The temperatures about 88

Temperatures these last couple of days have been back to July summer highs. Today, depending which part of LA you are in, the temperatures have hit highs of 99-100 Fahrenheit.Having grown up on the Celsius scale, its taken my wife and I some getting used to the Fahrenheit readings. All we knew, when we came over to the U.S, was that 88 was pretty hot, and that was from the Fresh Prince's line "...the temperatures about 88..." in his hit track "Summer time"So for the longest time we went by our baseline temperature of 88. Anything significantly higher than that would mean its going to be a sweltering day. Anything significantly lower than that meant it would be a cool day.That was all we needed to know. We couldnt do the quick mental conversion of Fahrenheit to Celsius. Still cant. With time though, we learnt that 88F is about 31C. We've long since dropped the attempts at conversion to C, so that it makes sense to us, to making sense of temperatures in F.Summertime temperatures in LA have frequently hit the low triple digits. And I've been told we even have it good !!! Out in Phoenix it gets way hotter than anything we are used to in LA. Makes sense now, when Ice Cube said he 'hot as Phoenix Arizona.' Not too many places get hotter than that.The weather forecast makes for interesting watching or reading. Why ?! Well, because in comparison, when we were living in London, the temperatures forecast would pretty much be the same regardless of where in London you are. So they'd just say something like "Temperatures are expected to be 21" and that'd be it.L.A. on the other hand is different. It has different localized climates with the temperatures varying by a couple of degrees depending on whether you are in the valleys, the beaches, inland, or downtown LA, and so they forecast the weather for every area. I read somewhere that L.A. has a temperature gradient of over one degree per mile. Its not strange then to have variations of even close to 15F between different parts of L.A.And its pretty evident too. When you drive say from Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley, to Thousand Oaks, there is a drop in the temperature. You step out of your car and you dont feel the sizzling scorching heat you left behind in The Valley. You feel a bit of a breeze too. The air doesnt feel humid at all. However, drive from say Burbank, still in the San Fernando Valley, to the Santa Clarita Valley or Antelope Valley and you immediately think "OK, maybe the Valley wasnt that hot after all."With the soaring heat comes summer madness. Police report that crime steps up during the summer. I dont know what it is about the summer heat that makes people go crazy, but they do.All I know is that you dont want to be inside your house when temperatures are this high. Alot of the time the air-conditioning doesnt make much of a difference inside our place, even when we crank it up to full. The kids run about all wild, constantly asking to get out of the house, and Susan ends up taking them to the Mall which has better air-conditioning. Its also cheaper than cranking up your AC the whole day. Turns out thats what alot of people do. Cool off anywhere but home, if you're not going to be in the pool or at the beach.Today's been 108 in the Valleys. Record-breaking temperatures for this day in "weather-recording history", so say the weather people on telly. And they say its going to be even hotter tomorrow. Not nice.