WOW!!! IS THIS LIFE IN SAUDI ARABIA!!!

A few weeks ago I was firing-up the day with my typical Yahoo headline scan; it was the weekend and I was relaxing with the TV on, ready to catch-up on some school work.  One of the titles on the Yahoo front page was the following:

July 7, 2011

Early this morning, the Sun erupted with an explosion I can only describe as ginormous. We’re in no danger from it, but the size and scope of this thing are simply spectacular.

The article then went on to explain some of the technical details.  Blah, blah, blah.  About halfway down the article this picture was attached. 

Under this rather intimidating and frightening photo was just the word "Yowza!"  Now I'm pretty sure "Yowza" isn't a scientific term, but it does do some justice to the imensity of this event in the scientific realm.  A couple of other key phrases from the article:

This event blasted something like a billion tons of material away from the Sun.

and the equally drastic....

Note the size of it, too: while it started from a small region on the Sun’s surface, it quickly expanded into a plume easily as big as the Sun itself! I’d estimate its size at well over a million kilometers across.

Fast forward a week and I'm in the office working away.  Altaf comes into my office following his lunch break.  He is sweating fountains of liquid from his forehead, neck, hair, eyeballs, toes, etc. 

"It is hot.  And it's humid!  Very hot."

Yeah, yeah, yeah it's hot here from April to October.  Nothing new.  A couple of hours later I closed up shop and headed for home.  I walked out of the building into a world class hair dryer blasting at my body.  Within 100 yards I was sweating profusely.  By the time I had arrived at my car, I was wiping off my head every 3 seconds.  I quickly went into "Heat-Combat Mode".  The first step is to air out the car.  I fired on the motor, blasted the A/C and let it AIIIRRRR.

Step 2 of the airing process is to roll down the windows.  This is an extreme measure, required only when there is a chance that the driver may pass out once in the car with the door closed.  I went with the window roll-down to be safe.

I was oozing more and more sweat as I waited for the 2-step airing process to finish.  After a couple of minutes I was ready to jump into my mobile heater oven.  I grabbed a quick photo as I climbed in.

It's a little hard to read, but it says "43".  Translated to Farenheit, that's a very manageable 109.  Child's play for Saudi Arabia.  But I was sweating like crazy.  What was the humidity factor in this mama?

Later that evening I stepped out of my apartment to head to my car and crossed paths with my neighbor.  A 4 year veteran in Saudi Arabia, he quickly commented, "It is brutally hot mate.  Do you know what the temperature was today with the humidity factor included (rhetorical)?  58 degrees!!  It basically felt like it was 136 degrees Farenheit today!"  You know what, I pondered, that is close to the temperature on the sun I bet...

So apparently that explosion on the sun got to Earth faster than scientists predicted, or at least it got to Saudi Arabia quicker.  But hey, the good news is that we were back to a dry heat today - it was 43 and it felt great!  I can deal with that.