Every year you hear about horrible heat waves and fires in California but I'm here to tell you from my first-hand experience that This Time It's Different. I've lived on the SF peninsula for 10 years. We bought a brand new spec house. It was built without air conditioning. The developer said we wouldn't need it. We installed it anyway because we came from LA and a house in California without A/C did not fit into our worldview.
For the first few years, we rarely used the A/C. Then one year we had a Horrible Heat Wave that lasted two or three days. The A/C ran more or less continuously during that time, but managed to mostly keep up. And it always cooled off at night.
In subsequent years we had period recurrences of 2-3 day heat events that caused our A/C to run quite a lot but still keep up. This latest heat event has seen the A/C running three days now with no relief forecast until Thursday. Worse, it's not cooling off much at night the way it always used to. For the first time in ten years we are having to run the A/C at night instead of opening windows in order to sleep.
Frankly, the trend scares the living shit out of me. The speed at which these changes are manifesting themselves in our little microclimate is just mind-boggling.
For the first few years, we rarely used the A/C. Then one year we had a Horrible Heat Wave that lasted two or three days. The A/C ran more or less continuously during that time, but managed to mostly keep up. And it always cooled off at night.
In subsequent years we had period recurrences of 2-3 day heat events that caused our A/C to run quite a lot but still keep up. This latest heat event has seen the A/C running three days now with no relief forecast until Thursday. Worse, it's not cooling off much at night the way it always used to. For the first time in ten years we are having to run the A/C at night instead of opening windows in order to sleep.
Frankly, the trend scares the living shit out of me. The speed at which these changes are manifesting themselves in our little microclimate is just mind-boggling.