In the Phoenix heat, it's adapt and survive

Welcome to AZ Climate for the week of Aug. 27, 2024. If someone forwarded this to you, please consider signing up so you'll receive the newsletter every Tuesda y.

In the Phoenix heat, it's adapt and survive

A year ago in July, in the middle of a record-breaking streak of 110-degree days, a reporter for an east coast newspaper surveyed the scene and sent back an account of a city melting in what he called a "brutal endurance match" with summer, a metropolis locked in a "sweltering straitjacket," whose children wandered playgrounds with hands singed by monkey bars.

The rest of the story walked readers through temperature trends, injury and death tolls, the response by cities and social service groups, the inequities for lower-income residents, all of it basically on target, warped water bottles aside.

The reporter was right. It gets hot here and it's getting hotter as the planet warms. Heat kills and it discriminates against those least able to guard against its effects. Last year, 645 people died from heat or heat-related causes. We cover the story from a dozen different angles from early spring to late fall .

But the story is bigger than that, especially for those of us who live here year-round and for the people who continue to move here. That's the story we decided to tell this summer, a project that launched on azcentral Monday , the story of heat in Phoenix through the eyes of the people who call it home, the people who adapt and, mostly, survive.

We sent a team of Arizona Republic journalists into the community for a week in July. "Swarm the heat," we called it. Reporters sought out fellow Phoenicians who were working, walking the dog, hiking trails, people who were barely getting by, volunteers and front-line responders who helped those in need.

We documented our findings daily in a series of blogs that revealed how a city — America's hottest big city — coped. (You can follow that live coverage over the seven days: Monday , Tuesday , Wednesday , Thursday , Friday , Saturday and Sunday .)

On Monday of this week, we published a narrative story from that week and each day through the weekend, we'll dive deeper into specific topics, including climate, substance abuse, the burden on hospitals, the risk to outdoor workers and what happens to animals and plants in this heat.

As you follow along this week (as we hope you will), here are a few of the things that stood out:

Timing is everything

Most people who've lived here more than a summer or so know the first lesson: If you need to do something outdoors, do it early or do it late. We talked to outdoor workers who start their day well before the sun rises and to people who walk their dogs after the sun sets.

Daniel Patella and Pedro Martinez, both journeymen carpenters, arrived for work at a construction site in Goodyear at 4 a.m. and 3 a.m., respectively, but some other workers had been at it since as early as 2 a.m.

To help combat the heat and boost morale, the site has an ice cream truck come each Thursday to provide free ice cream, and company workers, called the “heat busters,” pass out popsicles daily and check on crews, making sure they are taking adequate breaks and getting enough water.

Workers at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport prepared planes for takeoff one day as temperatures neared 104 degrees and the tarmac where they worked measured 140 degrees.

Jason Walker said he has worked at the airport for the past five and a half years. The airport provides enough water and takes other precautions so workers stay safe, he said, but extra hands would be welcome.

“We could always use more help, honestly, especially this time of year it gets pretty thin," Walker said. "There are times where you are out there most of your shifts without a break.”

It takes more than a village

On Wednesday, Regina Robles, a street outreach case manager for Phoenix Rescue Mission, met up with a client , Mark Anthony Scott, who did not have a place to live. Scott carried his backpack and his electric scooter to take him for a final round of paperwork for a housing assistance voucher to get an apartment.

In the cool of Robles' car, she broke the good news: They could cover him for one week at a Best Western he has frequented in the past.

Since the start of its heat relief campaign on May 1, the mission has rescued 316 unhoused people from the heat, distributed more than 604,000 water bottles to people living on the streets and has provided more than 870 heat-relief transport rides.

Not everyone makes it...

Since the start of the year, 114 people have died of heat or heat-related causes and authorities are investigating another 465 deaths. Both numbers are ahead of the same time in 2023, a year when a record 645 people succumbed to heat or heat-related causes.

Health workers are also seeing an alarming increase in the number of "contact burns," injuries caused by hot concrete or asphalt.

At the Arizona Burn Center at Valleywise Health hospital, doctors saw a patient who walked on hot asphalt. Diabetes had caused nerve damage in her feet so she didn’t know her soles were burning. Another was an elderly woman who fell and sustained burns over 20% of her body.

This summer is worse than the last. There are more patients, particularly older men, with more severe burns. No one is sure why.

“It’s baffling,” said Dr. Kevin Foster, director of the center. “Don’t know.”

...but for others, life finds a way

This is the part of our reporting that may resonate with the most readers, the people we found who adapted, adjusting their activities to avoid the worst of the heat, refusing to let high temperatures confine them indoors all of the time.

Esther Zanovitch started her 10-hour shift as a park ranger at 11:30 a.m. on a Tuesday near the Echo Canyon Trail on Camelback Mountain. Zanovitch, who's 38, says she stays safe out in the heat while patrolling the trails by keeping her gallon jug filled with water and ice.

At Centennial High School one morning, members of the Coyotes football team were outside conducting running drills. One drill, referred to as the "conditioning test," required players to sprint 300 yards — 25 yards down and back six times. The temperature outside, just shy of 100 degrees, was rapidly increasing.

“We start early to beat the heat,” said assistant coach Andrew Taylor, who had been out with players since 7 a.m.

The Desert Vista High School marching band practices in the evening , moving from indoor spaces to the football field as the sun goes down.

Norman, a senior, and Bradford, a sophomore, said practicing in the heat can be terrible, but they have grown used to it, even while carrying an instrument that can weigh between 30 and 50 pounds.

"Carrying the instrument is not as bad as you think it is," Norman said. "It just gets warm."

And then there was this guy

Around 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Robert Pamiroyan was walking back to his car with his golf bag after finishing up a session at the Encanto 18 driving range in central Phoenix. He was practicing for a tournament that weekend.

The parking lot at Encanto 18 was fairly full, but there were not many people out on the course, Pamiroyan said. He said he’d be good to play more if he didn’t have to head to work. He planned return the next day.

“Best time to play golf,” Pamiroyan said. “There’s nobody out there.”

Seven days in Phoenix: Living and dying in America’s hottest big city

Hey, wait, it snowed

Finally, the other side of the thermometer, our colleagues at the Reno Gazette-Journal noted this:

That strange chilly August weekend we just experienced is now over, but it did bring a bit of snow to the Sierra — three inches in the Lassen area, to be exact.

A cold system from the Gulf of Alaska brought the chilly weather to the West Coast, from Washington down into the Sierra Nevada.

"While it’s rare to see snow this time of year, it’s a reminder of the unpredictable nature of our beautiful Sierra Nevada," read a post on Madera County Sheriff's Office's Facebook page on Saturday.

Thanks for reading and for subscribing to AZ Climate, the Arizona Republic's weekly environment newsletter. We hope you'll consider forwarding it to others .

Environmental coverage in The Republic and on azcentral is supported by the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust . You can show your own support for environmental journalism in Arizona by subscribing to azcentral .

Now here's what else we've been up to:

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: In the Phoenix heat, it's adapt and survive