Henny Penny Farmette

Is this the new norm? If I had any doubts that the planet was heating, I have abandoned them in the face of sweltering heat expected today.  Bay Area forecasters predict the thermometer to climb to 107 degrees Fahrenheit in some of the inland valleys around the San Francisco Bay.

Orchids love heat

On the farmette, the heat will top out at 104 degrees. While breezes from the Delta in the late afternoon blow through, what we need is cool, moist fog. Breezes today will be like having a fan in a sauna.

No doubt about it, this heat is unseasonably warm here for any day in June. Not so, in Death Valley, an area of the state below sea level in California’s Mojave Desert. It holds the North American record for the hottest day on Earth.

In Death Valley, 125 degrees Fahrenheit is nothing to sneeze at. Back in 1913 in Furnace Creek, the center of Death Valley mining operations and ancestral home of the Timbisha tribe of Native Americans, the temperature climbed to 134 degrees.

To date, that 134 degree-temperature is the record for North American heat. As a species, we humans might have to think about how much heat we can stand, because it just might be the new norm. See, http://www.history.com/news/the-hottest-day-on-earth-100-years-ago