Zoey Choi (10) tugged at her shirt collar in the sticky heat. She much preferred lounging in her air-conditioned bedroom with a book in hand. Many San Diegans relish the hot weather, but others, like Choi, prefer to stay cool.

“On summer days I like to stay inside and read, go to the mall, or go to the beach because they are less hot places to be,” Choi said.

Finding fun activities and cool places to visit provides more than entertainment and relief, though. In many areas prone to heatwaves, blackouts can be common due to the overuse of electricity. 

“Some people do excessively run their AC in order to cool down, which can be irresponsible because that can cost a lot of money and waste electricity,” Choi said.

Even students who prefer hot weather, like Joshua Yang (10), find certain inconveniences in the high temperatures. 

“The heat makes it harder for me to sleep at night,” Yang said. “That means being kept up on hot, stuffy nights.”

But the heat poses a greater threat than just stifling your sleep schedule.

“Excessive heat makes wildfires more likely to happen, which I’ve seen in the past. Last year and in 2014, the wildfires would create a thick smoke that would cover the sky, making the bright sun into a small red dot, and making San Diego’s crisp ocean air into a thick smog,” Yang said.

In addition to the threat of wildfires, many homes in San Diego do not have air conditioning, making it difficult for families to find affordable ways to stay cool. A study in 2018 found that only 10.8 percent of homes sold in San Diego in the past year had central air conditioning.

“Not having air conditioning with this extreme heat is probably really hard because in the hottest parts of the day it can get up to the 90’s and that’s just miserable,” Choi said. 

It’s one thing to take a trip to the pool to escape the heat, but cooling off your house without an AC is another. According to Choi, it’s important to find cheap and sustainable methods to keep cool instead of running the air conditioning all day. “Responsible things that people can do are using shade and fans to one’s benefit to cool a home, rather than irresponsibly blasting the AC, which wastes both money and energy,” Yang said.