Hot Weather Story

The British journal, Nature, sweating at every pore, last week described a few unusual weather conditions designed to make U.S. swelterers count their blessings. Samples:

P:In the deep mines of South Africa, air temperature sometimes reaches 95DEG F. with 98% humidity, and air moving at only 20 feet a minute. Under these conditions, workers' temperatures may rise to 101DEG or 102DEG because their sweat cannot evaporate and cool them.

P:In the Simoom, the hot, dry Poison Wind of Arabia, whole parties of men sometimes perish together. Nature thinks that perhaps they lose so much water by sweating (up to two quarts an hour) in the dry air that they lose the ability to sweat and their bodies become defenseless against the heat.

P:"The Fohn Wind, a warm dry wind which blows down the sides of many mountain ranges, has long been notorious for producing . . . irritability and quarrelsomeness." Some desert-dwellers are always irritable. (Humidity produces the same effect in rats--TIME, June 11.)

The ideal climate, avers Nature, would have a winter mean temperature not below freezing and a summer so cool that a lightly clothed man could walk four miles an hour in sunlight without sweating. The best climate in the world is that of New Zealand. Pretty good is the area including the British Isles, France, northern Spain, Switzerland. Germany, The Netherlands. Denmark, southwest Scandinavia. The U.S. is not even in the running.*

Although Nature does not mention the U.S., sections here & there (e.g., Los Angeles) fulfill the qualifications.

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