Heat Wave: Difference between revisions

The temperature is 115 plus degrees Fahrenheit (46 degrees Celsius), and people are soaked with sweat. It's the hottest it's ever been since June 26, 1889. You could fry an egg on the sidewalk. Everyone has their air conditioner cranked up, and those not fortunate enough to own one are desperately looking to cool down. Just staying outside for a prolonged period of time can be dangerous. No one wants to ''move''. Everyone is understandably cranky because of the hot weather, but according to the weatherman, there's no sign of things cooling down.

 

 

Can also serve as a good excuse for [[Fan Service|people to walk around in swimsuits or soaked to the skin clothing.]]

See also [[Big Blackout]]. Like [[Snowed In]] and [[Rain, Rain, Go Away]], an aversion of [[It's Always Spring]]. Often a sign that [[A Storm Is Coming]], in fiction as in real life.

 

 

It's often a [[Long Hot Summer]] (media shorthand for the urban riots of the '60s-70s) or [[The Dog Days of Summer]].

== Anime and Manga ==

 

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' takes place towards the end of a 15 year long heat wave. While this sounds impossible, it's a consequence of [[Apocalypse How|Second Impact]] shifting the planet's axis, eliminating the Antarctic <s> icecap</s> continent and screwing up every weather pattern.

* ''[[Macross 7]]'' does it as well, with the heat wave being caused by the titular spacecraft heading dangerously close to a sun.

 

== Comic Books ==

 

* During the Confessor Arc of ''[[Astro City]]'', a major heatwave heightens the amount of paranoia and short-fuses that accompanied a Serial Killing, with the narrator [[Lampshading]] this trope.

* [[Milestone Comics]] had a quasi-[[Crisis Crossover]] called ''Long Hot Summer'', where the stories of its titles converged around the construction of the "Utopia Park" theme park in the middle of the worst part of Dakota City, and the stresses caused during the summer when the park was built culminating in the Blood Syndicate crashing the gates on opening day and unintentionally inciting a massive riot.

* Spike Lee's ''[[Do the Right Thing]]''. Racist attitudes collide on The Hottest Day of The Year.

* ''Summer of Sam'': Old school Italian street toughs beat on their punk rocker ex-friend, The Son of Sam killer commits several murders, and a full blown blackout/riot breaks out, all against the backdrop of the infamous NY summer of 1977.

* ''[[Falling Down]]''. A man having a mental breakdown wanders the streets of Los Angeles and, alienated by his experiences, turns to vigilantism on The Hottest Day of The Year.

* ''[[Dog Day Afternoon]]''. Al Pacino unsuccessfully robs a bank and winds up creating a hostage situation on The Hottest Day of The Year.

* ''[[A Time to Kill]]''. Matthew McConaughey defends a Mississippi black man played by Samuel L. Jackson who has killed his daughter's murderers during a [[Heat Wave]]. See any Southern summer courtroom scene, really.

* ''Hundstage''. Taking place during the titular "dog days", traditional considered the hottest period of the year, this film is about suburban Austrians being unkind, sleazy or downright malevolent to each other.

* ''[[Rear Window]]'': At the beginning of the film, the camera lingers on a thermometer showing the temperature as 90 degrees. The same day, one of the characters remarks that trouble seems to be brewing. Sure enough, it is. At the end of the film, the thermometer is shown again--{{spoiler|and it reads 70 degrees, showing that things have cooled down in the neighborhood now that the murderer has been caught.}}

* ''[[A Streetcar Named Desire]]''. You can feel the sweat pouring off [[Marlon Brando]]. It's set in [[The Big Easy]] of course, where it's like this 9 months of the year.

* The New York heatwave in ''[[The Seven Year Itch]]'' not only inspires Richard Sherman to contemplate illicit things with The Girl in the upstairs apartment while his wife and kids are escaping the heat in the country, but also leads to the [[Trope Namer|trope naming]] [[Marilyn Maneuver]].

* [[Akira Kurosawa]]'s ''Stray Dog'' (Nora Inu) has an [[Empathic Environment|empathic heat wave]] going on throughout the movie.

* ''[[Barton Fink]]'' takes place in a heat wave as oppressive as the protagonist's mental state.

* In the [[Ealing Comedy]] ''[[Passport to Pimlico]]'', the rebel state of Burgundy is established in central London during an un-British heatwave. When the more traditional London rain returns, so does normality.

* A frequent device in ''[[The Dresden Files]]''. ''Summer Knight'' makes the most use of the heat wave motif, feeding into Harry's irritability given his recent defeat and helping to highlight {{spoiler|how things are going seriously wrong with the Summer fae}}.

* ''[[Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix]]'' starts with a heat wave, which is possibly supposed to symbolize Harry being irritable because he hasn't been able to get any information about Voldemort and the Dursleys are irritable because there's a drought and they're busy making sure their neighbors don't cheat on the "no water sprinklers" ban. Ironically, the more dangerous part occurs when temperatures DROP, because that signifies the entrance of dementors.

* Heat Wave, the first book [[Castle|Richard Castle's]] [[Defictionalization|first Nikki Heat book]] takes place in the middle of one in NYC

* The events recalled by Leo Colston in LP Hartley's ''[[The Go-Between]]'' take place in the long hot summer of 1900. The temperatures rise as the plot unfolds, but the weather breaks at the climax with a thunderstorm.

 

* [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'' has one of its most pivotal scenes, where Tybalt kills Mercutio and Romeo kills Tybalt in vengeance, happen during an unusually hot day, setting the stage for the tragedy to come.

** "Sit Down, John":

{{quote| It's 90 degrees,<br />

* One episode of ''[[The Boondocks]]'' featured a memorable pastiche of ''Do the Right Thing'', also set on The Hottest Day Of The Year... in February. Huey is the only one who remembers that it's actually winter, and is wearing a thick coat throughout the episde.

* This occurred in a ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' episode. Naturally, the emotional Danny has a mean case of the frownies because of it. Mayor Vlad solves the problem by forcing a weather ghost to cool the temperature, but as always, all hell breaks loose when he creates violent storms afterwards. It takes Danny's emotions (and a machine to enhance it) to actually win this battle.

 

== Real Life ==

* Summer heat is frequently cited as a contributing factor to urban riots. The disturbances in Watts (1965) and Newark and Detroit (1967) all took place during periods of higher-than-normal temperatures in those cities. [http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2569097 One study] showed that incidence of mental disorders with violent presentations increased when the temperature rose above 80 Fahrenheit. Also, the FBI found an average increase of between 35-40% in the murder rate in urban areas from February to July over a span of five years of records. It was 90 degrees in April when the 1992 Rodney King riots in LA started.

** Somewhat subverted in the England Riots of 2011. Despite taking place in August, the temperatures around England, and London in particular, had actually been rather cool. The days the riots took place had not been especially hot either.

* The 2003 [[Big Blackout]] in the northeast of the U.S.A and parts of Canada came on a blisteringly hot August day, especially in New York. Think of the people stuck on the subway, where it gets even hotter...

** And also during the infamous blackout of 1977, described as the "summer that New York lost it's mind". Temperatures were skyrocketing, corruption was rampant, and the [[Serial Killer]] Son of Sam had made the city his personal hunting ground. The blackout capped everything off, leading to riots and looting--it took DECADES for some neighborhoods to recover.