I’m sure some of you have seen the international headlines or the new UN climate warnings about the heat dome over India right now. The IMD (our weather department) has issued red alerts across my region (the northwest/central belt). Yesterday, a town near me recorded 48.2°C.

I want to explain what 48 degrees actually feels like when you live in a developing country, because it is terrifying.

You can’t just “stay inside and run the AC.” The power grid simply cannot handle the load of millions of people trying to cool down, so we are dealing with rolling blackouts. Imagine sitting in the pitch dark in a concrete room that has been baking in the sun for 12 hours, with no ceiling fan, while the ambient temperature inside is still hovering near 40°C at midnight. You don’t sleep; you just pass out from exhaustion.

The taps are running dry because the heat evaporates local reservoirs and water usage spikes. People who have to work outside-street vendors, construction workers, delivery drivers -are collapsing. Even the water coming out of the cold tap during the day is hot enough to literally brew tea.

It feels like we are living on the absolute razor’s edge of what the human body can endure, and it’s only May.

For those of you living in other countries, or even cooler parts of India-what is the weather like for you right now? I genuinely just want to hear about someone being cold, or feeling rain, just so I can remember what it’s like.

This is a post I saw today from r/india and I thought I’d share here. It really broke my heart. Absolutely horrifying.

https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/1tq4exk/it_hit_482c_118f_in_my_state_in_india_today_the/