Across the sweaty landscape of America, pandas are getting Popsicles, cinnamon rolls are exploding in cars, and some people, in an effort to endure the blazing sun, are riding bicycles in their underwear.
New York is expected to be hotter this weekend than New Delhi. Cincinnati is already hotter than Imperatriz, Brazil, and Boston is warmer than Nairobi.
Heat is dangerous, especially for the vulnerable. It also prompts people to do the unusual, like fry eggs on a sidewalk and bake cookies on a car’s dashboard.
There was no frost in Frost, which was named for a former state lawmaker. The streets seemed deserted. Even the fields looked empty because the cattle were all hiding in the shade.
Frost — a town of about 640 in north central Texas between Dallas and Waco — seemed the perfect place to put the heat to the test. At 5 p.m. Thursday, to the visible dismay of Frost’s citizenry, two strips of hickory-smoked Whataburger bacon and two Grade A eggs were laid on the old asphalt at the corner of East Pace and Garitty Streets, across from Ross Propane and next door to the shuttered City Café.
The temperature was 95 degrees. But after about 90 minutes, the bacon and eggs did not fry so much as lightly, disgustingly bake.
The bacon dried out and got a little crispy. One gooey sunny-side-up egg hardened. The other scrambled itself. The lesson was clear: The bacon and eggs didn’t really fry, but the people watching it certainly did. It was hot in Texas but not hot enough. Ninety-five degrees, ultimately, was a little mild.
“I wouldn’t want to make light of climate change or of the real health dangers that accompany a heat wave, but in Texas, a summer day below 100 degrees is as invigorating as an arctic blast,” said Stephen Harrigan, a longtime writer for Texas Monthly.
Kevin Freeman, 37, the owner of City Café, was unimpressed with both the failed bacon-and-eggs experiment and the heat. “It happens,” Freeman shrugged from behind the counter of the store. “It’s Texas.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.