1. It’s pizza-oven hot. 115 degrees.
2. But it’s a dry heat. 21 percent humidity. So you can breathe in the pizza oven.
3. Leave your car and melt cups. Yep, you leave your car in a parking lot and everything inside melts. You can boil water inside a car. Well, maybe not. I haven’t tried it. But I did melt a plastic cup.
4. Watch what you touch. You get in the rental car, and the seat is fabric. But the steering wheel, the seat belts, the shift knob are finger-searing. You burn your fingerprints off.
5. Take a dip in the pool. The pool is a cool 90 degrees. Really. Because your skin is heated to 115 degrees, 90-degree water feels cool. You get out of the pool and the water evaporates so fast that your teeth chatter. You are standing in 115 degree heat and you dry in less than 60 seconds. I did some hand wash and put it out on a pool chair. Ten minutes and the wash was dry.
6. Everywhere you go, you are offered a bottle of water. And you are grateful for it. If you live there, you offer the postal deliverer, the UPS driver, any workman who shows up at your door a bottle of water.
But it’s a huge, blue sky with palm trees outlined against them. It’s a wonderful place.
–Quinn McDonald is, still, a resident of the Washington, D.C. area. She’s thinking about it, though. She is a writer and trainer. See her work at QuinnCreative.com Image: fuzzyco.com(c) 2007. All rights reserved.
QuinnCreative 
Jan–Lucky I didn’t see any kids or pets in cars while I was in AZ–that would have been reason enough to break open a window. Even here in relatively-cooler Virginia a baby died, left in a car in a driveway for several hours. Her father “forgot” her while taking care of his other seven kids.
..and your tennis shoe soles melt on asphalt, the roses in your garden dry ON the plant as they bloom, and the dogs take over the tile floors in your bathrooms even if you have air conditioning!
But what is pathetic is that people will STILL forget and leave dogs and children in their cars a couple times each summer. I don’t know what it is about heat that seems less dangerous than snow and ice, but there you are! Welcome to Oklahoma, too, though at least we get winter (sometimes too much of it!).
Weather extremes are a great excuse to stay indoors and do something other than rush around doing errands.
Oh, but our winters are wonderful.
Think I will pass on this experience Quinn. I don’t do Pizza ovens very well. That is why I choose to reside in good old Melbourne.
Yeah. We’ve been to Las Vegas in August. It’s about the same thing. We noticed that everyone goes out at night and sleeps all day… I think I know why.