Heat Waves
A heat wave is a prolonged period of excessively hot weather, which may be accompanied by high humidity. While definitions vary, a heat wave is measured relative to the usual weather in the area and relative to normal temperatures for the season. Temperatures that people from a hotter climate consider normal can be termed a heat wave in a cooler area if they are outside the normal climate pattern for that area. The term is applied both to routine weather variations and to extraordinary spells of heat which may occur only once a century. Severe heat waves have caused catastrophic crop failures, thousands of deaths from hyperthermia, and widespread power outages due to increased use of air conditioning.
Read more about Heat Waves: Definitions, How They Occur, Health Effects
Famous quotes containing the words heat and/or waves:
“When the heat of the summer
Made drowsy the land,
A dragon-fly came
And sat on my hand;”
—Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965)
“The seashore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-traveled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)