Posted on 07/29/2023 7:01:33 AM PDT by dennisw
Locals bake cookies in CARS and complain of melting roads Searing heatwave is forecast to bring 110F temps to Phoenix for 30th day today Even Arizona's hardy Saguaro cactuses are dying in the blistering heat Temps are hot enough to melt dog toys, bake cookies in cars, and soften roads
A searing heat wave that continues to blister much of the US is so hot that even Arizona's iconic cactuses are dying off.
In Phoenix, Saturday is forecast to be the 30th consecutive day with high temperatures above 110F, a streak that has shattered all records for the city, with fatal results.
At the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, saguaro cactuses, a symbol of the US West, are drooping, shriveling and in some cases toppling over during the record streak of extreme heat.
Residents of the area have taken to TikTok to highlight the staggering effects of the intense heat, showing cookies baking on car dashboards, rubber dog toys melting in the sun, and roads soft enough to leave footprints.
The heat wave has had deadly consequences as well, with at least 25 confirmed heat-related deaths and 249 more pending investigation in Maricopa County, the area surrounding Phoenix, so far this summer.
At the Desert Botanical Garden, plant physiologists are studying just how much heat cactuses can take.
The garden has specimens representing has over two-thirds of all cactus species, including saguaros which can grow to over 40 feet.
Until recently many, thought the plants were perfectly adapted to extreme high temperatures and drought. Arizona's heat wave is testing those assumptions.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Just be happy that it didn’t fall on YOU.
Those other cacti looked unconcerned.
I like it so hot that liberals die.
This is pure envirowacko BS. We made our first trip out to Arizona in June 1960. My sister screamed with excitement when she saw her first Saguaro cactus. Dad almost wrecked the car. The first Saguaros spotted on the Black Canyon Highway (now I-17) at that time were after passing the Sunset Point Rest Area and dropping over the edge of the Mogollan Rim. We moved there in 1962. It was still the same. The Saguaros started at the same exact place. When I was going to college in Phoenix in 1969, the fruit loops were winding down their Nam protests and starting out with their new “ecology” protests. Their proof of “global cooling” was that the saguaros were “migrating” south from Northern Arizona. Unfortunately, I blind man could see this wasn’t true. The Saguaros were at the same place on the edge of the rim. I was last in Arizona and on that highway in 2021. Guess what. The Saguaros still started at the Mogollan Rim at the same place they ALWAYS started. This is BS. Using the Saguaros as victims needing some (social justice) is some real retarded college kid garbage. Like trees, Saguaros do fall over whether they are hot and thirsty or not.
Seriously?
Saguaro falls down. Like that’s never happened before.
This is propaganda peddled to drugged out ignoroids.
“Somebody from AZ can correct me if I’m wrong, but 110 seems like nothing for that area.”
Absolutely correct... It is nothing... What they are trying to misrepresent is “how many days in a row”. And it is absolutely normal to be over 110 everyday though the whole summer. “Except when” the “monsoons” roll in and cool it off for a day or two. And so far the Monsoon season has been shy this year.
“Summers don’t seem to be nearly that hot now.”
I am in the desert southwest and this has been the coolest summer I have ever experienced in my whole lifetime here.
In July of 1965, I recall sitting on my stingray bike at a Circle K in Tucson. I was in the shade. There was an old style dial thermometer on the wall also in the shade.
It pointed to 117 deg.
110 is a normal daily temp for July - Aug and many times September in PHX. PHX is a heat island: the cities with their blacktop and concrete do change the local ambient temps, and my guess would be by about 5-10 deg. PHX used to mitigate this with humidity from the canals in Chandler and Tempe, but that was prior the 1970s and the massive development there. It was muggy, but it did seem to damp down the temperature. Stil miserable.
So local microclimate change can be real. How much it affects the overall climate is a different story: not much. But since all the news comes out of big cities, it skews the perception. Nobody pays attention to the temperature in Gila Bend except the lizards.
That one is not a saguaro, and still has five or six more. :)
I remember very hot summers in Scottsdale as a kid. It wasn’t unusual to see the asphalt getting soft in the street.
Yes. The people who wrote this article aren’t in Arizona, have never been there and know nothing about cactus or the desert.
Looks like it was rotting. It’s mature and probably was time for it to go heat or not.
Yes.
It’s normal.
Just 6 months ago the average high in Phoenix was 70°. Now it’s 110°.
My Climate Change® model predicts that in 6 more months the temps will be 150°!!!
We're Doomed....DOOMED!
I’d attribute it more to the depth of the water table. Saguros have deep roots.
> I never understood the logic of using asphalt in desert states
Actually performing pretty well, must be maintained with some oil periodically (bi-annual ?)to minimize cracks. Macadam tho, that tends to peel up chunks in the summer when trucks brake on it.
I’m sure that there might be a different formulation for desert asphalt, but during hot summer months (100 deg, direct sun) at my latitude you can almost watch the deterioration of the roadway under heavy traffic load, especially from buses and semis.
Where I live, big ole pine trees are always falling over like that. Kind of like people. Nothing lives forever. God uses droughts to weed out the inferior.
“I recall sitting on my stingray bike at a Circle K in Tucson. I was in the shade. There was an old style dial thermometer on the wall also in the shade. It pointed to 117 deg.”
That would have been from the pavement all around. Tucson in the 70s & 80 never broke 108 at the airport. And Tucson, in the 60s and 70s had large chunks of untouched desert (1 sq mile) scattered around the city. On the east side, going from memory, it almost never hit 105.
Now? All the undeveloped land is gone. 2 lane roads are now 6 lanes. And...Tucson breaks 110 all the time. But if you go a few miles away, outside of all the pavement? Temps max out at around...105, and those days are rare.
According to Weather Underground, it has hit 110+ 7 days this month in Vail. Living near there...I haven’t seen it. The hottest at my house has been 105, and only one day - but I live near Vail, not in it.
Yeah, as cities build up and pave over everything, it gets hotter in the desert. But hiking within 20 miles of the city? It is like it was when I was growing up in the 70s.
Total BS. The saguaro has evolved for HOT dry weather.
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