*%@!&?! Hot

Brendan Buhler with a weather story (thanks, Richard): It's hot. Very hot, darn hot, eye-stinging hot. One hundred sixteen degrees hot. So hot sweat evaporates before it soaks through clothes, a hot that's both a temperature and a judgment, the pillar of salt kind - just unbelievably hot.

Hot hot.

But really, how hot is that?

Hot enough to send a reporter to the airport to witness people getting their first taste of The Hot and ask them how it makes them feel.

"And you just heard me say I can't breathe?" says Ashley Columbo of San Diego, standing at the baggage claim exit. She is a bridesmaid in town for one of those 7/7/07 weddings. A fellow bridesmaid, Kimberly Wold, is hanging back inside, in the air conditioning. Both of them have tropical-like drinks in their hands already, heavily iced and almost empty.