354 days of 40'C

and above in this city since January 1st, 1888?

There is a letter from someone in our state newspaper telling us this. (The writer apparently has been working on this statistic for some time and says, "Yes, get a life" as he comments.)  He goes, "That's 0.7% of 50,405 days at the time of counting. In twenty-nine years the temperature never reached 40'C. In 1908 there was a "heatwave" with the temperature going over the 40'C mark for six days and then four days. 

My great-grandparents had not air conditioning. They had no electricity. They tried to keep things cool with wet towels but my great-grandmother still had to cook on a wood burning stove.  Yes, food had to be cooked because so much would spoil in the heat. 

My grandparents did not have much more. There was no air conditioning. My paternal grandmother never had more than one tiny electric fan. She would turn it on for an hour after she had done the housework and given my grandfather a cooked lunch. 

When the Senior Cat as a child all my grandmother had was a "cool safe" with a block of ice and a drip tray to collect the water as it melted. She could keep milk and butter there overnight but not much more. They eventually had a tiny refrigerator but there was a limit to what could be safely kept even in that. She shopped most days in summer and walked to the shops in the heat to do so. 

We have been grumbling about the heat for the last few days and I am not looking forward to the size of my electricity bill but I cannot work in extreme heat. (The computer, rightly, complains. It sulks in the heat.) There has been increased talk about "global warming" and how the temperatures are caused by that. I find it odd that some years back we were being told we were heading for another "ice age". Do the climate experts really know?