I could barely see the road from the heat...

[sadaist]

Back in July was driving through the central valley in California. I think around Bakersfield-ish. Anyways, was a fucking HOT day for sure. Saw this & of course you know what popped into my head. For anyone that may not have ever actually seen this phenomena. The road is bone dry. That's just the heat from the sun reflecting off the blacktop.

[Nitro Express]

Great photos of a road mirage. It looks like a puddle of water. You can picture Yosemite Sam going "Water! Water!" and running for it getting ready for a big wet drink and it's a mirage.

[Nitro Express]

It's a three days drive from Bakersfield and I don't know why I came...

Bakersfield is where the journey begins......

[sadaist]

It's weird how the cars actually reflect off it like a mirror.

[envy_me]

So the road was actually dry?
I have never seen anything like this. How hot was it?

[vandeleur]

Cool pics

[PETE'S BROTHER]

So the road was actually dry?
I have never seen anything like this. How hot was it?

around 110-120 fahrenheit

[sadaist]

So the road was actually dry?
I have never seen anything like this. How hot was it?

around 110-120 fahrenheit

Exactly! Good job Petes Bro. You would be very familiar with this being in Arizona. It was around 113 at the town 10 miles behind me. So right around there on this little farming stretch. Amazing that they can grow vegetables in that heat.

And Envy, I had a feeling there might be a lot of people who had never actually seen this phenomena. Dave sings about it in Panama so we've all heard it. I just was lucky to have an opportunity to get it on film to share with everyone. But no, I did not reach down between my legs to ease the seat back. That area was busy holding a 64 ounce Big Gulp with extra ice

[PETE'S BROTHER]

you see that shit on my street for 5 months outta the year

[katina]

Great pictures, I have seen this phenomema on hot days on the horizon, but never so close, the pavement is like a mirror.

[katina]

It´s rough to live with that heat. I hope scientists could find a way to put that piping hot pavement into good use, I found this interesting article:

http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2012/09/piping-hot-asphalt/

Pavement covers as much as 45 percent of urban areas—and asphalt makes a sizeable contribution to the urban heat-island effect. On a steamy summer day, the surface of a road may get as hot as 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit). And it can stay miserably hot long after the sun sets, raising the temperature of whole neighborhoods built around this blacktop.

A lot of work has gone into figuring out how to combat this effect: planting more tree cover, painting black surfaces white, even constructing artificial glaciers. But what if, instead of fighting it, we used that heat?

Rajib Mallick, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, and other researchers have been developing a system that would harness the heat contained in asphalt. In one of Mallick’s designs, asphalt would heat water coursing through a series of pipes embedded in the road. In large-scale experiments on pavement slabs embedded with copper pipes, the researchers found that they can cool pavement by as much as 10 degrees Celsius with this technique while extracting the equivalent amount of energy.

Putting miles of pipe underneath highways could be costly to construct and maintain. In order to capture the most energy, the pipes would have to be embedded as close to the asphalt surface as possible. So instead, Mallick has his sights set on buildings with vast parking lots—such as theaters, malls, or office complexes. All that hot water could do the laundry at a sizeable hotel.

In another configuration, a flexible, cloth-like material embedded in the road surface could conduct heat to pipes running down road medians. Alternatively, the heat could be converted into different forms of energy. Liquids other than water and which vaporize at temperatures as low as 30 degrees Celsius could be used to drive turbines generating electricity.

Mallick and his colleagues have begun testing their designs with support from both the state of Massachusetts and the National Science Foundation. ❧

—Emily Badger

[motherchicken]

Bakersfield? Was ya comin to my house?
Actually contrary to what some say I've never lived in Bakersfield. I have been there plenty of times. This illusion seems to be caused by the heat and the humidity from the plants growing in the area. I'm just curious why Sadaist wasn't on the freeway unless he was cutting over between the 5 and 99. Through the town of Wasco. I know that area well. Fresno used to be the place to score pounds of weed when you couldn't find any in So Cal. And unless you're on the coast or on 395 you go through there going north to south or south to north in Cali.

[envy_me]

Exactly! Good job Petes Bro. You would be very familiar with this being in Arizona. It was around 113 at the town 10 miles behind me. So right around there on this little farming stretch. Amazing that they can grow vegetables in that heat.

And Envy, I had a feeling there might be a lot of people who had never actually seen this phenomena. Dave sings about it in Panama so we've all heard it. I just was lucky to have an opportunity to get it on film to share with everyone. But no, I did not reach down between my legs to ease the seat back. That area was busy holding a 64 ounce Big Gulp with extra ice

Hahahaha man, you should have done that. Just so you can claim that Dave wrote a song about you :-)

[sadaist]

I'm just curious why Sadaist wasn't on the freeway unless he was cutting over between the 5 and 99. Through the town of Wasco. I know that area well. Fresno used to be the place to score pounds of weed when you couldn't find any in So Cal. And unless you're on the coast or on 395 you go through there going north to south or south to north in Cali.

Was driving 5 south & heard they had shut down most the lanes at 1 spot and I would be parked on the freeway for hours. I don't have functioning AC in my truck so a stand still in that heat is deadly. So yeah, I decided to cut over to the 99 and travel down that way. Not sure exactly where but pretty sure I was south of Harris ranch when I made the cut.

[motherchicken]

Was driving 5 south & heard they had shut down most the lanes at 1 spot and I would be parked on the freeway for hours. I don't have functioning AC in my truck so a stand still in that heat is deadly. So yeah, I decided to cut over to the 99 and travel down that way. Not sure exactly where but pretty sure I was south of Harris ranch when I made the cut.

I lived in the Antelope Valley for over thirty years. That's probably the route through Wasco. I know all about that no a/c shit. I never owned a car with working a/c until I was in my late thirties.