Thursday, June 30, 2005

But it's a dry heat

Well, the weather is here. Wish you were lovely.

It got up to 119 degrees yesterday. So warm, in fact, that the two-sided tape holding my outdoor thermal sensor gave up, and it dropped off the eave. I found the sensor lying in the dirt, baking in the sun, showing 126 degrees.

Mostly it’s been around 115 this week, and not a cloud can be seen anywhere. It gets really windy in the afternoon, and we’ve started to have dust devils kick up. I’m used to these from back home, but they’re pretty small potatoes compared to the ones here. These dust devils go hundreds of feet up, and are 15-20 feet wide at the base, spinning weeds, dirt and garbage high up into the air, and making the whole area dusty.

I saw two earlier today, and thought they must be 300-400 yards away. I happened to be driving, and as I got past some obstructions, I saw that they were at least 2-3 miles away.

We have been one of the warmest places in Iraq this week, hotter even than Basra. I had been hoping, given our more northern location, that it would be cooler here than elsewhere.

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