It’s late July here at The Storage Inn in Egg Harbor Township New Jersey, and we are currently experiencing our third heat wave of the summer. It’s hot hot hot, but as I was reminded by one of our storage tenants, all things are relative.
As I was making my rounds of the self storage facility this morning, I saw one of our long-time tenants, Mr. Osborne, working at his storage unit. Mr Osborne travels back and forth between his home in New Jersey and his home in Florida. “It’s a hot one!” I chirped. Mr. Osborne’s reply caught me somewhat off-guard – “Nah… In Florida we call this spring!” As I drove back to the rental office, I began to think about how hot it must be in other parts of the world, so I decided to do a little digging.
Here are some fun facts about hot weather…
- The highest temperature ever recorded in the shade was 136 degrees in Libya on September 13, 1922.
- The skin of a polar bear is black, which helps it to absorb more of the heat from the sun.
- According to NASA, when the temperature reaches 95 degrees our work output drops by 45 per cent.
- “As cool as a cucumber” is an apt simile: The inside of a cucumber can be as much as 20 degrees cooler than the outside temperature.
- The average temperature on Mars is -81 degrees.
- According to ‘Dolbear’s Law’, you can calculate the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit by counting the number of chirps produced in 14 seconds by a cricket and adding 40.
- Until they are needed, the balls at Wimbledon are stored in refrigerated containers at 68F.
- The flapping of the wings of 1,000 bees generates seven watts of heat.
- The first use of the term “heatwave” for a period of hot weather was in New York in 1892.
- The World Meteorological Organization’s definition of a heatwave is when temperatures are over 9 degrees above average for five days in a row.
So, now you’ll be armed with some fun facts for this weekend’s BBQ. When your neighbor starts to complain about the heat, you can ask him if he’d rather be in Libya! Meanwhile, here at The Storage Inn, I will be cranking up the air-conditioning in the rental office, hoping for Mars-like conditions!
Happy Heat Wave!