DAY 4: Desert Climate

Early Light & Hot Temperatures

Since Qatar doesn’t observe Daylight Savings Time and is on the eastern portion of its time zone, the day starts and ends much earlier than I am used to. By 5am, the sun zooms past the horizon and it is already bright enough that headlights are no longer needed. By 7am, the wind picks up and starts to stir the dust…it already feels like mid-day. By 9am, the temperatures skyrocket into the 100s. By 11am, the sun is directly overhead and scorches the skin and bakes the earth with 110F+ degrees. While many spots in the western U.S. periodically reach these high temperatures during a heat wave, the high temperatures here are consistently in the 110s with lows hovering around 90F. A memory from the past – on my tour in Kuwait during DESERT STORM, the summer temperatures reached up to 130F. I laugh when folks say “well, it’s dry heat!” Let me tell you, it doesn’t matter whether it’s dry or moist heat at that point – your skin is cooking!

Best Friends

With the intense conditions, I am constantly dealing with severe nose bleeds. My very best friend turns out to be a saline nasal spray that was provided to me by our flight doctor during my last tour in Afghanistan. Several squirts early in the morning and my nose is content for the rest of the day. My next best friend turns out to be moist towelettes. The Baltimore-Washington International Airport USO handed out free gift packets to all deploying members. Each packet contained a 20-towelette package that I’ve constantly used since then. The sand and dust does numbers to the face and skin and it is a nice refresher to clear the grime and sweat from even a simple walk around the base.

I find out that my expected flight is cancelled. Not much to do except to sleep and convert my body’s time clock over to Middle East time. Traveling east always proves difficult for me since my body clock loses time. It’s 10 hours ahead of the west coast and it takes me a couple of days to adjust. I find myself easily sleeping at all parts of the day just to recover and adjust.