Ninth anniversary of the "Super Derecho"

[Boyd]

It roared through here during the early morning hours on 6/30/2012. Cut a narrow path of devastation across South Jersey, some areas got nothing. It was a real mess here, all the roads were blocked with fallen trees, it was days before you could even go anywhere. And the power was out everywhere, I was in the dark for 5 days while some members of this site were closer to two weeks. And it happened during a bad heat wave with 100-degree temperatures and no air conditioning!

Here comes the hot weather

We've had that storm since around 12:30pm, just ended in the last half hour or so. Scratch that, its still here.

forums.njpinebarrens.com

 

[RednekF350]

..........And it happened during a bad heat wave with 100-degree temperatures and no air conditioning!

Here comes the hot weather

We've had that storm since around 12:30pm, just ended in the last half hour or so. Scratch that, its still here.

forums.njpinebarrens.com

Doesn't that sound like most of our childhood summers in the 60's and 70's ?
We didn't have an air conditioner in my house until I was in my teens. It was a window unit that only did the living and dining rooms. We had a reversible fan in a downstairs window at night and we would leave our bedroom windows open 3" or so and it would suck in the cool night air out of the woods behind my house. It was better than an air conditioner.

 

[Boyd]

I just have a window air conditioner to cover my bedroom and little studio that is connected to it. Living room, dining room and kitchen aren't air conditioned but I don't mind. Had three previous homes in the pines with central AC and the electric bills were crazy. Growing up in St. Louis in the 1950's, we didn't have AC until I was maybe 6 years old and then they were beat-up old window units my Dad fixed up. Summers there were a lot hotter and more humid than here. My parents sent me to summer camp on a lake in Wisconsin from about 12 years old and later I was a counselor there.

Living near Lake Ontario in Central New York for almost 20 years, it was a similar setup with just a couple window units for the bedrooms. None of our cars ever had air conditioners and it wasn't too bad. Then I moved down here and started commuting to Philadelphia, that was just about unbearable, got my first car with AC around 1994.

I don't mind the un-airconditioned rooms in my house now, I go into the bedroom to cool off now and then. I also have small window units for the guest rooms when my daughter's family visits. Yeah, fans can be pretty effective if used properly (as you describe). But I'm surrounded by forest and a lot of pollen and other stuff gets sucked inside and coats all the furniture, so I don't do that so often these days.