Yesterday was the peak of our current heatwave, with air temperatures hitting 38-39ºC in the Madrid area, depending on which weather service you consulted and nighttime lows were a demoralizing 24ºC. Humidity was very low as usual, averaging below 20%. I'm here to share my particular experience of the day in the hope it will be interesting, informative and maybe helpful to others. I wish to preface though, that any positive tone I take in no way implies that heatwaves are no big deal. Our ability to personally cope has nothing to do with the increased risk of forest fires and the damage to agriculture.

Highlights:

1. I had to take around a 15 min walk round trip outside at close to 18:00. My personal cooling spray bottle failed me, everything was concrete and there was no particular shade on that walk. I joked that I could feel some of my proteins denaturing, but honestly it gets much worse than that. My bottle wasn't spraying well, but I dumped some of the water on my head and that was good enough. The shop I was going to not only was air conditioned, but as I've noted in other posts, it also had a couple big swamp coolers inside to supplement. I took in front of one for a few minutes and I was back to normal. I purchased another spray bottle for the walk back and sacrificed some drinking water for it. Totally worth it. The spray made the outside temperatures totally bearable long as the water supply held up.

2. I spent a short time in a non-air conditioned waiting area. All they had was a big fan. Spraying myself and standing in front of the fan was fine, but eventually I lost patience and went back to bring the car around to pick up the family at the door of the establishment (the swimming pool).

3. As long as the car was parked in the shade, I could dial the air conditioning down to 25ºC in eco mode and things were fine, for me at least. That was the waiting. When I had the rest of the family in the car and was one the move, I had to crank it up to 22º and dial the fans up to offer my wife relief from spending 45min in a non-AC space.

4. My daughter, who had just been at the pool, was very comfortable with her wet hair for about a 20min drive. We had to make a stop in a very reasonably cooled establishment. After that, she complained, in her 9-year-old way, that her hair was already dry and thus the cooling effect gone even though we were in the car.

5. Despite the high temperatures, I still got a chill after stepping out of the shower, indicating wet bulb temperature was still quite low.

6. The end of the day saw interior temperatures in the apartment at around 29.5ºC in the hottest rooms and around 28.5ºC in the coolest. I checked the output of my mother-in-law’s swamp cooler for safety and it was still managing to put out 24ºC air at around 9:00pm, which would improve as the night gradually cooled. I deemed normal operation safe. After filling all the swamp coolers for the night and having a shower, the kid and I flopped in the bedroom with swamp cooler blowing on us to talk before bed. No more comfortable place in the house, but notably we had to dial the fan to medium for best comfort while previous days it stayed on low.

All in all, this heatwave did not require anything particular of us beyond minding the savagery of being outside in the afternoon. It’s a testament Spanish building design and the incredible effectiveness of evaporative cooling when it’s dry. I understand not everyone has this option. Stay safe and cool out there.

I have heard that having a bowl of ice a fan can make a room colder but it would be difficult to do with a ceiling fan... any advice for how to make it cooler?

I live in the south of the U.S. if that helps to tell how cool it is...

i dont know if this question is serious enough for this subreddit sorry if not

i dont want to put my ac down further for environmental reasons

I’m afraid of my HR rising outside in the summer, heat stroke, heat exhaustion. For my children I’m fearful of it being way too hot on them outside. Went outside for hours this week and it was nerve racking as hell but I did it. Really hot day but I did it!

I've yaked on and on about my portable evaporative coolers here for a couple years now. In this year of multiple heatwaves all over the world, it seems appropriate to finally share some details of what happens to keep me and mine safe and comfortable. Not a good choice for folks in humid climes.

This is "Big Sister," as my kids dubbed her (the decorations are their work), a Mconfort brand (Spanish company out of Valencia) model Elite 28, which is no longer produced as it was kind of an oddball higher end consumer model. It was the first serious portable evap cooler I bought and while it's currently the weakest performing of my good units, it was the one that showed me how much was possible and it still has a place in my army. It is taller than my other units and thus the vents completely clear the top of the bed, which makes it ideally suited for use while sleeping.

The energy consumption officially peaks at 120w, it has four fan speeds, up to 8 hour timer, ionizer, a high humidity cutoff function, low water pump cutoff and dubious "anti-mosquito" feature. Officially, it can move up to 2400 cubic meters of air per hour or around 1412 CFM at max power. It has three filter pads for greater evaporative surface and better cooling performance. I get 4-6ºC of cooling versus ambient temperature under typical summer conditions.

Please excuse the ugliness of the water. While I've perfected keeping it free of bacteria between washes (mild hypochlorous acid) iron still builds up, giving that rusty tinge. The dark-colored rectangle is a plate of copper, which has its own antimicrobial properties to help keep the bacteria down.

Generally Big Sister is run on low or medium fan speed as a balance between volume of air and noise. On low, she's a perfectly viable companion for TV and she to this day remains designated night cooler for my wife and I.