Record breaking heatwave

It's been quite normal here in Southern California. Temperatures in the high 70's which I recall as being normal this time of year. Though actual mileage may vary depending on how far you live from the ocean (I live six miles away). When I read Tanypteryx' report I wondered which side of the mountains he's on.

I also have family in the Seattle area and my weather app reports temperatures around 100°F even though they're right next to the ocean. My weather app shows for Seattle 99° today, 109° tomorrow, 91° Tuesday, and down in the mid-80's for the rest of the week. So maybe the end is in sight (and it's not another train coming at us in the tunnel).

 
One of the things I learned from the Navy's Basic Meteorology correspondence course (I would earn extra retirement points by doing the courses, plus I love to learn) was the effects of rising and sinking air, AKA adiabatic cooling and heating.

As air rises, it expands and cools. We see this in low pressure systems. But as air sinks, as in a high pressure system, it compresses and heats up. In SoCal, the reason why the Santa Ana Winds are hot is because they are coming from a high pressure area that's also at a higher altitude, so the winds must descend to get to us which causes them to heat up.

"Do you know what average means?"

Now that's being just plain mean.

 
O'Reilly, the publisher famous for its long line of computer books with drawings of animals on the cover, also published Cooking for Geeks, an exercise in food science.

One of the recipes in the book is "A Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie". They test cooked the recipes, but when they got 30 to 40 recipes for chocolate chip cookies there was no way they were going to make 30 to 40 batches. All the recipes had the same ingredients, just different amounts, so they averaged out all the amounts to arrive at a mean chocolate chip cookie:

Preheat oven to 354.17°F / 178.98°C.

2.04 cups (245g) flour
0.79 teaspoons (3.81g) salt
0.79 teaspoons (3.63g) baking soda
6.44 tablespoons (87.9g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
2.1896 tablespoons (29.9g) unsalted butter, cold
4.2504 tablespoons (58g) unsalted butter, melted
0.84 cups (169g) light brown sugar
0.10 cups (20g) dark brown sugar
0.54 cups (109g) white sugar
1.33 (46g) eggs
0.33 (8g) egg yolk
1.46 teaspoons (6.08g) vanilla extract
0.17 tablespoons (2.51g) water
0.25 tablespoons (3.84g) milk
1.53 cups (257g) semi-sweet chocolate chips

Cover and chill dough in the refrigerator for 25 minutes.

Cook for 13.04 minutes.

What does the forecast for tomorrow look like?

Pointing my weather app at Seattle (I have family there), it reports 106°/68° for today and 90°/64° tomorrow (and a high of 84° the day after).

That says to me that it should start cooling down a bit.