It's a hot heat.

You get used to a lot of things in New York, weather-wise -- mounds of snow, slush, huge puddles and potholes, ice, harsh winds, hot summer days of high heat and 100% humidity, gorgeous fall leaves that turn into a wet slippery menace, and so on and so forth. But we seldom worry about temperatures in excess of 100 degrees, and in my experience never in excess of 110.

So I was almost shocked past the stage of pity when friends in Southern California reported 117 degrees yesterday at 3:00 pm Pacific. 

That's just mean. 

They live inland, closer to Joshua Tree than L.A., and I suppose they had what you might call a "dry heat." Or, "the seventh circle of Hell." (Burning rain and sand, blood + fire, etc.) 

And here we were in the Hudson Valley, having the most glorious weather of the year this Labor Day weekend. 

I mean, I don't even know what to say about 117. It's just mean. The mind boggles. 

A few years back I read a book about a guy who decided to live in a cabin in the Alaskan inland, using wood and coal for heat, and one night it hit 70 below zero. Most Alaskans probably have not had to endure those kind of conditions. Extreme temperatures are just stunning.

I remember some summers in New York where we had heat waves you could literally see, and the temperature might get to 104. A bad fever, but probably not fatal. Of course, being New York, it was most decidedly not a dry heat; you could almost stick to the wall like Wacky Wally. Maybe 117 with low humidity is nicer than 104 with high humidity, but I doubt you could call either really nice. 

My main concern for our friends is that California does not have the best track record of keeping the air conditioning on (or for that matter the lights). And indeed they started to have power problems Friday night. 

Even professional-strength A/C struggles when you have this kind of heat. The only time I know I was someplace with comparable temperatures I was changing planes with the Mrs. in Phoenix, and you could feel the baking heat humming into the windows of the airport like a glowing red field of radiation. We were kind of glad to change planes elsewhere on our way home.

Our friends are tough cookies and will survive a little baking. And when we're freezing under a pile of snow in five months I'm sure they'll be enjoying perfect California weather. Although they may still be doing it by candlelight -- them being in about the only state in the union run by bigger morons than our state.