It's way too hot! Amusement park nightmare!

Jeff said:

Fine, but we have hot days every summer. Some years we have more than others. It's not like we never encounter days when it hits 100. That we have several in a row is noteworthy, but hardly something that I'd call a nightmare.

Except this hasn't been just a few days of hotter-than-normal weather:

The national temperature of 57.1 degrees F during spring (March-May) was 5.2 degrees F above the long-term average, besting the previous warmest spring of 1910 by 2.0 degrees F. This marked the largest temperature departure from average of any season on record for the contiguous United States. The spring of 2012 was the culmination of the warmest March, third warmest April, and second warmest May. This marks the first time that all three months during the spring season ranked among the ten warmest, since records began in 1895.

...

January-May was the warmest such period on record for the contiguous United States, with an average temperature of 49.2 degrees F, 5.0 degrees F above the long-term average.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/

DJ, can you put the lid back on that can of worms.

O noes!!11!!! It's on average five degrees warmer! How will we survive? How will we go to amusement parks?

My point remains: It's summer in the Midwest. That some days in June feel like days in August hardly makes it the theme park apocalypse. It's over 90 degrees in Orlando theme parks during their busiest days, and some how, they persist.

We usually have a heck of a lot more rain than this by now, though.

This is the first year I've seen signs all down the highway warning people not to flick lit cigarettes because of the fire hazard.

I blame it on hemispherical warming.

What's crazy is that the south is going through a phenominon known as hemispherical cooling!

~Rob

Jeff said:

...hardly makes it the theme park apocalypse.

Agreed. But on the flip side, the record-setting temps we've had throughout the year are hardly worth dismissing completely.

It's on average five degrees warmer! How will we survive?

I'm certainly no meteorologist, but isn't 5 degrees average over a 3-month span rather significant?

It's significant enough for me to say..."huh." It's an interesting tidbit of information, but beyond that, I'll wait until a few years from now when we can actually verify a trend of significantly warmer average temperatures over the whole planet before I start to panic.

Our growing national debt concerns me approximately 100% more than any global weather scare.

No no no... I certainly didn't mean to imply the weather was cause for concerns over global climate conditions. I'm simply saying the "ORLY, you mean summer is hot? duh!" response was off the mark.

Ah, ok. I don't agree that Jeff's comment was off the mark, however. So it's been hotter, on average, this time of year than any other, but summer is always hot. We always have oppressive days in the high-90s/low-100s. Just more than usual this year.

More to the point, Timber-Rider's first post had nothing specifically to do with the record average highs this year, except maybe for the first sentence, "The last few days in Michigan have been extremely hot. (90+)" Given that, I think Jeff's post is appropriate (and funny, until you read all of our analysis of it).

For the record, I don't mind the heat too much; it's the humidity that sucks the life out of me. However, I still prefer to go to amusement parks in the spring or fall when it's sub-85°.

"It's hot outsid.."

djDaemon said:
Agreed. But on the flip side, the record-setting temps we've had throughout the year are hardly worth dismissing completely.

It's completely worth dismissing in the context of visiting amusement parks.

Since when is 86 ungodly hot? I am a welder and the thermometer on my booth almost always reads triple digits and i am wearing a leather jacket, a leather apron, and a helmet and I can't have a fan blowing on me.

Babies.

For what it's worth the drought of 88 was far worse than this year and I remember that well. And then we have had years where it never got above 90 all summer or years when it was 10 and snowing all winter and winters where it was 35 with no snow all winter.

It all balances out kids.

My family back home in Kentucky had a big weekend outing planned to HW last weekend but cancelled in light of the 105+ temperatures they said they were having.

So...that's something!

You won't find me anywhere near an amusement park--or to be more correct, anywhere away from an air conditioner--when it hits the triple digits.

Yeah, I can handle up to about 95-97 and then I'm going to see a movie or something instead of hitting a park. Except Orlando/Tampa. I'll go whenever I get the opportunity, and screw the heat. I'll figure it out somehow.

Also the "normal" temperatures that we see are just an average of the extremes over the last century. Like others have said, it all balances out. I remember last year being very, very, rainy and here we are this year complaining about the lack of rain.

~Rob

So, are people who can't tolerate the heat supposed to say, "hey, it was 10 degrees cooler last year so this is ok" or are they supposed to take precautions because of the current temperatures?

During the HWN trip last year, we hit Dollywood and it felt like a convection oven in the parking lot. Once we got in the park, however, there were cooling mist-fans ALL over the place. Sure, it was hotter than anyone would prefer, but by having damp clothes and fans, it never became unbearable.

Pet peeves: fans not operating in the heat, and 1 in 100 amusement park fans have misting capability...

^ I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of natural and not-so-natural shade at Dollywood. It was in the upper 80s/lower 90s when I visited a few weeks ago, but I was never that uncomfortable. The themes of many of the rides lent themselves to having covered queues.

I've sometimes wondered what it would cost for Cedar Point to, say, put those semi-shade awnings over ALL of Millennium Force's (or Dragster's, or Power Tower's, or... oh wait, not Maverick's) queue instead of the seemingly random arrangement they have now. Honestly, the complaint about "not enuf treez!!" is probably more related to hot, unshaded queues than charm.

I am still trying to figure out where, other than the main midway, Cedar Point lacks trees. Large, mature trees are everywhere.