On 2-jan-05, at 3:20, Glen Zorn ((gwz)) wrote:
Of course, the MAXIMUM temperatures quoted in the *exceptional* Paris summer of 2003 were 104 degrees Fahrenheit;
2003 was, indeed, exceptional. OTOH, it is hardly exceptional that everyone who can leave the city in August, does. This is no doubt because it is just so damn pleasant they can't stand it, right?
Well, AFAIK _everywhere_ in the US having air conditioning at home is common, while this is rare in middle / northern Europe. Don't forget we are located much further to the north than major population centers elsewhere in the world.
Even though august is the warmest month, I think going on vacation during that time is more a cultural thing than a climatological one. I don't know how many vacation days people get in France, but I'm pretty sure it's much more than what people in the US get (here in Holland it's 22 or 24 days a year minimum).
But anyway, if a conference center/hotel is going to hold more than a thousand people, they'll have to have air conditioning, and if you don't skimp on the hotel it will have this as well, so you'll be exposed to the blistering Paris heat for just a few hours a day...
(And what I understand from the extra deaths due to the heat is that it's people who die slightly earlier than they would have otherwise. If it were a more fundamental problem this would shed a very different light on the US practice to ship the elderly off to Florida...)
BTW, how much worse are the Minneapolis temperatures in march vs those in november?
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