Sunday, June 30, 2013

Hot enough to fry an egg in the desert?

I know weather isn't climate, but temperatures will be near world record level in the deserts of the American Southwest this weekend.  CNN reports from Palm Springs in Extreme heat soars throughout Southwest.

Triple digit temperatures are scorching the Southwest. CNN's Casey Wian reports.
The high temperatures prompted Robert Roy Britt to ask on LiveScience: Hot Enough to Fry an Egg on the Sidewalk This Weekend?
PHOENIX, AZ — It’s so hot today … Actually, it’s only 112 degrees Fahrenheit here today, nothing compared to Death Valley, Ca., which the National Weather Service says will see high temperatures near 130 through Monday. The hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth was 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 degrees Celsius) in Death Valley on July 10, 1913. All this got me wondering about the old adage.

So I checked around. The science on whether you can fry an egg on the sidewalk is sketchy, but if ever there were a time and a place to try, it would be this weekend in Death Valley. It didn’t work in Phoenix. More on that in a moment.

There are several references to 158 degrees as the minimum temperature needed to fry an egg. But Bill Nye the Science Guy tested egg-frying on a griddle on a stove a couple years ago, and found the minimum temperature to cook an egg was 130 degrees Fahrenheit (55 C), but that it took 20 minutes at that relatively low temperature. “So indeed, it can be hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk,” he writes.
Britt has photos of his egg congealing, not frying, at the link.

For any of you in the desert southwest reading this (Hi, Nebris!) try to stay cool.

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