or above (up to 127 on record days.) My dad grew up in Phoenix; they used to literally fry an egg on the sidewalk every summer.
Are you sure about that? Wikipedia says that the record high in Phoenix was 122 back in 1990, which corresponds with what I remember.
Also from Wikipedia: Phoenix has a population density of about 1,100 per square kilometer, while Las Vegas's density is about 1,800 per square kilometer. The Phoenix metro area also has about twice as many people as the Vegas metro area.
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I'm gonna have to disagree with you somewhat UofUlawguy.
Las Vegas has a metropolitan area of approx. 113 square miles and approx. half a million residents. Phoenix has a metropolitan area of approx. 475 square miles and approx. 1.4 million residents. Yesterday, the temperatures in Las Vegas were 108/86 and in Phoenix they were 109/89 (according to weather.com). So the temperatures were very similar - basically way too dang hot in both cities. I would guess that the increased Phoenix deaths (compared to Las Vegas) are a function of the larger population.
Jon Boy - I think the record of 122 for Phoenix is correct, however that was the officially recorded temperature that day. Other readings taken in other parts of the area were higher than that. The other thing that they never mention about that record high is that basically that entire week was about 120 degrees.
ketchupqueen - Every year for the 4th of July when I was a teenager my family used to make a contest out of frying an egg on the sidewalk. We'd each come up with our own schemes for frying our egg (solar power only, no outside heat sources) and see which one cooked quickest. Besides cooking, the eggs would literally dehydrate - a very strange sight. My favorite setup was when my uncle used a parabolic reflector to cook his egg. It burnt a hole through the bottom of his aluminum pan almost instantly when he was testing it. Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Yeah, we were cooler yesterday because a new weather front moved in, and we had overcast skies most of the day.
And, from the cite you provided:"Between April 1990 and April 2000, the Las Vegas metropolitan area population increased by 83%, growing from 852,737 to 1,563,282."
You may not know that the actual City of Las Vegas is only a small part of "Las Vegas." Also included are unincorporated Clark County (which includes the Strip and much of the south/central valley), Henderson and North Las Vegas. And we've grown a TON since 2000, when the above figures were taken. Your figure for the "metropolitan" area is likewise incorrect, although I don't know the correct one.
Edit: According to this site, the Las Vegas "urban valley" has 516 square miles, and a population of nearly 1.7 million.
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No, I understand that Las Vegas proper is only a part of the Las Vegas metro area, just like Phoenix proper is only a part of the Phoenix metro area.
Interesting growth stats: census info. 2 cities from the Vegas area in the top 10, 3 from the Phoenix area....
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One thing I have heard about Phoenix, though I'm not how accurate it is, is that there are so many swimming pools that the humidity is much higher than it would normally be. Is that true?
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It's conceivable. I know that there are more swimming pools and golf courses per capita here than anywhere else in the world. Even so, it doesn't get _that_ humid here. Humidity here is considered "high" when it's 40%.
Edit: I was annoyed that I couldn't find more census info from 2000 online. Maybe my google-fu is just weak.
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quote:Originally posted by UofUlawguy: One thing I have heard about Phoenix, though I'm not how accurate it is, is that there are so many swimming pools that the humidity is much higher than it would normally be. Is that true?
I've read this, too. It's not just pools, but also lawns and trees and whatnot. I believe the humidity is higher than the surrounding desert, but it's still probably fairly low.
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