80 degree swing

This week has been hot and sweltering. How hot? Hot enough that when I have taken off my shirt back in camp it has had salt stains all over it. I have been wet all over from about five minutes after work started until I get into the shower back in camp. When we have breaks and take off our fall arrest harnesses you can see where they were by the water trails left where the harness had been kind of like a shadow made of sweat. So suffice it to say that it has been bloody hot and bloody humid. This heat is a stark contrast to the extreme cold we had in the winter. Where it is 40+ now (the humidity brings it up from the basic 30ish temperature) it was -40 in the winter when windchill was factored in. That is some serious cold. When the temperature drops that low you can take a cup of boiling water and throw it into the air with none coming down to the ground. Instead it immediately turns to steam or fog. If you don't believe me there are videos that show this phenomenon posted on YouTube. When the weather is at the extreme ends of the thermostat safety and management run around making sure people don't over do it. We are repeatedly warned to drink lots of fluids and to spend time in the cool down shack. Oddly enough 4 months ago the same little but was known as the warm up shack! An 80 degree shift in weather does that. Here at Kearl they have an interesting test to judge how well hydrated you are. You are supposed to look at the colour of your pee and compare it to this chart they have. It ranges from clear to coffee coloured. If its clear you are good. The more yellow the more you need to drink some water. If its coffee coloured you should head for the hospital and quick! They hung the chart near the urinals in the bathroom and that had me wondering if you were supposed to pee on it for a good sample comparison? Probably not. It is a weird kind of test though. It is dusty today and majorly so. Hard to believe we had over 70mm of rain 2 days ago. Harder still to believe that yesterday, the day after the big deluge, that the ground had already dried and hardened to concrete quality. But this is Kearl and that's the weather. It is said that up here it is both the hottest and the coldest place in Canada. Based on today and what I have seen since January I would certainly agree with it in terms of the range of temperatures! Have a great day and stay hydrated, ok? :)