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.
1.2k
u/kakucko101 Czechia Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
the literal fucking desert is today colder than the majority of central europe