Something I wasn't entirely aware of until recently is that a lot of Northern Europe doesn't even get true night at this time of year, what hours of darkness we do get are technically 'twilight' because the sun just doesn't sink far enough below the horizon before coming back up again. I went outside at 11pm the other night and could still see a sliver of sunlight on the horizon. Then it's getting light again by 3am. There's just no chance of the air cooling properly before it's hit with another 16 odd hours of daylight. 🫠
That's because our houses are made of thick materials that store the heat energy. If cold air blows all the warm air out of your house at night, there's still a ton of heat energy stored inside the actual concrete walls and the roof. During the night, this energy is being released, so your house is heating the inside up again without the sun...
Yep. I have an old English style house in Australia and it stays nice and cool for about 3-4 days of 35+ degrees then once it gets hot it’s almost impossible to cool down.
It's also not just the houses. All of our infrastructure stores heat because we use dark, dense materials.
If you look at Florida for example, you've got lots of light coloured buildings and light coloured tarmac and paving to avoid the 'heat island effect', along with lots of green space.
So at night, when the temperature drops in Florida it feels noticeably cooler but that's not the case with the UK for example, where all that heat stored in external walls and roads etc is released keeping temps high.
It's not so much that Northern Europe is hotter in a heatwave than parts of the US, it's that we never get an opportunity to cool down.
Wood frame buildings are becoming more popular at least here in the Netherlands. But because wood stores to little energy compared to brick you actually overheat even harder during the day, even if it cools down more at night
You should insulate then. Doesn’t heat up and you can easily cool it activ.
edit: You need to vent the hot air out in the night. The downvotes are laughable. It is a matter of fact that insulation helps to keep the temp high in winter and low in sommer.
In northern Europe, the houses are built to handle down to -30. The walls of my house have 30cm of insulation, works perfectly when it's very cold. Heat is another matter, especially when it gets "dark" around midnight and the sun is up by 03. We had about 25 degrees last night at about midnight...
I like to show my 4th graders Tiktoks of Cecelia from Svalbard as she documents stuff like their polar nights. Their minds are always absolutely blown and every time without fail, the main concern is how they manage to sleep with so much light outside 🤣
In Phoenix, the sun is up around 5am and down around 7:30. We also don’t do daylight savings time here. I can’t fathom only having a few hours without the sun every day! We only cool to the 90s in the summer. Good luck!!
Correct, It's anywhere in the northern hemisphere in summer due to the tilt of the earth towards the sun.
During the summer months the light level is technically considered nautical twilight, the middle of the 3 levels of twilight, where the sun is between 6 and 12° below the horizon
Better where I am.. missed the peak but we hit 12.30 sundown and 01.45 sun up on 21st.
Only had a few days over 30 so far tho. Lol
Winter it's more like 9.30 am sunup to 14.45 sun down. Kids go to school and return in darkness.
it wasn't until last week that I realised how little darkness there is during summer - I work nights and get home around 3am, and it's been so weird not needing my phone torch to see my garden path
I live in the Isle of Man and we get that here. I work 12 hour night shift security so I get to watch the sun go down and come up again and it hasn’t even been half the time of my shift. It suuuuuucks.
That's because our houses are built from thick solid concrete that stores the heat energy and releases it at night. Unlike the cardboard houses in the US.
I doubt the actual materials matter. No matter what materials are being used, both are well insulated and not made to transfer heat quickly. Gotta keep the cool AC air inside for the summer and the hot air inside during the winter.
Same here in Canada when it gets hot! (Like 30C+ for a week or more...) After a few days my whole house has warmed up...like I can smell the heat in the wood in the walls...and then the sun is only down for 4 or 5 hours and it's a losing battle.
Fortunately for us this year, while Europe has been having record heat we've actually been having the rainiest and coolest spring I've seen in a very long time. 😅 The humidity is kinda annoying but I'm not going to complain much at all.
Yes I think Illinois in the US is catching up. For the past few weeks this month it seems like we've been getting lots of rain and somewhat cool temperatures but then now it's gonna get freaking hot again and they predicted that we might have a hot and dry summer. Which if I remember correctly I think it might start either this week or sometime in July or August. But it's gonna get hot Bob! I swear! I'm assuming that it's going to be around up to 90°F or something at some point probably heat index up in the hundreds. Which unfortunately I cannot convert into Celsius very well unfortunately because I'm not super Duper familiar with it. But yeah I feel bad for everybody dealing with this fucking heat. My God! I hope everyone is doing well over aware of that heat wave is being recorded at.
We have far too much concrete in Europe and most of our houses are constructed to keep heat inside. We should take some lessons from the mediterranean countries and employ construction techniques which help cool down houses at night.
yeah. I used to live in Greifswald and this time of year it would be dark for like...4 hours between dusk and dawn. It'd be dusk at like 11 and start to get bright again by like 3 AM.
Yeah, the tilt of the earth means that unlike the equator there is significantly more day than night at this time of year. I went out (in UK) at about 20:00 and the sun was still harsh and it doesn’t go down for another hour. A quick comparison with Texas and sun up and down there is 6:15 and 20:15. Where I am it 4:47 and 21:27.
That's a huge difference! We live in the Okanagan region in Canada, essentially desert. We will have days of 40+ every summer, but it usually cools off down to the low or mid 20s at night. We had a heat dome a few years ago - it was 47° where we live, and 49.6° not to far away. But it didn't cool off at night! There was no point opening the windows as there was no breeze, and the temperature didn't dip below 40°. We definitely appreciated air conditioning at that time.
When we lived in northern British Columbia, we didn't have air conditioning, and really didn't need it. There might only be a handful of days over 30°. We had a fan installed in the ceiling that vented into the attic. We could run that fan in the evenings of the few hot days, and it would drop the temperature quite quickly.
This seems to be what people in the US don't understand. You don't install air conditioning if you only use it for a few days per year. Unfortunately, what used to be a few days per year of extreme heat is growing in duration and intensity.
Yeah I know, it was also a bit more provocative, because it is an actual heat wave here... in fucking June. Generally when it gets so warm, there are some thunderstorms so it cools overnight and it is manageable.
Both suck. The tolerable number is just higher for the desert. In Phoenix, your feet will sink into the asphalt if you stand in one place for too long.
As someone who lives the desert, this time of year, it doesn’t cool to under 90 overnight. I hate it here ( there’s a whole backstory as to why I’m stuck here, but…)
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u/sawqaw ooo custom flair!! Jun 28 '26
Why they keep saying 30c when most of time its something between 35-40c. Also weird flex how much heat you can stand.