Hank Van Exel calls it "cow-killing weather."
"I hate saying that but at over 100 degrees, a little thing becomes a big thing in a hurry," Exel said.
*****
I remember a few years back when I was living in California, we had a string of 30 days with temps above 100 degrees before topping out at 115 and dairy cattle were dying like flies.
It's illegal to bury livestock in that area (hell, it might be for the entire state, I don't know) because the water table at the time was so low and they didn't want to contaminate it, so farmers had to have the tallow plants come pick up the dead animals. They'd put their dead cattle right outside the gates to the property and call the tallow plant for pickup.
Only problem was, the local tallow plant in South Modesto had shut down because they started building houses in the area and the fucking Bay Area Transplants started complaining about the stench, leaving only one tallow plant in the region, so they were seriously overwhelmed and pickups were delayed.
My commute was about 5 minutes of town driving, then another 40 minutes of country driving, past piles and piles of dead bloated cattle rotting in 100+ degree heat for days at a time. The stench was horrible.
It got so bad that the powers that be suspended the rule about not burying cattle.
Yeah, you read that right - people were moving into the area where the tallow plant was located and then complained about the smell, causing it to close.
You can't tell me they didn't smell it when they were looking for homes because that stench was flat out overpowering and lingered even when the plant wasn't actively rendering cattle.
But these were the same group of people that bought homes next to dairies for the 'country living' experience and then complained about and then sued over the flies and noise coming from those 24 hour a day 7 days a week operations.
It got so bad the County had to enact a Right To Farm ordinance just to stop the lawsuits.
