The Yearly 'Heat Wave'

At some point in June of each year.....the 'heat wave' will occur.  This is typically where fronts go through and the daily high temp is around 32 to 37 degrees C (90 F to 99 F). 

So let's get to the one of the many oddities about Germany.....air conditioning is rarely found.  Major stores might have them.  Your town grocery probably runs it.  Maybe out of a village of 300 houses....maybe thirty of them will have a AC unit (sometimes just for one single room).  The bulk of society lives without AC units.

How do you survive?  Let me offer ten observations.

1.  Heat waves come and go.  So you might have four consecutive days of 33 degrees C, then some storm comes through and the temp drops back down to 24 degrees C for two days.  Then you go through days of a rise, and then you reach 33 degrees again.  Wave in, wave out. 

2.  The serious pain is that concrete structures absorb heat and retain it....for hours and hours.  So with four straight days of heat....your night-time temperatures don't help much in cooling the interior. 

3.  People tend to drink more...not just water, but beer, wine and sodas.

4.  Some Germans are intensely anti-AC and really don't want a brief reprieve from the heat.

5.  Years differ.  You could have a year where only 15 days of 32 degrees C or more occur.  You could have a year where 40 days of 32 degrees C or more occur. 

6.  Thunderstorms play a major role in the cooling and damage cycle.  Late afternoon storms are prevalent throughout Germany in the summer period.  Hail is a major issue that you watch for.

7.  Just because the sign on the bus indicates it has AC, doesn't mean that it actually chills much once the temp is above 35 degrees C.  There's several occasions in the past five years where the temperature was bad enough for me to get off at some bus stop to cool off for 20 minutes before I could complete my trip.  Same is true for the railway services.

8.  Heat waves never occurred prior to the industrial period of Germany, and only occurs now because mankind's contributions to climate change (the actual quote that Germans will give you).

9.  Heat exhaustion does occur, but it's awful rare. 

10.  If you reach a period of ten consecutive days of high temperatures.....you can anticipate that Germans are getting less than 5 hours a night of sleep and are fairly aggravated each morning as they arrive for work.