Photo: Charlotte Dewey/National Weather Service
If you live in the Western half of the United States, then you don't need me to tell you that it's been hot lately. When the latest hit wave brought triple-digit, "oven-like" temperatures to Phoenix, Arizona, meteorologist Charlotte Dewey took that as an opportunity to bake cookies ... inside her van:
Dewey and a fellow forecaster hunted down cookie pans, tin foil and a roll of store-bought chocolate chip cookie dough. On Saturday the desert city hit 119, breaking an all-time record for the day.
They decided to put the cookies in the windshield of a white 2008 Dodge van, the weather service station’s government-issued vehicle, chosen for its non-tinted windows. A second cookie pan was placed outside the car on the ground.
The forecasters didn’t have a thermometer. But one local news station taking heat measurements recorded car temperatures of 200 degrees, Dewey said.
A series of photos snapped every hour, from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m., showed the progression of the baking. At the end of four hours, nine crisp, well-done cookies were sitting in the windshield of the car.
The cookie tasted good, Dewey said. But you know what's even better? The station van still smelled like cookies days later!
Devin Kelly of The Los Angeles Times covered this yummy story: Link