If You Can't Stand the Heat, Stay Out of Arizona

Summer in Arizona is always pretty miserable, but the current heat wave is particularly awful. Temperatures have been getting as high as 120 degrees, which means asphalt can get up to 160 and car interiors can reach 200.

Those extreme conditions aren't just bad for people, they can also ground planes and destroy property. Over on The Daily Buzz, you can see a collection of pictures showing just how hot it is in Arizona. It's enough to make you enjoy the warm weather outside wherever you live -unless, of course, you actually live in AZ.

So see the Grand Canyon state in all its melty misery here.

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The wall and the trashcan look like the result of a nearby fire. Notice the discolored ground and that the other parts of the wall are just fine. The heat might have been a contributing factor.

The slouched mailbox could be real, however. Plastic does not have to melt to lose its structural integrity, just get to its Glass Transition Temperature. For example, Nylon can buckle at 120F.

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I know that 120 isn't enough to melt plastic and that the images could have nothing to do with the actual heat wave as it's the internet, but given that asphalt can reach 160 in the sun and any reflecting heat from other sources could make the temperatures even hotter, I still think the pictures could be credible. If there was no way this was possible, I wouldn't have posted this. The wall is particularly bad looking because they obviously used inferior materials or stretched it way too thin -even so, the fact that it's only in a tight grouping suggests it could easily have extra heat reflection on it.

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As someone who lives in the desert, I can assure you all that plastics don't melt at 120F (49C), not even close. The only way those pictures MIGHT be remotely real is if the plastic objects were having sunlight reflected off of something like a window, and focused on the plastics, in addition to direct sunlight, getting the temperature up over 400F. Of course this is the internet, and it's just as possible the photos have nothing to do with the current summer heat.