Six motorcyclists rode into Death Valley National Park on July 6. Only five came out alive. With temperatures reaching 128 degrees Fahrenheit in California, the cyclists faced extreme heat exposure that killed one and sent another to a local hospital, according to the National Park Service.
When there’s a medical emergency like this, helicopters are typically dispatched to get people to a hospital. However, the extreme heat made it impossible for the helicopters to fly.
The next day, an emergency helicopter pilot in Stanford, California had to cancel a flight because the tarmac near a patient was too hot for him to land. As reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, the pilot said he’d never seen temperatures this bad in his 27-year career.
Extreme heat, as many across the U.S. are experiencing this summer, can cause computer and mechanical systems on board helicopters to overheat and malfunction. But it’s not just a mechanical issue as air pressure is also a factor. Air expands when it’s hot and contracts when it’s cold. As it gets hotter outside, air pressure plummets. The air literally gets thin which means that spinning helicopter blades have less air to cut through and it’s harder for them to achieve lift. That makes it dangerous, and sometimes impossible, to fly.
People need to start changing their behavior about this heat. I know this sounds like victim blaming. I know people shouldn’t have to change their behavior because we saw global warning coming for 30 years and should have prevented this from happening. But it’s happening. You can’t go into Death Valley in the summer anymore. You just can’t. Please don’t put yourself in this position.
It’s a tragedy that this death happened. We absolutely need to adapt our emergency services to this heat to try to prevent something like this from happening again. But we also need to change our behaviors so we don’t end up in that position in the first place.
Man, it’s almost like it’s called Death Valley for a reason or something
Yeah but judging by the success of Liquid Death water, there is a certain group of people who are attracted to things with morbid names.
I know people shouldn’t have to change their behavior
The whole reason we’re in this situation is because we refuse to change our behavior.
“We” is incorrect, it is mostly the rich refusing and sabotaging change,
It’s the global 1% not just the ultra rich
Exactly, a middle class American has an enormous carbon foot print compared to a middle class person in the rest of the world.
This is cope. I know too many people who roleplay as environmentalists, but are fully engaged in consumerism. Friends who look at me funny when I insist that we can have the same conversations over discord that we can when I drive an hour to to see them or who think that Biden’s Green Deal will be enough. My primary concern for the past 30 years, more time then I’ve been an adult, has been to reduce my co2 output or make sure that what co2 I do output has been productive. There’s a huge disconnect between myself and my supposedly like minded friends that can only be explained my a deep unwillingness to be put in any sort of discomfort. So they cope by telling themselves that they deserve this vacation that requires air travel or ignore the mountain of waste that the average movie production produces or that plastic recycling works and you can drink your Pepsi™ if you just put the bottle in the recycling.
If the rich are responsible for all of our problems, we’re responsible for letting them be rich.
Why bother when it’s far too late and nothing is going to change?
Funny how it went from not being real to being far too late. Almost like there’s always a “reason” not to do anything.
What are you going to do about it?
I’m saying your being manipulated into inaction.
No, we’re in this position because of a failure of leadership. Leaders can unite people behind doing things they don’t want to do. It’s how rationing was tolerated for years in WWII. But we have an entire political party built around telling people what they want to hear while working against their interests for the wealthy’s short term gains. We could have conquered this from the top-down with a good plan and charismatic leaders supporting it.
Except we wont elect leadership that will do something. The electorate has been brainwashed by decades of advertisements that have convinced them that they deserve the very best of everything. Any possible leader that would push for a strong solution to climate change wouldn’t get the votes and they wouldn’t get those corporate “campaign contributions”.
We have two entire political parties built around telling people what they want to hear.
why are people riding motorcycles into death valley? Aren’t you like, advised to not even step out of your car, or like, stop moving. I’m pretty sure there are recommendations on riding motorcycles out there also.
and climate change deniers are probably still at it.
No probably about it.
Six motorcyclists rode into Death Valley National Park on July 6. Only five came out alive. With temperatures reaching 128 degrees Fahrenheit in California, the cyclists…
The shorter word for motorcyclists is “bikers.” “Cyclists” is a term for people that actually pedal.
“Six motorcyclists rode into Death Valley National Park on July 6. Only five came out alive.”
ffs gizmodo, five out of the six survived. That a bit over 83% as a survival rate.
Sounds like the beginning of a riddle.
Oh no, what a tragedy, are they saying golfers in the Death Valley have to travel by car like plebs?!
It’s only to get to their private jets in an airfield immediately next to it, but the humanity!!
(Not the Devils Golf Course, thats just named that, the actual thing is in the lowermost point, in ‘Furnace creek’)
Death Valley is not going to be the only place where this is an issue. It could even be an issue where you live at the height of summer.
The climate change & weather models didn’t change all that much in the last 70 years, they just became way more precise & can predict changes very locally (more input data and better computers).
Insurance companies use grids of a few 100km.My region is getting periods of more serve precipitation (with hailstorm increase) & more severe droughts (as in 3 to 4 weeks at a time), bcs of that some areas could become more prone to land/mudslides.
Temperature wise both summer and winter extremes are gonna get higher, but being and more importantly straying between fronts/systems should help ease things, a bit.
But most importantly, I do not have a habit of traveling by helicopters, tho medical transports will suffer, yes.
tho medical transports will suffer, yes.
Putting that at the end like it’s an afterthought when it’s one of the biggest problems is ridiculous. Someone already died because of this problem. It’s going to continue to be a problem where people will die because of that. I’m not sure why you think that isn’t a big deal.
Also, I grew up in the state I’m living in now after not living here for a decade. The difference in summer heat is not minor. We never used to have summers this hot for this long when I was a kid. We had a week last month where the temperature was above 95 every day. Also true for this week. Temperatures in the 90s in June were enough news to make the paper beyond the weather section when I was a kid.
The sun’s only been up for an hour and it’s already 76 degrees. Again, that is not even close to normal when I was growing up. So telling me that it hasn’t changed all that much in the last 70 years when I’ve experienced that change myself over less than 50 is not especially convincing.
