How to survive a heat dome

The top five things to do when the next heat dome comes around — and what really matters when it’s 110 degrees Fahrenheit in your apartment.

The ambient temperature in my apartment was hotter than parts of the Sahara Desert (Photo by Keith Hardy on Unsplash).

A few weeks ago in July, my girlfriend and I survived the heat dome that fell onto Seattle and much of the Pacific Northwest. The temperature started rising on Friday, hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit for three consecutive days. For almost 48 hours, the temperature in our apartment was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. We both felt like we’d woken up from a dream when we woke up to temperatures in the 70s on Tuesday.

We visited family in the Midwest a few weeks later, and they chided us on the ‘hot weekend’ we’d had. They asked how hot it really got, and we told them at least 110 inside our home. They stopped laughing, stopped smiling, and frowned in confusion. They kept asking, “Didn’t you have air conditioning?”

When we said no, they just looked shocked. Temperatures over 100 degrees are not uncommon in our home state of Minnesota, but there’s always an air-conditioned mall or bedroom to escape to — how do you survive without A/C in those temperatures?

(Photo by Sarah Mae on Unsplash)

Why is Seattle so ill-equipped to handle the heat?