what people did to survive the ones they experienced.
A TL;DR would be very useful, here.
this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2026
33 points (94.6% liked)
You Should Know
45341 readers
597 users here now
YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.
All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.
Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:
**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Rule 11- Posts must actually be true: Disiniformation, trolling, and being misleading will not be tolerated. Repeated or egregious attempts will earn you a ban. This also applies to filing reports: If you continually file false reports YOU WILL BE BANNED! We can see who reports what, and shenanigans will not be tolerated. We are not here to ban people who said something you don't like.
If you file a report, include what specific rule is being violated and how.
Partnered Communities:
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
Credits
Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Nothing, people did nothing, these things aren't life threatening. So in order to survive them you just need to wait till it's over.
There is this one case discussed in the YouTube video from almost 70 years ago where it is claimed the temperature got up to 60 degrees C. But all of the events in past 30 years with proper data haven't gotten above 40C, so I would very much doubt the 60C figure. These events are also brief, lasting at most a few hours. They are also rare and can only happen in specific places.
The old footage they have in clip is so unique I thought it’d be best for the episode to do the talking.
For those want a tl:dr/dw:
*Some people took shelter in underground tornado shelters. *Others held cold rags soaked in water from the tap near their mouths to cool the air around the mouth, making it more breathable. *If I recall correctly there was a few that went to nearby rivers, creeks, and ponds. Staying in them the whole time.(I’m sure there is more but that is all I recall.)
Okay, thank you!
I was kinda curious if there were new techniques being demonstrated here, but I guess that's pretty traditional stuff. Still, some may not know these things, so good share.
Why should we know about this super rare event exactly? They can't even happen in the region of the world I live in. I don't think anyone was ever hurt by one? The events are usually short and rather mild?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_burst
Most listed here don't get above 40C? We have regular days in summer where it's around 40 all day. Sure it's hot, but not unheard of hot and certainly not something to worry about happening. It might be weird if the temperature suddenly jumps from 24C to 34C, but that's all it is, just kinda weird.
I saw that YouTube video when it released and it was really interesting. But it's just a cool niche weather phenomenon, not something people should know.
Trying to avoid YouTube (I hate that my phone chaged the case from lowercase on its own) is hard.
The watch here option is still a YouTube stream, it just doesn't open it in the YouTube app or open YouTube in the browser.
We deal with tornados here and there in NJ, but nothing like tornado alley out west. I’ll add heat bursts to the list of reasons why living out that way is scary as hell.
I've been in 52 C heat (125 F) and it's no joke, but you can still walk around, even in the sun, without exerting yourself too much.
I've also been in a room at 70 C (almost 160 F) for a few minutes and that was terrifying. The air is as if burning your insides, it's absolutely unbearable. There is a world of difference between these two. I image 60 C for four hours would start killing people, particularly the elderly.
35c (95 f) is the wet bulb temperature where the human body stops being able to cool itself. Humidity plays a role, but generally above this temperature you're going to get heat stroke if you can't find external ways to cool off. So yeah 52c would definitely be enough to be killing people without a/c, fans, cold water, etc.
Humidity plays a big role. You can still cool down at 52 C if the air isn't very humid (that is, when the wet bulb temperature is low enough). Wet bulb temperature is a particularly useful metric because it incorporates evaporative cooling in it. Sadly most thermometers can't measure it.
Yeah, no. 95F is a normal summer temperature here. I've done farm work for hours in triple digit temps in direct sunlight without getting heat stroke.
It's something you have to be acclimated to, though, and you have to know to frequently drink water.
A) Drinking water is external cooling, just inefficient.
B) No, your anecdote doesn't change reality. though the 35c is a good reference point humidity does matter. If you cannot sweat you cannot cool down. Period. End of story.
At 35c you MUST be able to sweat or cool down in some other way, or you will die. just the close you are to 100% relative humidity at that temp, the less you will be able to sweat. So you will have one less method of cooling down.
Many people have no problem living in 35-40c temps with low humidity. Maybe up to 45c with 0% relative humidity.
There are not humans that have survived 35c at 100% humidity for more than 2 hours. They don't exist on this planet. They physically can't.
70c is like the temp in the children's sauna
A fellow Swegler in the wild, nice!