When I was on the USS Kitty Hawk, I worked down in 4 Main Machinery Room. (the old oil-powered carriers have 4 separate enginerooms, and 4 shafts leading to 4 propellers). Each engineroom had 2 boilers, a high pressure turbine, an LP turbine, and what's called a Deaerating Feed Tank (DFT): a ~3600 gallon tank with water at ~250° in it. Those are the major heat sources although there were others. One spot I had to take 4 readings in was right in between one of the boilers and the DFT. Ambient air temp there hovered between 140° and 150°. Let me tell you: I got real adept at holding my breath, poking my head in there, unfocusing my eyes, and taking a mental snapshot of the angle of the dial on those 4 guages and then stepping back & mentally converting those angles into temperatures!
But even in the other parts of the engineroom, it was always hot. There were about a dozen 12" ventilation pipes that pumped in ""cool"" air down there. I used the quotes for a reason: Each pipe had a thermometer in it, shoved way up in there. As part of the Navy's Physiological Heat Exposure Limits program, we had to track the temps on those thermometers. As long as the air pumping down to keep us cool was under 100°, all was good. If it went higher, we had to shorten up our shifts from 6 to 4 or even 3 hours, which really sucked, working 3 hours on 3 hours off... There's not enough TIME to shower, eat, catch any meaningful sleep, and then get back to the pit in 3 hours. I can neither confirm nor deny that sometimes those readings got fudged to prevent any PHEL shifts from happening.
So... whenever I feel like whining about a 105° Texas day, I just remember how bad some others have got it. I do kinda miss those summertime days in Dillon, CO, though: the record high temp there since recordkeeping began in 1850-something is 88°.
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