We broke yet another heat record in the Valley over the weekend, as thermometers tallied 113 degrees at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
But, it’s October, that time we’re supposed to be buying pumpkins and putting up Halloween decorations, drinking pumpkin spice and maybe — just maybe — putting on a sweater. Now, we here at The Show know this is Phoenix and it’s hot here. But, after another record-breaking summer of heat, this hot autumn pushing some of us over the edge.
Amy Silverman, executive producer for KJZZ's The Show and columnist for Phoenix Magazine, joined host Lauren Gilger to discuss.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: So I know you've lived here your entire life. We know it can get hot in Phoenix in the summer. We know it can often stay hot until Halloween.
That's always like my cutoff. I think Halloween will be the first time, it almost feels chilly outside, but this is not normal, right.
AMY SILVERMAN: Right. I always say it's a little bit warm until Halloween and then you got to put a sweater over your costume, which always bums everybody out. But now, now, I don't know if we'll ever have sweater weather here again.
And for me, fall has always been like spring is for everybody else all over the country. I get depressed in March thinking about the summer and all I do is look forward to September. And now I'm starting to think maybe I'll need to start looking forward to October instead because September is just really another summer month, another summer month.
GILGER: OK. And I want to talk about the way it kind of changes our lives in all of these little ways. Like, there are big ways if you're not as lucky as we are and you're not living in a home with good air conditioning. But for me, it's in parenting, like it's not being able to let my kids go outside now for months on end. It's how my kids' fall soccer league, "fall" in quotes, they had to cancel games due to extreme heat. They've moved them to night games. Where do you notice it most, Amy?
SILVERMAN: We might need to move to the Biosphere, right. It really is so different this year. And I've tried for so long to tell myself it's not that bad. There are other cities that are hot. Phoenix has always been hot, but now that it's hit October, it's really different.
And I've always felt like when we get to the point where the mornings and the evenings cool off, I can deal with it. I can deal with the middle of the day. But now you go outside and it's 90 degrees at 10 p.m. And, you know, now we're really in trouble because the thermometer is coming for Halloween. So we might as well just keep this whole summerween trend with like, I don't know, what are they carving watermelons into, into jack-o’-lanterns?
I'm really bitter because one of my best friends years ago made me a candy corn wreath where she took one of those styrofoam wreaths and glued individual pieces of candy corn all over it, hundreds of them. And then she shellacked it with glitter. And if you put it up now you would come home and half the candy corn would be melted onto the porch.
GILGER: That's entirely true.
SILVERMAN: So, we're just not getting Halloween at all.
GILGER: You can't put out pumpkins yet. We put ours inside because if you put them outside, they're going to completely melt.
SILVERMAN: They're going to rot instantly. And yeah, you're going to talk your kids into walking outside in a costume at 5 p.m.?
GILGER: So I know also like we both, you know, try to be gardeners here in Phoenix. I haven't even started mine yet because it doesn't seem useful. What about yours?
SILVERMAN: It's so sad. I don't need to put Halloween decorations up because it's terrifying in my garden right now. You just need to go out there. Everything's dead. I haven't even bothered to pull it up. I tried to grow pumpkins this year. And that was a pathetic attempt. And now everything's all crunchy and scary.
And I keep telling myself when it gets under 100 I'll think about starting a fall garden, but I don't think we're going to have time when it gets under 100.
GILGER: Yeah. OK. So it seems as if they, this will be our quote unquote, like "new normal," that phrase we've heard a lot of. So I asked an expert to make sure I was right about this.
And ASU’s Randy Cerveny told me that they measure quote unquote "normal" in weather based on the 30-year period up to the last year ending in zero, which I did not know and I found very. So that means we measure normal in weather now based on the averages from 1991 to 2020.
And he told me yes, for most cities around the world, particularly Phoenix, the official weather, normals have gone up over the last several decades, not just the last few years, like it really seems to us. So if we know these kind of normals are going up, what do you think this means, Amy, for the future and what it might be like to live here in the future?
SILVERMAN: Well, I think to put it poetically, we're screwed, right. I mean, it's not going to make the place uninhabitable and that's kind of a silly discussion to have. It's not it's not going to be on fire anytime soon, but it really is starting to impact our day to day lives. And it's more serious than candy corn wreath melting of course.
I mean, what about people's electric bills, right. We budget so that we can pay high air-conditioning bills through the summer. And now if September and October are also those months, that's really going to mess with people financially. And, you know, I'm seeing signs up saying that the cooling centers are open longer, who we wouldn't have thought, I mean, last year, two years ago, we wouldn't have thought that that would be the case. In fact, even last year October wasn't super hot.
GILGER: No, no. OK. So we have to end with maybe a positive note. So on the flip side, fall has always looked different to us in the Sonoran Desert and that's not out of the ordinary, right? Is there something good in this? Can we find a silver lining and look at this in a way that is unique?
SILVERMAN: So one thing I've been trying for years is to introduce the concept of winter linen, which basically means wearing linen all year long because we already have so much for the summer. And so for the last few winters, I have shivered in my linen. And now I think maybe winter linen will have to be a thing. But I don't know that that's, is that really a silver lining or does that just make you sad about your sweaters?
GILGER: I miss my sweaters, but this is another alternative at least.
SILVERMAN: It is. It is. And so when I lived on the East Coast for a few years, for a blip in my 20, many decades ago and when I came back, I noticed that there were these bonkers holiday displays of lights. And someone explained that it's because we don't have the trappings of Christmas and wintertime here in the Valley, right? We don't have the snow and the fires and all of that.
And so instead people just go to town with their lights. So I guess maybe that's a silver lining if you enjoy driving around and looking at the what they like, coordinate them to the radio and all of that. And they do that for Halloween too. So maybe we just need to stay in our cars with our air conditioning on year round and drive around and look at lights.
GILGER: And see all those Halloween lights. We're putting some up today.
