Summer has finally arrived in Baton Rouge. In most parts of the nation, it’s grilling season!!! Here, if you start a grill, you may spontaneously combust. It’s gross hot. Like literally people are dying hot. It’s 10 till 7:00 and it’s 92. What the actual eff?!? I know that writing about the heat seems dumb, but this is about you, and your inability to not post pictures of your car thermometers.

Everytime it gets hot here (read:anywhere), people can’t wait to snap a pic of the 107° on their dashboard, as if somehow in their cars it’s 17° hotter than outside. STOP IT.

Your cars thermistor is not a thermometer. It’s a cheap device that measures a change in electrical current being added or taken away. They are cheap and mostly accurate. The issue is that they are also located in the front of your grill on your vehicle, or better yet, under it, closer to something that’s way hotter than the outside air. The pavement.

So the temperature your dashboard is reading is the heat coming off the pavement combined with the heat of your engine. It’s not the temperature outside.

It’s like you’re 12 and you are holding the thermometer up to a light bulb, then your mom comes in and says, “Oh, you have a fever of 106°, you’re technically supposed to be dead. Nice try.” Super believable.

Yet, summer after summer, the dashboards light up with 109° and you can’t wait to let us know that it’s somehow hotter than anywhere outside Death Valley in your work parking lot. It’s not. Please stop.

#hugsandhi5s