Yesterday we landed in Shanghai around 12 PM and when I left the terminal I was still wearing the sweater that I usually wear during flights. Not a smart idea, the Shanghai heat literally hit me when the doors opened. It was extremely hot and humid and I immediately took it off. But it didn’t help much: I only stayed outside for 2 minutes but I was already sweating before I got into the car.

Today I read in the Shanghai Daily that the mercury broke another record yesterday, it was officially 39.8 degrees Celcius – it never gets over 40 degrees in Shanghai because then people get a day off I think. My car thermometer (normally pretty accurate) showed 43 degrees while driving home from the airport. It was also the 4th day in a row that temperatures were above 39 degrees, a record according to the Shanghai Daily, this never happened since people started recording Shanghai temperatures in 1833. In total we already had 21 days above 35 degrees this summer…

At night a heavy thunderstorm with rain and a lot of wind cooled down the air a lot (overnight it was only 27 degrees, the night before it was 34 degrees!), but today it was again over 35 degrees. And the heat wave will continue, tomorrow it will be 36 and later in the week even warmer. Luckily both my house and office have good air conditioning systems, although it can still get hot during the regular power blackouts (this morning we had another one, I already lost count of the number of blackouts this summer).