Interesting Chart

[Stu]

Annual Heat Wave Index in the United States

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/heat-wave-index-usa

Make of it what you will.

[Uncle Al]

The heat wave is getting worse
As of 4:49 PM (16:49)CDT, the ambient temperature
is 106*F(41.1*C) with the heat index at 109*F(42.7*C)+.

At 72 years of age, I'm only going out to get the mail
and then stay inside with the A/C.

Uncle Al

[rode_kater]

As they say: Lies, damn lies and statistics.

The definition of the heat wave index was vague there so I looked for another source, and found the chart on the EPA website. And it says:

An index value of 0.2 (for example) could mean that 20 percent of the country experienced one heat wave, 10 percent of the country experienced two heat waves, or some other combination of frequency and area resulted in this value.

So if half the country experiences a three month heat-wave, that will contribute 0.5 to this index. It pays no attention to how long the heat wave lasts or how bad it was. In other words, doesn't correlate well with lived experience.

Which just goes to show that that other man-made disaster, the Dust Bowl must have been fricking terrible to live through. Or maybe they had 1 day heat waves every other week. Still impressive it shows up. The other graphs on the EPA website I personally find much more interesting than this one. This one seems most interesting for people wanting to downplay the whole thing.

[crfriend]

As they say: Lies, damn lies and statistics.

Also of note, is that the media tends to play up these events and calls a short hot stretch a Heat Wave when it really isn't. According to National Weather Service a "heat wave" is three consecutive days (or more) of temperatures where the highs are 90 degrees (F) or warmer. Note that is says nothing about dew point, heat indices, or low temperatures.

Playing up the weather is one more way that the media keeps the rabble frightened, stirred up, and not looking where the real problems are right now. It's become a real problem.