Residents of Moscow and 14 regions in Central, Southern Russia and the Urals will remember this summer for long. The weatherman promises that temperatures of +32 to +40 degrees Celsius will be with us till at least mid-August. As for Moscow, it’s +35 in the shadow and +30 degrees or so even underground in the Metro.
The cloudless blue sky does not seem as attractive as it should be in the midday heat. Weather reports promise the long almost cloudless heat wave with very rare drizzling rains. Asphalt melts under the wheels of the cars, making driving a torture. The silver lining is the traffic jams are thinner. Air conditioners in many offices are losing out on the weather. The predicted temperature rises to +40 for such long spells of heat are something unbelievable in the city.
According to the regulations of the State Sanitary and Epidemic Inspection, work in offices at +30 should last just 5 hours, each new degree shortening the working day by 60 minutes up to +32.5 when it is not a working day any longer but one working hour, as official documents set out. In reality there’s no stopping work in many industrial and non-industrial companies and enterprises. Deputy General Director of the HydromMeteorology Centre Galina Maksimova said that this July absolute records for summer temperatures in Moscow are expected to be broken:
“The history of our instrumental observations shows that the July temperatures in Moscow have never risen about +36.8,” said Galina Maksimova.
Meanwhile, along with the weatherman, scientists predict the growth of solar activity in the coming two weeks or so. And that’s another health hazard.
Russia’s Chief Sanitary Physician Gennadi Onischenko has came up with a suggestion that managers and employers change the working frameworks, introducing – can you imagine? - the siesta for 3 hours in the middle of the day!
There’s nothing new to such a practice, nothing original. Siesta is widely practiced in many southern countries, so we recommend trying it out in Russia, in our climatic zone, which can be worthwhile.
The survey of 1,000 managers carried out in Moscow last Monday showed that not more than 2% of them have re-viewed their employees’ working regimes, with another 4% planning to try it too. The measure may work or it may not work - from the standpoint of crisis-caused unemployment, risks of losing jobs make people defy the heat rather than complain. A compromise, you know.
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