A Tropical Heatwave

"We are having a heatwave," as the great Ella once sang much better than Marilyn, "A tropical heat wave" in Central Europe. Here is the weather map of last Wednesday for my American friends conveniently marked in Fahrenheit.

©Weather BELL Analytics

In Freiburg, we measured 37⁰ Celsius, so we did not quite make it to 100 ⁰F.

The heatwave is caused by hot winds blowing along the eastern flank of a low-pressure area stationary over the Atlantic. So the heat will continue to flow, although somewhat attenuated, over the coming weekend.

Last Friday, during the climate summit in Bonn, the Badische Zeitung printed a graphic showing the development of summer temperatures in Germany from 1881 to today. Below the picture, the snappy headline, "Climate Conference Not Moving."

©Badische Zeitung

Since there are still people around who do not accept human-made climate change, German journalists upgraded their language. Instead of writing about Klimawandel (climate change) that always existed, they now call the present situation Klimakrise (climate crisis)

Yesterday I was in Zürich to hand over Elisabeth's death certificate to our bank. It was hot, but the trains were air-conditioned. I had a surprise only on my last leg from Basel to Freiburg.

The air-conditioning systems on the German ICE trains simply cannot cope with the present temperatures. This happened yesterday in my carriage. But instead of locking the access to the wagon, the personnel arrived with a reel sticking tape and scotched off the seats instead. What a waste of time and, above all, what pollution by plastic tape not to be reused.

My second surprise. Instead of using German English like when thanking the mostly delayed traveler over the speaker, "Senk ju for träveling wis Deutsche Bahn!", they had translated the message somehow correctly, "Klimaanlage defekt - Dieser Wagen darf nicht benutzt werden, (Air conditioning not working - this carriage must not be used)."

Found on Facebook

Here comes the "cooler" side of the present heatwave. A man in Potsdam rode his scooter completely naked. Otherwise, he had committed no traffic offense wearing his helmet correctly. The friendly policemen eventually convinced him to put on his shorts.

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