It’s hard to keep all this heat bottled up without at least popping us some cloudiness, and Friday we should start to see clouds form with the afternoon triple digit temperatures. It’s not impossible that a few thunderstorms could form Friday afternoon mainly over the mountains, those odds increase somewhat as we get into the weekend. High temperatures should equal or exceed record levels through Monday, after which they cool slightly (back into the upper 90s), but will remain very warm through the next week.

With all this heat we’ve had lately in mind, this question seems timely. “I’m faced with two indoor cooling options: a window air conditioning unit, and a window swamp cooler. Which is better?”

First off, a definition is in order. A swamp cooler (also known as an evaporative cooler) works by tapping into a property of water known as the “heat of vaporization.” When water changes from the liquid state to a gas, a certain amount of energy (heat) needs to be absorbed into the water molecules in order to make the phase change. If air is blowing through a wet medium where water is evaporating, it draws the heat directly from the air, cooling it. It’s a nifty mechanism that works well here in the desert. But is it better than a standard AC? We will compare tomorrow.