Hot Enough To...

So, how hot is it in Utah this week?
Well, thanks to the amazing efforts of our firefighting crews, we are now down to just EIGHT wildfires in the state.  (I'm not being sarcastic here.  The firefighters are amazing.  The idiots who are still shooting fireworks and shooting bullets at targets in these tinderbox conditions ought to be made to fight the fires they start.)
We haven't had a drop of rain in well over a month now, and the temperature has been reaching the mid-nineties for days on end.
It's hot, smoky, and completely miserable.  Sleeping in weather like this is darn-nigh impossible.
But just how hot and dry is it?
Let me give you some perspective, for those of you who don't live in a desert.
Summer for school teachers is the time to do all those unpleasant tasks that build up during the year.  And today I decided to scrub down the bathroom blinds, as they get grosser than any of the blinds in the house because dust sticks to them when they're moist and can't be shaken off later.  I had bath towels destined for the wash, so I put one of them down in the bathtub so I wouldn't scratch the porcelain with the blinds as I scrubbed them.  I then put an inch or so of soapy water in the tub, scrubbed the blinds, drained, put it clean water, rinsed them, shook them out a bit, and took them outside to finish drying.  That left me with a SOAKING wet, thick, heavy bath towel in the tub. I didn't even wring it out, I just scooped it into a bucket and took it outside also, as I wasn't ready to do that load of wash yet.
I spread the soaked towel over some dry grass and left it.
One hour later, yes, ONE hour later, the bath towel was completely dry except for one corner fold which was slightly damp.
That's how hot and dry Salt Lake City is today people, hot enough to cook a soaked towel into a flat board in one hour.