tagged: Athens weather, Greece weather heat wave, Greek TV, Haris Kampezidis, meltemi, meltemia, Thom's Index, weather Athens

Weather in Athens: Hottest August Ever?

Posted by keeptalkinggreece in weather

The hot soup we live in, here in Athens  these days is unbelievable!  Temperature was  39 degrees C at 5.30 pm today, in the shadow of my balcony. Humidity, total lack of wind  and smog make my hands stick, turn my brain into mash and cause a biting feeling in the throat.

I see no chance to write anything and post it in my blog during the day. I am an A/C opponent for environmental reasons, so when I am at home I go around with a fan in my arms. If the future summers will continue to be that hot and for that long I might reconsider my environmental sensitivities though. It is the third or fourth heat wave this year and … “enough is enough”, I could say…

Anyway, the only activity I can do, except drinking liters of water, is to call a friend – few are in the city these days-, pack my bathing suit and a towel, and go to a nearby beach. Nearby beaches are over crowed and unfortunately I had no functioning brain, so I didn’t think of getting my camera with.

The heat wave is going to torture us until the end of next week, with temperatures up to 39-40 degrees C in the shadow, I hear from weather forecasters. For Tuesday and Wednesday the temperatures will reach even 42 degrees!

By next week I hope I will be able to escape again on an Greek island and enjoy much a refreshing breeze and sea sports.

Where is the Meltemi Wind?

It is an odd phenomenon this summer that there is no “Meltemi“. Meltemi  or better  say Meltemia (Plural) are the  strong, dry north winds blowing in the Aegean Sea.  They normally blow from May to September and sometimes reach 8 Beaufort. There are a blessing in  August because they help you go through the hottest summer days. At least it was like that in the past when the climate was more balanced, the sun wasn’t ‘biting’ and smog wouldn’t burn my throat.

I remember  some thirty years ago, to ‘eat’ tons of fine sand every day on the beach of Faros village on the island of Sifnos. Meltemia would blow from 11 am to 6pm and save our free camping holidays.

I was reading today on a newspaper that scientists have started to wonderabout the absence of  Meltemia this year. They say lack of Meltemia is not an unnatural phenomenon but it sure is a rare one. For certain without the helping blow of Meltemia , humidity is going high and you wish you’d live inside the sea or at least in a swimming pool all day.

Scientists blame the changes in the climate for the long heat waves  in Greece and point the Mediterranean Sea as the place where climate changes appear.

Thom’s Heat and Discomfort Index

Thom’s Index  evaluates how current temperature and relative humidity can affect the sultriness or discomfort sensation and cause health danger in the population.

Enet.gr  quotes Haris Kampezidis, Director of Research at the National Observatory, who explains  that how comfortable a healthy person feels in an environment depends greatly on the prevailing conditions of temperature and humidity content and secondarily by wind speed. The quantification of sensation that is called the Thom’s Index, which takes into account in calculating the values of temperature and humidity.

Thom’s Index values of less than 21 indicate a normal non-distress, values ranging from 21 to 24 mean that 50% of the population feels discomfort, from 24 to 27 more than  50% of the population feels discomfort, with values 27-29 the majority of the population feels discomfort and when values reach 29-32 everybody feels heat stress. Values over 32 make emergency medical intervention neccessary.

The first ten days of August this year surpassed slightly  the values of  32!

Hot Weather vs. Hot Girls

“Are you hot?” The blond, stylish reporter of a private Greek TV channel poses this question in English to a female tourist in Athens. The woman, a bit irritated by the ‘direct’ question, thinks twice in front of the camera and answers “Yes, it is very hot”.

The blond reporter contintues her ‘hot weather report’ through the parks and streets of downtown  Athens until she meets a male tourist from Egypt. “What is hot in Athens?” she asks him. “The girls!“, he answers. Task fullfilled, a ‘blond’ report successfully completed.