While I have significantly more advice for staying warm (and keeping food warm) and even treating heat as a treat, I have also learned a lot about staying cool when necessary.
A few broad ways to think about heat and then a few favorite products.
- In most places, the sun’s radiation causes daytime temperatures to be significantly higher than nighttime temperatures. It’s worth tracking both (I like wunderground).
- You can take advantage of this in two main ways:
- If you need to do work outside, do it very early in the morning (before the sun had had a chance to heat everything up) or after sunset as things start to cool. Not only will the world be cooler, but you will be in the shade, protected from the sun’s radiation. If you do need to work outside during the day, find a way to shade yourself—work under a movable patio umbrella or the shade of a building, or protect your body directly: wide-brimmed hats, neck attachments, hooded sun shirts with monkey thumbs to cover your hands, etc. Not only will this keep you cooler (as long as you still maintain good airflow—see “evaporative cooling” below) but it will also protect you from radiation burns without needing to reapply sunscreen.
- Your house/apt will follow that same pattern, cooling at night and heating up during the day, but you can use this to your advantage by opening the house up as soon as it’s cooler outside than inside at night (focusing on windows on opposite ends of the house to create a cross breeze) and then closing everything down at or before sunrise. In addition to trapping that cooler air, you should also prevent the sun from heating anything inside your house by closing all the curtains/blinds and ideally having a gap between anything the sun hits and the inside surfaces (double walled windows, thermal curtains + decorative interior curtains, etc.) My grandparents’ house is in the woods with thick window coverings and shade from tall trees and even in the heat of summer you walk through the front door and it feels like there must be a hidden glacier in the crawlspace or something.
- A major way that humans are able to cool themselves is through “evaporative cooling” — this process requires sweat (or water in the form of a quick dunk, some kind of mist/spray, a wet towel, etc.) that then evaporates to create the cooling effect. If there’s high humidity, the moisture can’t evaporate (which is why the “feels like” temperature in your app can be significantly higher than the actual temp). If it’s very dry this can work wonders for cooling you down, but you have to remember to rehydrate your body from the inside out (ideally with electrolytes), and techniques like spray bottles or wet towels will need backup water supplies.
Fans can help with cooling (neck fans and stroller/lawn mower fans are also a thing now). I’m currently over the moon for this set of three neck ice packs—they come in a set of three because each only lasts about an hour, so you need to plan to use them in a rotation where two are always re-chilling in the freezer or in a cooler with ice cubes or similar.
I use this mister that screws onto the end of a hose like a sprinkler, but I think 3 heads is overkill. In a dry place it’s ok, but in an average sort of place like the Bay Area or Oregon, even on a hot day it will start to develop a puddle. There are also fans that incorporate the mister (which you might see at the animal barns at the fair). And there are misting systems that have in-line nozzles like drip tubing, but for lining the edge of a portico roof.
I have a cheap tilting patio umbrella and a rolling patio umbrella stand and I have a secondary stand that’s lighter (and can’t handle all weather conditions outside) so that I can lift it off the patio and place it in other areas of the garden where I need to work. Getting shade in less tame terrain allows me to get work done in daylight that I would normally have to wait to tackle until sunset.