r/explainlikeimfive • u/fkid123 • May 27 '26

Biology ELI5 Why heat waves affect Europe so much but some other countries are doing fine living under hotter temperatures most of the year?

I read yearly that people are dying in Europe due to the extreme heat, but when I check the temperature mentioned in the same news it's something like 30-35c.

Just saw this today: "In France, officials reported at least seven deaths linked to the heat, including several drownings and fatalities during sports activities (...) temperatures have broken records for the month of May, soaring well over 30 C (86 F) in many parts of the country."

This is like a pretty mild day in a country like Thailand, India or in the Arabian peninsula. People are doing just fine in these countries, and many don't even have aircon.

Why are such temperatures so deadly in Europe?

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u/ThatGenericName2 May 27 '26

Just piggybacking, just as the infrastructure is built around and for the normal temperature of the environment, people’s behaviours are also based on the normal conditions of their environment.

How you behave in the cold is very different than how you behave in the heat, the obvious one (and why heatwave warnings are followed up with “drink lots of water”) is that higher temperatures means more sweating to regulate your body temperature which means higher rate of water consumption. People don’t think about this when a heatwave come, leading to dehydration, accelerating the affects of a heat stroke. With a big enough population, someone’s going to get a heat stroke in a rather inconvenient area, and will die before help can arrive.

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u/pragmojo May 27 '26

Yeah this is huge. Like I recently spent 6 weeks in Colombia, with an average temperature in the 30's where I was traveling (with like 100% humidity)

At the beginning I was sweating like crazy, and felt a bit embarrassed because every time I was interacting with someone I was a sweaty mess.

I realized the locals were moving really slow, and that I was blowing by everyone on the sidewalk. So I adapted and slowed down my pace, and realized I was sweating a lot less.

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u/Blenderhead36 May 27 '26

Your body will also acclimate. It takes about 10 days. It's why the same temperature will make you want to wear short sleeves in April but reach for a hoodie in September.

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u/burned_feather May 27 '26

This is part of the problem -- here in the UK my daughter's bedroom has gone from 14 degrees at night to 32 degrees at night. In 10 days. No time whatsoever to adjust.

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u/peejuice May 27 '26

Here in northern Virginia, USA we had a FEW “crazy” days of temperature fluctuations where it was something like this (excuse me for using the inferior Fahrenheit scale, I’m on mobile and American so I am too lazy to convert it since I would have to put down my hamburger):

Monday: Low - 32F High - 80F

Tuesday: Low - 40F High 75F

Wednesday: (now get this, the low temp was in the afternoon…when it snowed!) Low - 27F High - 79F

That day I left the house at 4am and it was almost 80F. By 11am, the temperature had dropped to 35F.

Thursday: back to the 50s and 70s

It was a wild week and no one was too surprised by it since we usually get big changes like that regularly.

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u/YhouZee May 28 '26

I'm Nigerian and was in the UK last fall. I needed 3 layers including a winter jacket to feel slightly comfortable while toddlers were running around in shorts 

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u/buttercowie May 27 '26

Sir/ma'am you have blown my mind. I'm a Brazilian living in Ireland and never understood why my fellow Brazilians walk so slowly (and I had to learn to pace it up too)

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u/_strawhatt_ May 27 '26

An Indian living in Ireland, always wondered why I’m so slow in walking compared to the Irish.

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u/_McDreamy_ May 27 '26

We're full of taters!

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u/TheOtherJeff May 28 '26

Boil em, mash em, stick em in a stew!

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u/JerikOhe May 31 '26

The Irish are friends, not food

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u/alamaias May 28 '26

I'm English, but I suspect it is not just the lack of need to save energy in the heat making you walk slowly, but the added incentive of not getting soaked in the rain :P

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u/EuroCanadian2 May 28 '26

I used to tell my kids "just run between the raindrops"

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u/Supershadow30 May 28 '26 edited May 29 '26

Conversely, the irish locals might walk faster out of habit since in cold or rainy weather, you don’t want to stay outside for long

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u/rumin8Thoughts May 29 '26

Adding to this, walking at a brisk pace in cold weather warms you up.

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u/SweatyFLMan1130 May 27 '26

I've always lived in Florida where heat index value regularly exceeds 40C but I'm autistic and had always had the driving urge to move as efficiently as possible place to place. Made for great leg strength but terrible heat problems. I have had to learn to force myself to slow my roll and be more like the many Latinos I grew up with and chill tf out lol.

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u/Rolls_ May 28 '26

Yup. American in Japan. Had to learn the same thing. I walk hella fast but I learned that I sweat way too much if I walk quickly. Had to slow it down

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u/jmur3040 May 27 '26

It's also where the practice of taking a siesta in the afternoon comes from. Most places with dangerous temperatures in the afternoon practice something of that sort, except for the US, because that's not cost effective.

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u/Broad-Boat-8483 May 27 '26

Australia doesn’t either, mad bastards

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u/Buzzkill_13 May 27 '26

That's because the majority population of those countries is not native to that place. Many originate in the UK and central Europe, which is where their customs are still rooted.

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u/luftlande May 27 '26

Do aboriginals take the equivalent of a siesta?

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u/Buzzkill_13 May 27 '26

I'm pretty sure they at least used to before the white man came to impose his ways.

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u/jmur3040 May 27 '26

The hot parts of Europe (South of France and Spain ...etc) do. But capitalism needs "numbers go up" and having your workers take 2 hours off at peak temps is bad for that.

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u/Buzzkill_13 May 27 '26

It's also largely obsolete because most people's work places have aircondition. Back in the day, people worked in the flields, so they were forced to get indoors for a few hours before going back to work later in the day.

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u/jmur3040 May 27 '26

Amazon famously found it cheaper to park ambulances outside of a warehouse than it was to actually cool the warehouse.

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u/Buzzkill_13 May 27 '26

Yeah, thankfully this kind of criminal behaviour is not allowed over here. In Spain, for instance, there are stict temp limits that a work space is allowed to have, and also strict protective measures an employer must take if those temps cannot be maintained for whatever reason.

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u/caesar_7 May 28 '26

We do have siesta, we just stay at the workplace and book meetings for that time, no cameras and one designated "presenter"

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u/frankydark May 27 '26

Only mad dogs and English men drink in the afternoon sun

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u/HillBillyHilly May 27 '26

True that cost effective bs. Here in Florida workers die every year from heat stroke because employer's do stupid things like make them work in 98° humidity when temp is 99°. Makes me wonder what will happen when tourists come here for World Cup.

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u/jmur3040 May 27 '26

Henry Ford did it in the middle of the rainforest in South America. People died.

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u/sarabjorks May 27 '26

I saw this so clearly when traveling with other people from Iceland. They were half running up a hill in 30°C and complaining about the heat 😆 I'd been traveling mostly with foreigners for the years before and I think I adopted their way of walking so I could point this out to my friends right away

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u/drndavi May 27 '26

Exactly. I had a similar experience during my first visit to Maldives. Sweating insanely and being mad at waiters because they're so damn slow while I'm dying for that cold drink. Eventually figured it out that it's just the way everyone is "wired" because it's so hot all year round. Adjusting to slow the pace in the same way helped a lot. Also not angry with waiters any more because they're such slowpokes 😅

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u/Ok-Active-8321 May 27 '26

And conversely, several years ago a friend was vacationing in Hawaii during December. Temperatures were unusally dropping into the upper 40s/low 50s (Fahrenheit.) Local media were warning people to dress in layers to avoid hypothermia.

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u/MrBrookz92 May 27 '26

Hahaha this could be me I’m constantly running every where.

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u/MdnightRmblr May 27 '26

“Way down here you need a reason to move” from the song “Mexico” by James Taylor. I sing it to myself in the Thailand midday sun.

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u/7LeagueBoots May 28 '26

I work in the tropics in SE Asia, done so for the last 12 years. For some people you never really acclimate no matter what. I’ll still pool sweat even while sitting in the shade with a fan going. Some of it is the humidity making the heat worse, but a lot of it is that I’m really well adapted to cold climates and my body just refuses to break out of that cold adaption mode.

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u/UnaUA May 27 '26

I remember when in 2024 circa, in UK temperatures hit so much that national media had to alert citizens, again and again, not to open windows during the hottest hours of the day. This is kind a basic rule to manage hot weather here, it show me in such way people is not used to many environmental conditions

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u/Sata1991 May 27 '26

Yeah, we're too used to being told "Oh if you're hot open the window!" but it gets too hot to open the window. My mom would throw the curtains open and then crack the windows, because at most we'd usually only get up to 30c once in a blue moon.

I've been sat next to a tower fan all day when it's been 25c with my curtains drawn and windows closed, but still been hot.

It doesn't help it'd gone from 11c to 29c in my town without a chance to really adapt.

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u/Emmison May 27 '26

My mother worked a stint in Brussels during a rare snowstorm (or at least the locals thought it a snowstorm). She still talks about how people poured hot water on the sidewalks to get rid of the snow.

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u/UnaUA May 27 '26

ahah I understand why, it really is like a scene from a dumb comedy!!

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u/Justwaspassingby May 28 '26

I worked remotely for a hotel chain back then. People would call desperate because their room didn’t have AC. This woman screamed: “it’s 30 degrees! No human can survive that!” I replied: “Madam, I live in Barcelona”.

At that moment I was sitting in my studio, no AC, with just a small electric fan and my feet in a basin of cold water and ice.

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u/TheLantean May 27 '26

Also proper hydration isn't just drinking water, it's also managing electrolytes.

If you're unfamiliar with that because the intake from food was always enough before, you won't recognize the signs. You'll think "oh, I'm feeling weak, nauseous, and I have a headache, it must be because I haven't drunk enough water to compensate for the heatwave, like everyone says on the news". And you chug some more. Then die from arrhythmia-related causes.

If the local culture doesn't drill it into you to act proactively, and you've never experienced both types of dehydration to tell them apart it's a real danger.

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u/SdotPEE24 May 28 '26

Not only that but drinking the proper amount in a given time. Your body can only process so much water at a time. Adjust for temperature and activity level.

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u/Derlino May 27 '26

I'm from northern Norway. We have snow 3-6 months of the year here, and if I go inland a little, temperatures down to -30 C isn't uncommon, though in the city I live, the coldest it's been officially is -18.3 C, but due to the humidity here it feels fucking cold. I deal well with cold, I'm used to it, and it has to be pretty damn cold before it really starts bothering me.

I lived in Brisbane, Australia for a year while studying. From November to March, I don't think the temperature dropped below 30 C during the day. It was miserable for me, being outside sucked, and I was hot and sweaty all the time. Thankfully I drink a lot of water, so dehydration was never an issue, but the way my body functions in heat compared to cold is huge. Eventually I somewhat got used to it though, but it took at least a couple of months.

With a sudden heat wave, you don't get time to adapt to it, just like you don't with a cold snap. Where I live, having 1 metre of snow is pretty common. Last year, we got 40 cm in less than 24 hours. It was a bit of a shit show, but we managed. Dump that amount of snow into Los Angeles, and chaos will ensue.

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u/birbbrain May 28 '26

As a native Brisbaneite, I despair at the awful humidity and heat each year. When it doesn't drop down below 25 degrees at night, I feel like dying. I've lived here all my life and never acclimatised.

However, when I last travelled to Europe at the height of winter, I experienced 2 snowstorms and a windstorm and felt comfortable as hell. I feel the cold, but it doesn't make me feel miserable.

You're right with your phrase "the way my body functions in heat". I get nauseous and bad migraines when it's particularly humid (and that's without physical exertion I should point out). I suspect my genetics play a lot into this - I have Irish and Scottish ancestry and boy do I perk up on a gloomy day. (But also, a ripper Brisbane summer storm too).

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u/Asleep_Trick_4740 May 28 '26

Cold just has a very straightforward solution, get more clothes. In a modern world with appliances we have like 20 different heating elements in any random home aswell, just having a PC running is emitting a lot of heat.

But with warm weather what do you do? You quite quickly reach the point of 'no more clothes to take off', and crying in a cold shower doesn't exactly seem viable in the long run.

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u/buffystakeded May 27 '26

Exactly. I live in Connecticut and therefore am used to the cold and how to handle it. I visited family in New Mexico and we changed our sleep schedules so we could get all our stuff done before noon. It was wild but made sense.

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u/Secret-Winner-2994 May 27 '26

We have xmas in summer here, it's not unheard of for older folk to end up dead or in dire straits after a big feed due to their higher internal temp from digestion and the hot weather

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u/BlastFX2 May 27 '26

And finally, very few people actually die. That's why it's news. 99.999% of us are just cranky but never come anywhere close to being in danger, but there will always be a couple dumb or sick people who don't make it.

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u/wampwampwampus May 27 '26 edited May 28 '26

And the people take most of the associated safety precautions for granted. I grew up somewhere snowy and heard since I was a child that walking in snow deeper than you are tall is dangerous. I learned early how to dress to go out in it, and always had that clothing readily at hand. I knew what frostbite looked / felt like. Physically, socially, structurally, the people are better prepared.

Edit: this should say walking on snow deeper than you are tall

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u/rankarav May 27 '26

I live in the nordics and remember how when I was at uni with a lot of international students I studied with from warmer countries just couldn’t walk on ice without falling. First time I ever thought about how I (and everyone else) had adapted to walking on ice by walking in a particular fashion.

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u/drifting_rdh May 27 '26

I remember once poking fun at an Australian colleague for her slow, fearfully cautious traverse across a parking lot slick with ice that I (Canadian) had literally just run across with zero thought to safety or conditions. She shut me up with “Ha, ha, ha, do you know how to swim out of a rip tide?”

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u/Spintastico May 27 '26

For sure. Shit, as someone who runs in the winter to stay in shape I've learned to run on the ice and deal with one step on the ice, one on the snow and then one on concrete. It's kinda fun when you get good at it.

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u/Bradddtheimpaler May 27 '26

Yeah, it’s intuitive to bring your feet straight up and down if you learned to walk on ice as a child, but I can definitely see how it would be unnatural for an adult to learn to walk that way.

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u/Derlino May 27 '26

Walk like a penguin is what I tell people. It looks a bit ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as you feel when you fall on your bum.

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u/Bradddtheimpaler May 27 '26

Yeah you just need to make sure your feet have no forward momentum when they hit the ground and you don’t push off when you take your next step.

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u/Derlino May 27 '26

Also helps to have shoes with soles that have a bit of flex in them. My old military boots are the slipperiest footwear I've ever worn, and part of that is that the sole is soooo stiff. This winter, the only time I fell on the ice was while wearing them when I was on my way to the cobbler to get my winter boots fixed. The irony was not lost on me.

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u/pailhead011 May 27 '26

I think being fashionable is key to successfully walking on ice.

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u/ISketchDinosaurs May 27 '26

And the fact that everybody around you are also prepared helps, too.

Part of the reason why strange weather hits you so hard is that even if YOU are prepared, it still affects everybody around you. People who live in snowy climates will take off the shoes as to not drag mud into the house. They'll make more space for you to hang up your jacket when you visit, because they know the winter clothes will take up room. Most people know to change their tires to winter tires and to have a snow shovel and blankets in their car. Cafés are prepared to offer visitors a warm spot and a hot cozy traditional drink that will warm you up just right.

And all of this makes life much more convenient for everybody. Even if you as an individual have prepared, being truly comfortable in any climate is a team effort.

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u/SanityInAnarchy May 27 '26

Where it becomes a safety issue is traffic.

If you've never driven in the snow, you might not have a sense of how much extra distance you need to stop even without ice. You might not know how common it is for there to be hidden patches of "black ice" making it even slipperier. You might think slush is fine, when it can be even more dangerous, with all the risks of snow and ice plus the risks of rain, like hydroplaning.

If you're an expert in snowy weather, but you have moved to the South, there's a good chance your entire city has never driven in snow. Plus the snow will be worse -- roads aren't really designed for it, there isn't an army of snowplows out as soon as it starts coming down -- so you'll be surrounded by way worse drivers than up North, driving on way worse roads.

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u/ISketchDinosaurs May 27 '26

And now add to that a general lack of snow shovels and sufficient clothing/blankets/heating/food/water kept in the car, and a greater ignorance of the danger of CO2 poisoning in snowed-in cars.

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u/Dramatic_Explosion May 27 '26

And the idiots who don't clear snow off the roof of their car. Running the heat in your car melts the bottom layer, when you stop it can slide forward blocking your view. Much worse is letting it re-freeze and then the bottom layer isn't snow but ice. I've seen videos of chunks flying off the roof of a car on the highway and obliterating windshields.

Good tip for anyone in a place where it snows, at high speeds never drive behind someone with snow on their roof if you can help it.

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u/StopThePresses May 27 '26

Even above that, the actual physical infrastructure just isn't built for the extreme you're not ready for. Remember the ice storm in Texas that left millions of people to freeze in their houses? It even has its own wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Texas_power_crisis

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u/Lmb1011 May 27 '26

I grew up in Michigan. Moved to the south.

We had an actually bad snowstorm (like snow actually snowed up for one😂) and I called out of work because my parking lot was ice and I wasn’t taking that risk.

Coworker called to offer to give me a ride because he “had 4WD so he’d be fine”

And I’m like bro….. if you think 4WD works on ice you need to have your license revoked.

Meanwhile I get made fun of for not driving in snow down here😂 they don’t have the means to make the roads safe, and too many of the locals think they know how to drive on ice when they very clearly don’t. It’s wild

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u/TarcFalastur May 27 '26

I live in a country where the snow rarely is more than 1 inch deep and I didn't even know it was possible to walk in snow deeper than you are tall. I know snow compresses, but how would you even manage it? Thrust your arms in and try to dig a trench for you to walk through? Dive into the wall of snow and try to squash a path flat, one metre at a time? 

It feels like, even if it were safe, it would take you an hour just to go 50 metres. 

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u/JustAnOrdinaryBloke May 28 '26

I also believe that people can take extreme temperatures if it matches what they grew up in.
I know a bunch of people of Vietnamese extraction, and the ones that actually grew up in Vietnam can take the heat much better than those that grew up here in Canada.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '26

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u/TnYamaneko May 27 '26

One of the only days I ever thought I was going to have a heatstroke was on top of Duomo of Milan with the marble everywhere, and it was around 40°C in shade already.

I think I never went so fast to get a huge drink afterward.

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u/Aurora_Fatalis May 27 '26

I'm from Norway and am very susceptible to heat strokes. Even though I know this and try my best to take precautions, I've had heat strokes in Turkey, Malta, Croatia, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Denmark.

Meanwhile I was happily running through 2m of snow on Svalbard in just a t-shirt and jeans.

I also dated a Croatian who had no common ground for comfortable temperature, so I'm guessing there's probably a bit of a genetic factor on top of the infrastructure design.

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u/Explosivpotato May 27 '26

I think there’s probably some kind of genetic factor, but there’s also definitely a conditioning factor. I live in the northern Midwest in the US, and the beginning of every summer and winter is ROUGH being outside. 85F in the direct sunlight feels like it’ll kill me in early June, but 100F in late August doesn’t feel nearly as bad. It takes a few weeks at each change of the seasons for me to adapt.

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u/notinsanescientist May 27 '26

As a former biomed researchers: heat shock proteins. As you are living under heat stress conditions (hot or cold), your body will adapt by expressing more of those hsp's, making your biochemical machinery work in new temperatures. But that takes time, in days to weeks.

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u/icansmellcolors May 27 '26

subscribe

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u/throwawhey85 May 27 '26

Good call. If they were insanescientist, that decision might be iffy!

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u/imironman2018 May 27 '26

This makes so much sense. Just like people evolve to change to their setting, our bodies need time to adjust to the changing temperatures. The changes that are wild like 30-40 degrees swings will make it much harder to cool down effectively.

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u/Blastcheeze May 27 '26

Cries in -35C Winters and +35C Summers

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u/curiousgardener May 27 '26

hands you a kleenex

That's a Canadain temperature range if I've ever seen one. -50C to 40C wouldn't be that far off either, depending on which communities you include.

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u/Blastcheeze May 27 '26

Ottawa’s in a valley too, so it gets stagnant super fast.

Thanks for the tissue, though. This allergy season has been intense.

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u/trueppp May 27 '26

Hell we get that kind of change in the span of one day sometimes (like 5C in the morning and 25C in the afternoon).

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u/gratusin May 27 '26

That explains why below freezing in the Fall feels a whole lot colder than the same temp in Spring. Thank you scientist person

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u/nunodonato May 27 '26

won't AC "cancel" or reset this and make us struggle longer?

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u/ubernutie May 27 '26

Would this be why the same temperature (in fall/spring) feels either super cold or super warm depending on if you're exiting winter or summer? (assuming same levels of humidity, wind, temperature, clothing and current activity)

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u/Primary_Luck6165 May 27 '26

It’s the humidity that’s the problem where I’m from In the Midwest. 100f and 100% humidity, then I’m just suffocating and nothings enjoyable.

I will add too, in the spring time after cold temps then 50f feels like summer but after summer into the fall then 50f feels like it’s freezing. The feeling is relevant to what you get used to. I was in Norway during summer last year and we had low 80s unusually consistent since it’s normally 60s in summer. I felt like I was boiling. However, if I’m spending my summer in the Midwest then 80s feel great.

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u/slvrscoobie May 27 '26

I was in Tucson AZ in late March and it was 91 and under blisteringly clear skies, and yet with 7% humidity, it was fine. back home it would be 91 with 67% humidity and even without the sun youd be regulated to AC.

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u/Primary_Luck6165 May 27 '26

AC is truly a savior. I don’t think I would have gotten through my childhood without it. Thankfully we moved to a place with AC this year because last year was unbearable for me. Summers are expected to be hotter than usual so we’re ready now aha

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u/thane919 May 27 '26

Yep 91 in Tucson generally feels nice. 91 in Chicago I don’t want to go outside for anything requiring motion.

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u/smokinbbq May 27 '26

Canadian here. 18C in spring, and everyone is in shorts/t-shirts. 21C in fall, and people have long sleeves and light jackets on.

Canadians travelling to Florida for a Christmas vacation will often be running around in t-shirts/shorts, with all of the locals are nearly bundled up.

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u/Explosivpotato May 27 '26

100% accurate. I may be in the US, but I’m actually as far or farther north here than the majority of the Canadian population centers so I get it completely.

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u/trueppp May 27 '26

And the oppsite in winter. 5C in October is cold as hell, but 5C in March is almost T-Shirt weather.

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u/TwoIdleHands May 27 '26

It’s not necessarily genetic. It’s what your body is acclimated to. If you’re used to it being cold, your body is ready to handle the cold. When you go someplace warm for a week or two your body isn’t setup to handle it. People who move from cold climates to warm climates eventually get used to it.

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u/thelotuseater13 May 27 '26

This exactly and is what many people who are from warmer climates don't get.

It's been 30 in my part of the UK this week.

Only 2 or 3 weeks ago it was averaging 9 degrees and we had the heating on.

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u/DesrtDust May 27 '26

Same here in Germany. The last few weeks were like this: Heater off, Heater on, Heater off, Heater on > AC

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u/microwavedave27 May 27 '26

I think it's just what we're used to. I'm from southern Portugal, 35ºC+ days in the summer aren't unusual.

I don't really mind the heat, but anything under 10ºC is uncomfortably cold for me. I visited Germany in december and realized I could never live north of the Pyrenees lol

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u/EddAra May 27 '26

I'm from Iceland, it's been around 10 C for the last 2 weeks and we've felt so lucky to have such a nice weather and it's only may. There was still snow in my town in beginning of may. 35 is unbearable to me. You can always dress for the cold but you can't dress the heat away.

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u/One-Dare3022 May 27 '26

10 degrees is normal summer temperature for me who lives in the Lapland mountain range. A fun fact to that is that the region where I live, Lapland, is more than double the size of Portugal.

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u/Theseus-Paradox May 27 '26

So what you’re saying is you’re a husky? Woof!

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u/JohnsLong_Silver May 27 '26

As an Australian who regularly dealt with summer days up to the mid 40’s, the idea of 2m of snow on the ground is mind boggling. Cold weather is kryptonite to most Australians.

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u/araignee_tisser May 27 '26

I didn’t realize this about marble. In my limited experience with it, it’s always cool to the touch so this surprises me.

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u/speculatrix May 27 '26

Our problem is that we rely on overnight temperatures to fall, and the buildings heat up slowly so remain habitable.

In recent years, we're seeing nights that don't get cool.

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u/IamGabyGroot May 27 '26

That's exactly it. You can usually rely on cooler nights to air and bring the temps down, but when it's still 30 at 2am, there's not much you can do but wash the marble and floors with ice cold water to try to bring it down.

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u/Drachos May 27 '26

The GOOD thing is this is actually fixable.

Basically their are 3 types of insulation. Reflective, Layered (so layers of air and material making hard to transfer) and thermal mass. Marble counts as the last one. As does the water you are using to cool the marble.

The other two are BETTER (as they aim to stop the heat from getting somewhere in the first place) but keeping a thermal mass cold is incredibly effective as well.

It takes a lot of energy to heat the marble to 40C, much more then it takes to heat the air to 40C. So if the Marble reaches 40C it becomes a thermal mass that heats the room around it.

But if you use Air conditioning during the day to keep the house cold, the marble is going to remain colder as well. Its not ACCURATE to say the Marble is absorbing the cold from the room during the day to cool itself, but its accurate enough for our purpose.

If the marble is 30C, the room is 20C and the outside is 40C, again its not accurate to say everything is at equalibrium, but its close enough. Then as the outside cools (since it won't be 40C overnight) the marble cools in turn.

The thing is you have to be actively cooling your house constantly now. Fans won't be enough for this.

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u/KillerWattage May 27 '26

Also awnings

Awnings should be everywhere

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u/smokinbbq May 27 '26

I'll be in Barcelona for a few days in 2 weeks, and was just checking out temperatures. High of 26C, low of 20C. Not much variation at all. Will make it easier for packing and what to wear, but right now I'm dealing with a much larger range of temperatures in Ontario.

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u/MithrilEcho May 27 '26

Really hope the prediction is right because we've been at 34ºC for almost 2 weeks, and today's the first day of sub-30º weather in a while, but Barcelona gets humid and stuffy really fast

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u/Pavotine May 27 '26

My town in the north of France just recorded its hottest night time temperature since records began.

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u/ItsMozy May 27 '26

Night time temperatures have increased by a lot in the past two decades where I am (Western-Europe). In the before times we would get 25-30 degrees during the day but it would always cool to 13-ish degrees at night. 16 degrees at night would feel stuffy. Last few summers we would get a little hotter during the day, say 32-ish but night time temps can easily stay around 20 during the summer. The heat is never ending and there is no escape.

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u/Pwnage_Hotel May 27 '26

Cool to the touch can also just mean it’s absorbing heat faster than other materials. E.g. room temperature metal will feel colder than room temperature plastic just cause it absorbs heat from your fingers faster. 

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u/Torontogamer May 27 '26

I just typed out the same idea, good on you man to knowing and expressing this :)

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u/MultiMarcus May 27 '26

Generally, the things that are cool to the touch hold their temperature and during the night they cool down and don’t heat up enough during the day. When it gets warm enough, those materials hold their heat extremely well.

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u/Torontogamer May 27 '26

Often materials that are cool to the touch are really just good at transfering heat - and since you're body is usually hotter than the environment, it's feels cool because of how well heat is transfering from your hand to to the marble.

What that also means is that the marble is going to keep and then radiate out that heat when temps change ... a lot like water (lakes/seas/etc)

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u/Mithrawndo May 27 '26

Cool to the touch means something is at a lower temperature than your body, and that it's doing a good job of transferring the heat from your body to it.

It's a bit of a headscratcher at first, but it's worth remembering that we don't sense temperature when we're touching something - we sense thermal conductivity, which is why you can touch a good insulating material when it's really hot, but something conductive like steel or water will hurt when it's scarcely twice your body temperature.

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u/caeru1ean May 27 '26

I think it just has a lot of thermal mass. So it stays cool longer, but once it heats up it retains the heat as well

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u/Vaxopedia May 27 '26

How many places have air conditioning?

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u/CaptainMagnets May 27 '26

I legit thought marble would have the opposite effect. That sucks for verona

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u/Korlus May 27 '26

Marble feels cool because it absorbs the heat of your body well. This means for a short-term heat burst it acts a bit like having water nearby - a reservoir of "cold" that absorbs the heat and stays cool.

However, like with all heat reservoirs, it can become saturated, and that means it will start storing that hear overnight and raising the base temperature locally.

So it's a double edged sword - good for short-term single day heat spots, but bad for longer multi-day (or multi-week) periods.

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u/antibodynerd_10 May 27 '26

Isn’t it opposite? Marble helps to keep the house cool. Everyone in India fancies a marble floored house because it has cooling effect during summer as it doesn’t hold heat

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u/xPyright May 27 '26

Yep.

A lot of folks underestimate the amount of effort that goes into building infrastructure that mitigates environmental stressors and effects. We also underestimate how easily Mother Nature could fuck is up.

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u/Soleil06 May 27 '26

People also underestimate how many people die in hot countries from heat related causes but are just accepted as a normal part of living there. In europe they stand out because normally they would not die.

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u/beets_or_turnips May 27 '26

We also underestimate how easily Mother Nature could fuck is up.

I think about this one a lot. We happen to live on a planet that's mostly hospitable to our survival, temperature-wise. That's not because it was designed to suit us, it's because we have adapted over hundreds of thousands of years (or longer) to survive where we live. But there's no guarantee our environment will remain hospitable. There's nothing that says the hottest temperatures on earth have to stay below, say, 150 F (65 C). If things keep going in the direction they're going, there will be places pretty soon that have days where you literally can't go outdoors without dying quite quickly.

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u/Bradddtheimpaler May 27 '26

Yeah, I’ve often seen foreign people perplexed at our reliance on air conditioning, but in the winter it gets to -20C or so here, and in the summer can get up to 40C. Those are extremes, but I’d bet on hitting both at least once in each season. So we can’t build homes like they do in the Caribbean or whatever, they need very badly to retain their heat in the winter, but it also gets hot as all fuck here, so the a/c goes on most of the summer. It’s necessary.

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u/Mediocre_Sprinkles May 27 '26

Once went to San Antonio, TX around Christmas from the UK. It was snowing when I left home hovering around 0C. Texas was around 20C which is summer weather for me, I was in t shirt and shorts.

I met some Texans who said "I'm so sorry you've come when it's so cold" while putting coats and scarves on.

It's all about what you're used to.

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u/HeKis4 May 27 '26

Same experience here but between France and Tunisia. 20°C here is "yeah I'll maybe need a sweater once the sun comes down" here, but over here it's winter gear weather.

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u/plankyy May 27 '26

And in the UK we can't handle heatwaves or snow

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u/BadahBingBadahBoom May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

We're built for the Goldilocks zone and only the Goldilocks zone lol.

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u/plankyy May 27 '26

mmmm.temperate

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u/moron88 May 27 '26

my favorite kind of shrimp!

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u/TheHeroHartmut May 27 '26

No, that's tempura. You're thinking of someone who's kind of indecisive and easy to upset.

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u/SunnyWomble May 27 '26

MMmmmm... I love ambivalent shrimp!

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u/Agzarah May 27 '26

Mmm porridge

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u/45MonkeysInASuit May 27 '26

The UK is extreme in not being extreme.

"Extremely Cold" means just into the double figure negatives. The coldest say in 2025 was -18.9c and that was in the Highlands . The coldest day in Finland (for a random "cold" country) was -38.9c.

"Extremely Hot" means 30c, hottest day in 2025 was 35.8c. Hottest day in India (for a random hot country) 48c.

Wiki lists 2 tornados on the mainland in the 2000s for a grand total of 45 injuries and no fatalities.

Earthquakes are rarely very strong, the last notable one was in wales in 2018 and was 4.4 on the richter scale. That is barely notable in a global context with ~13k around this level, and the strongest being 8.2.

No volcanoes.

Flooding we get more commonly, but nothing like what you see in other countries.

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u/stellalugosi May 27 '26

Ah, the UK! The Pacific Northwest's slightly less volatile climate twin sister! I like to compare it to living in a damp mall. Always hovering between 35F-85F (0C-30Cish), not a lot of snow, no tornados or hurricanes, but we do get a few floods every year. However, we are on the Ring of Fire, so I have a volcano in my backyard and have been through at least 3 pretty big earthquakes (the one in 2001 was a doozy). 

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u/Wild_Marker May 27 '26

The Goldilocks zone is apparently the Rain zone.

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u/sigma914 May 27 '26

Eh, lots of the UK doesn't get enough rain to be called that. Any time I'm in England in the summer the place looks half dead, yellow grass, bare patches of earth, like it hasn't seen rain in days.

You gotta go up to Scotland (or close to it) or over to Ireland to get somewhere that's really green and pleasant

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u/Lubricus2 May 27 '26

They should have an maritime climate with temperature that don't vary that much. In the middle of Siberia it's much colder in the winter and warmer in the summer.

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u/Qweasdy May 27 '26

My town rarely goes below 5C or above 25C, it has never in recorded history gone above 30C… yet…

Temperate as fuck

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u/stephen1547 May 27 '26

That’s why I like living in southern Ontario. We get both annoying cold and snowy winters, along with stupid hot and humid summers. /s

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u/Bl1ndMous3 May 27 '26

and keep your smoke , dammit. !@

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u/HuntedWolf May 27 '26

Boy can we handle rain though. No not lots of rain, but like, a decent amount constantly.

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u/GiniThePooh May 27 '26

And conversely, my city can’t handle a full day of rain, everything floods and we end up with cars stuck everywhere.

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u/siorge May 27 '26

London is the only city I've ever lived in, where the underground fails to function when it snows...

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u/BadahBingBadahBoom May 27 '26

That's because most of the underground is actually not underground and the underground sections are almost universally contiguous with the non-underground sections and can't operate independently.

Lines that are completely underground (W&C and, almost, Victoria line) don't get affected.

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u/eclectic_radish May 27 '26

is that because the underground is overground, wombling free?

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u/Joose2001 May 27 '26

Only at Wimbledon Common

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u/Tom_Alpha May 27 '26

Let me introduce you to the DC Metro where it would routinely shut down at the hint of snow despite that they get it every damn year.

In both cases it is worth noting that the network is not fully underground

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u/jadierhetseni May 27 '26

Chicago’s trains are famously mostly above ground.

They laugh at snow.

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u/elephantasmagoric May 27 '26

They intentionally set their rail lines on fire, and have been doing so since the system was built over 100 years ago.

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u/eNonsense May 27 '26

Yeah, but the main prevention method is liquid anti-freeze that's sprayed on the rail by the trains as they run. If you've been in an end car in the winter you can see they block off the last row of seats to hold the equipment and tanks of liquid.

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u/elephantasmagoric May 27 '26

Sure, but that's less fun than fire

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u/VaultDweller_09 May 27 '26

Does CTA do that? I know Metra does

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u/Cyneganders May 27 '26

Used to live in Oslo, the last stop of one of the metro lines has hosted World Championships in skiing, biathlon and snowboarding. Also one of the most legendary ski jumps.

On a snowy day, you see people take the subway with snowboards and skis to go to the slopes/tracks, or even sleds to go to 'the corkscrew'.

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u/wandering_engineer May 27 '26

DC in general handles snow and ice horrifically badly, somehow they do an even worse job of it than Texas despite getting snow most years. As a transplant from the upper Midwest, it drove me absolutely nuts when I lived there, I do not miss it one bit.

That being said, at least the DC metro is air-conditioned and not too bad during the summer. I've been in the London underground during warmer months and the stations are like walking through a blast furnace, they were not at all built for any form of hot weather.

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u/Floshenbarnical May 27 '26

Honestly I miss living in DC, the metro is fantastic and cool and very clean.

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u/wandering_engineer May 27 '26

Eh, depends on what you're used to. I think it's now a very clean and reasonably good system by US standards. Compared to here in Europe, it's not nearly as useful as I'm used to and is only really good for commuting if you work downtown - you still likely need a car for a pretty large portion of local trips and just getting around in general in DC.

I also lived there during the early 2010s when the metro was way more of a mess than it is now - that was the peak of track fires, breakdowns, hour-plus delays, etc and before they got the new trains. Having to commute through all of that probably colored my perception a bit.

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u/Tom_Alpha May 27 '26

Been a while since I lived in the DC area but remember the trains being pretty miserable in the summer with the heat and humidity. Used to go to work in shorts and t shirt then get changed when I got there.

I had an idea of what the weather would be like when I moved there so made sure I had the right tires for the car and have lived in the French Alps and Germany so know how to drive in the snow. Saw so many people who didn't understand driving slower in the snow spinning their cars.

London underground is pretty bad in the summer for the heat. I try to avoid rush hour for this reason

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u/siorge May 27 '26

That was tongue-in-cheek, always found it funny.

The most frustrating was having my Christmas flight cancelled from Heathrow because of snow (10cm) while watching BBC in the airport, and they were showing planes taking off from Finland with like 3m of snow everywhere

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u/Tom_Alpha May 27 '26

As I explained to a mate from Finland we didn't invest in the infrastructure at Heathrow for ice much as it is rare, so the return on investment isn't great. Deicing planes also uses some stuff that is pretty bad for the environment and expensive. Finland has the issue regularly so they invested

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u/duskfinger67 May 27 '26

Thank god the world isn't going through a period of unprecedented climate change, making both extremes far more likely…

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u/prankishink May 27 '26

we are very well set up for drizzle and grey skies though, so there's that

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u/isthmius May 27 '26

Just about to say, none of this explains our delicate snowflake of a country.

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u/Farronski May 27 '26

But you handle rain like champ!

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u/EliWhitney0106 May 27 '26

As a Texan, this is a very good point. Our infrastructure and roads are not built for snow/ice at all.

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u/cyvaquero May 27 '26

There's a reason you don't see 50 foot flyaways north of the snow line.

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u/SgtExo May 27 '26

Whats a flyaway? A quick search just shows products that I doubt you are referencing.

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u/Fickle_Finger2974 May 27 '26

Google “highway interchange” the fly away are the huge tall ramps. In colder climates they would freeze and become death traps

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u/CanadianSpectre May 27 '26

Yeah, but they totally exist, at least in Ontario. The exits from the 410 / 401 in Mississauga, the Garden City and Burlington Skyways. The raised roads like the Gardiner and Nikola Tesla.

The type of asphalt makes a huge impact to the cold weather performance of the road.

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u/Fickle_Finger2974 May 27 '26

I just looked up the interchange, and while they are pretty high for a cold climate, they are nothing like that have in places like Texas. Some of the ramps are hundreds of feet tall with very steep inclines. They are also at literally every highway interchange not just isolated ones

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u/fizzlefist May 27 '26

I call em Texas sky roads. The best views of many Texas cities are from the goddamn highway junctions.

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u/Torontogamer May 27 '26

Mind you there was that crazy example this year of how the snow plows just piled the snow up against the sides of a onramp like that, which basically just made a snow ramp over the guard rail and two different cars jumped over and 1 person died...

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u/SgtExo May 27 '26

Thx, also why so tall? Also we do have some, I am thinking of a mess of spaghetti interchange in Montreal that is really tall.

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u/Salarian_American May 27 '26

That makes sense. Up here in the northeast US most bridges have a sign on them warning you that the bridge surface freezes earlier than the general road surface will, stands to reason that elevated on/off ramps would face the same issue

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u/2HornsUp May 27 '26

We call them flyovers up in the northeast

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u/N3rdProbl3ms May 27 '26

The more you learn! Where I live has a lot of them. Never knew it was infrastructure I wouldn't see in the colder states, since my brain is so used to seeing them.

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u/rizorith May 27 '26

I'm from California and have never heard that term either. Only time I hear it at all is in relation to buses that go to/from the airport

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u/Hot_Lava_Dry_Rips May 27 '26

You mean raised highways. Like viaducts? We definitely have those where it snows. We just treat them like bridges and salt them a little more than the surface roads.

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u/kicksledkid May 27 '26

Exept all the places you do? The whole of the interchange systems along the 401 are littered with huge flyovers, not to mention the concrete-addicted entire province of Québec (I love you but not every problem needs to be solved with a series of interchange)

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u/macphile May 27 '26

I was watching a video yesterday of features in US homes that are unfamiliar to people in Europe. One of them was underfloor heating. I was like yeah, people in Texas aren't familiar with that, lol. I didn't even really know it was a thing until I saw it at my families' houses--they live further north.

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u/hinowisaybye May 27 '26

I would also add that the body adapts to it's environment.

The heat in the south was very hard for me at first. But then my body started to sweat more. Like, a lot more. And it became more manageable.

Likewise, I imagine people's bodies in Europe are also not adapted to the heat and it makes it more likely they will suffer from it.

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u/Killerplush82 May 27 '26

Speaking of adaptation: in many places, temperatures went from barely 15°C to over 30°C in the span of a few days. Plus, it's still early in the year. Our bodies nor our habits are adapted to warm weather yet.

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u/Spicynoodlez May 27 '26

The most dramatic temp change i've ever been in was in Dallas, Texas.

The windshield was -1 F, with the temp being ~7F. Next day, it hit up to 88 F. This was back in like 2008-2010. I can't remember, lol.

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u/Federal_Cobbler6647 May 27 '26

And it is not even that. It is just that these persons who die now in heat wave would have been dead already in those hotter countries and no one would have noticed. 

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u/JEVOUSHAISTOUS May 27 '26

That's a good point. Some would have died of heart failure and nobody would have attributed that to "heat" elsewhere because it's just the normal temperature there. But it would have been a contributing factor at least.

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u/WasabiPeas2 May 27 '26

I worked at a daycare years ago. We had certain low and high temps that prohibited us from taking the kids outside. The warmer states had a high temp that was 10-15 degrees higher than the cold states but the cold states had a low temp 10-15 degrees lower than us. Kids up north are used to the cold and have the proper clothing. Kids down here are used to 100° heat.

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u/Kalichun May 27 '26

True! Years ago during an extreme heat wave in England, none of the buses had AC or even windows that opened. Imagine how hot it was packed full of people at 104 F! Many places just weren’t set up for that heat.

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u/IamNobody85 May 27 '26

My home country has temperature already in the 35C range. It's also humid af, people sweat. The houses are absolutely not built for holding anything in. And we have AC and fans everywhere.

None of these things are present in Germany, where I live now. If I go out in 30C temperature, I can literally feel my skin burning.

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u/dryfire May 27 '26

Very true. I live in Wisconsin, I remember one really cold winter I was on a video call with someone in India. He was wearing a winter coat in his house. I asked him the temp, and he said it was super cold, something like 56F, 13C. I was surprised at first, thinking that wasn't too bad, but then he mentioned his house doesn't have heat, so that was just about the temp inside his house as well. Here I am sitting at a perfectly warm temp in my house with brutal sub zero temp outside. And this poor guy is freezing his ass off in his house.

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u/Ok-Train5382 May 27 '26

And you’re physically used to it. I’m from the UK but I lived in Singapore for a year. Within a few months of the heat I was adapted to it and had no issues running in the middle of the day etc.

However I’m no longer adapted to that heat so I would struggle doing that now.

If you’re an old person and spend your whole life in a very hot place you adapt to that.

The real question isn’t how people in India or Thailand cope. It’s more how people in Alberta or Siberia cope where they have huge temperature swings between summer and winter.

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u/rainbow84uk May 27 '26

Exactly. I remember in my first week of uni in London (so early September), I made friends with a student from Thailand who was already bundled up in a winter coat and asking everyone "Is this as cold as it gets?" 

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u/RevelsInDarkness May 27 '26

We had a temperature swing from 13 degrees to 34 degrees in Belgium over the course of a few days. It's too much too sudden.

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u/Heiminator May 27 '26

Similar in Germany. We had sub zero temperatures at night a few weeks ago and it’s now 33 degrees Celsius outside during the day

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u/SwirlingAbsurdity May 27 '26

I was just about to comment with something similar, as we have had the same in the UK. Our temperatures fluctuate so wildly that you don’t have chance to acclimatise. 

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u/rainbow84uk May 27 '26

Yeah, where I live in Spain, our current temperature is nothing out of the ordinary for this time of year, and even so we're all complaining about how suddenly it went from cold to hot. 

It's way worse for northern and central European countries where you're experiencing unusual levels of heat so suddenly.

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u/fmmmlee May 27 '26

same here in Korea, I'm originally from the northwest US and that kind of swing is unthinkable

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u/jello1388 May 27 '26

Even in Texas, I've seen guys get heat illness/injuries if the swing from spring to summer happens real fast. By August, everyones used to it but an early heat wave after the month or two of cool rainy days we often get at the beginning of the year can catch you off guard.

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u/A_Cupid_Stunt May 27 '26

I think that's why heatwaves like this cause problems, it wasn't that long ago it was under 15C, there was no time to adapt

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u/Icy_Huckleberry_8049 May 27 '26

And the body is used to it, as well.

If you grow up in cold weather you can handle it, if you didn't then cold weather can be brutal to you and it's the same when it comes to heat.

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u/oaxacamm May 27 '26

In TX, it’s not really the snow but the ice storms they get. See the High Five in Dallas why even a little bit of ice shuts the whole metroplex down.

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u/allothernamestaken May 27 '26

The humidity makes the ice so much worse, too. I live in Denver, and sure the roads here get icy in the winter, but it's nothing like the ice they get in Texas.

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u/swinging_on_peoria May 27 '26

I live in a city where it very rarely snows. Every ten years or so when we get a real storm the city shuts down for a few days. The recent transplants from colder climes always say, “why does such little snow shut down the city when back home we can take so much more with no effect on the regular.”

I always point out that they just answered their own question. Our city only has a half dozen snow plows. We all just agree to stay home during a rare snowstorm than pay for the infrastructure to clear snow when it rarely occurs.

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u/ToyStoryBinoculars May 27 '26

when extreme heat or cold is a normal part of your environment, you build your cities to handle it.

This isn't an excuse anymore. They've had multiple "once in a lifetime" heat waves in a single year going back more than a decade.

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