Authorities advise parents to keep children indoors during extreme heatwave, expected to last two weeks
South Sudan is closing all schools from Monday in preparation for an extreme heatwave expected to last two weeks.
The health and education ministries have advised parents to keep all children indoors as temperatures are expected to soar to 45C (113F).
They warned that any school found open during the warning period would have its registration withdrawn, but the statement issued late on Saturday did not specify how long schools would remain closed.
At 25% humidity in Sudan, that temperature gets them into the wet bulb death zone:
https://earthsky.org/earth/wet-bulb-temperature-explained-dangers/
Never got that at school in Australia. I remember they said 35C and we go home. Then it was 40C. Then it was 45C and the news is reporting the elderly dying at home, but still got to be in school.
Most classrooms didn’t have aircon, but the teachers would turn off the lights because it apparently made it feel cooler, psychologically apparently, taking our minds off the heat. Even with kids fainting in morning assembly before the day was even in high 30s, they’d rush them off and we’d all go to class.
Private schools in the 90s. I realise it was logistically impossible to call up the parents of 1400 kids to come collect them at 1pm, but never did they cancel school the day before. Too hard.
I remember getting home and going straight into the neighbour’s pool with all the other kids who had the day off in public and state schools.
But, on the plus side, I’ve been in 48C with 45% humidity as an adult and knew exactly what to do with no aircon. Pool, umbrella, me and dog on a li-lo, splash water on him every few mins, play some good tunes, and pretend I’m in just relaxing in a 6 hour sauna
Thermometer at 2:24pm that day. “In” diode on balcony, “Out” in shade on the deck. “Feels like” would’ve been well into the high 50s
Been in 49C in the desert, no where near as bad because almost no humidity. Just feels more like an oven than a sauna.
Edit: Oh, apparently it was 49.2? Maybe? But the display at that point was shitting itself from the heat… That’s 120.56 for all you American kids +45% humidity. Deaths.
I have worked outside at those temps and humidity. The only way I could survive was by putting ice under my large floppy hat. There is no other way to keep yourself cool under those conditions. I would go through a gallon of water every hour and still be dehydrated. It was brutal.
I would go home and fill up a tub of cool water and sit in it for 30 minutes to cool down. I was fully acclimatized to temps 40-45C then too.
Smart thinking!
I remember back in the day in my state of Australia we would never shut down for weather and those little metal portables were fucking hell on those 40+ days. Cracking a window open does so little.
Wow, and it’s only March.
Albeit they are pretty close to the equator. Do their seasons matter or are heat waves more indicative of their weather?
Temperatures are consistently high all year, but there’s more rain in the summer. They’re probably escaping the worst possible combination of temperature and humidity, but that feels like pretty small comfort in the face of 45 C
As Deceptichum said, it’s getting dangerously close to the point where the wet bulb temperature exceeds 35°C, after which the temperature starts to become lethal to humans. We’re on route that large swaths of the earth become uninhabitable without AC
This is the best summary I could come up with:
South Sudan is closing all schools from Monday in preparation for an extreme heatwave expected to last two weeks.
The health and education ministries have advised parents to keep all children indoors as temperatures are expected to soar to 45C (113F).
He said schools should be connected to the electricity grid to enable the installation of air conditioners.
South Sudan, one of the world’s youngest nations, is particularly vulnerable to the climate crisis with heatwaves common but rarely exceeding 40C (104F).
Civil conflict has plagued the east African country, which also suffers drought and flooding, making living conditions difficult.
The World Food Programme in its latest country brief said South Sudan “continues to face a dire humanitarian crisis” due to violence, economic instability, climate change and an influx of people fleeing the conflict in neighbouring Sudan.
The original article contains 209 words, the summary contains 136 words. Saved 35%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
