Boston #6 for worst heat islands

Time to find out how many square miles of city owned asphalt each mayoral candidate is pledging to replace with plantings over the next mayoral term.

Or are you just pushing what you always push?

Why is MLK Boulevard so wide? It goes from nowhere to nowhere, yet it's two wide roadway segments.

This would be a great portion of road to put in greenery. Gardens, trees, you name it.

It's very unlikely that this is the euphemistic term "urban". This would be land cover, population density, and similar metrics.

You can see the report here: https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/uploads/general/2021_UHI_Report.pdf

EDIT: Of course, poor neighborhoods tend to have way less green cover, so yeah they're probably going to get hit harder than wealthy neighborhoods. But I don't think that was one of the factors they looked at.

As in city. As in heavily developed = most of Boston and surrounding communities.

You would be surprised that what you probably consider "suburban" (e.g. houses on 3,000 to 5,000 sq ft lots) is actually considered inner-city urban in most US cities.

That one made me do a double take too. I guess there aren't a lot of trees in the Church Street/downtown area now that I think of it, but it's still pretty surprising they'd be this far up the list.

It's right on a very large lake - it hugs the shoreline. And yeah, the center of downtown has virtually no trees. With that said, it does have some awesome parks with plenty of trees. I love Burlington.

How are the airport, seaport, and large swaths of traintracks around figure into these studies?

I had the same reaction. This is an odd statement:

Andrew Pershing, the director of climate science at Climate Central, said the results were somewhat unexpected.
"Anything with 'urban' in its name you're going to be surprised if New York City and Chicago and places like that don't rate pretty highly," Pershing said. "But I was certainly surprised to not see places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno on the list."

Why is that surprising? According to the study, "[the] index score for each city is a temperature representing the potential difference in average temperature for the city compared to its less developed surroundings." There's less of a contrast between those cities and the surrounding arid desert environments. It shouldn't be a surprise that comparing the small urban stamp of Burlington to its green VT surroundings will yield a bigger contrast.

More green space would be great, but we are pretty fortunate to have the Arboretum, Franklin Park / the Emerald Necklace, and other great spaces.

Tree cover isn't the only variable in these studies.

ACTUAL HEAT RETENTION is the biggie. That is based on satellite mapping on hot days/nights ground truthed with surface measurements.

Bend, OR has issues simply because it was a 15,000 person place when I was growing up that ballooned after 1995 to a 100,000 person place. There has literally been no time to grow tree cover. That, and trees grow slowly in areas where every other business is "High Desert ..."

Do read through the entire assessment - this isn't just about trees, it is about measured heat loading and contrasts.

If you are interested in participating in such a project, check out Wicked Hot Mystic, which is actively recruiting people to do those heat measurements in the next couple of months.

Also important to note: the most deaths happen when cities that have never seen lethal heat suddenly experience it for the first time - the 2018 Heatwave in Quebec is an absolute warning for Burlington, VT.

Malcolm X Park, Horatio Harris Park, the park in front of the African-American art museum, the old town common at John Eliot Square, Highland Park (Fort Hill), and of course Franklin Park.

A walk or bike ride down Walnut Avenue, one of Boston's less appreciated pretty streets, passes a number of these places.

I wonder whether that is part of what's creating such a strong contrast - read this again:

Neighborhoods with little tree cover, few grassy areas and a lot of concrete can be as much as 15 to 20 degrees hotter than the surrounding areas.

I long noticed the temperature drop on a hot night when biking into my area - and verified it once I had a car that measured outside temperature. 5 degree drop in a half mile.

But that doesn't make it any cooler in the neighborhoods where my sons moved to.

Nor does it fix the cherry red pavement nightmare of the high school.

MAPC has some good landsat data/photos where you can see what is going on; https://www.mapc.org/resource-library/extreme-heat/

Prevailing wind direction is blowing east.

But, again, anecdata << actual data. Check out the MAPC link - you can "see" the differences from space, and these are being ground-truthed through citizen science programs.

I’ll pass on to a friend who lives near the Mystic.