Hot Enough To… Well, You Know!
Summer is officially in full swing here on the Gulf Coast, but perhaps it’s swinging a bit too much. Heat index temperatures have reached into the 110 degree mark, and emergency workers have their hands full dealing with heat related injuries and illnesses.
For those of you not in the know, or are on vacation here from a place where it snows in July or something, extreme heat can lead to serious problems in the human body if left unchecked. Heat exhaustion is the worst, causing nausea, dizziness, headache and fatigue. Keeping hyrdrated and cool is a must, because heat exhaustion can turn into hyperthermia, better known as sunstroke.
And yet, despite the numerous and repeated warnings every year, heat related fatalities are on the rise. Granted, though there are always circumstantial reasons, one must ask a question. Do people really grasp how hot it is out there?
Sometimes, I don’t think we do. We’ve been so conditioned for the indoors that often we don’t realize that we’re getting hot until it’s too late.
Allow me to illustrate, then, using the age-old adage, “Hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk.”
Much to the disappointment of curious young boys and girls, simply cracking an egg and letting it sit on a hot sidewalk will not cook it. Although it’s hot enough, the lack of a solid cooking surface keeps it raw. This hasn’t stopped one Arizona town from holding an annual solar egg frying contest, devising ways to cook eggs with only the power of the sun. In Arizona, though, the low humidity helps speed up the cooking process.
Hot as an oven? Oh yeah!
On hot days, eggs can also be cooked on top of a car’s dash. Simply take a non-stick skillet, a coating of oil and an egg, and watch your car’s dash turn into a four-wheeled convection oven. At this point, cell phones will shut down to avoid overheating and those that don’t might risk an exploded lithium ion battery.
If the heat does that to cell phone batteries and eggs, think leaving pets or children in the car isn’t a big deal? Think again!
Though it’s still not hot enough for chickens to lay hard-boiled eggs, the heat is intense enough to make you wonder, “Wow. If it can do that to an egg, what could it do to me?”
Let’s not find out, hmm?
Sources:
cdc.gov
wikipedia.org
dailyherald.com
loc.gov
