Before tragedy strikes in your family, remember that the interior of your car heats up quickly in hot weather!
“Your pets rely on you to keep them safe, and that includes remembering not to leave them in a car, even if the windows are cracked,” said Jean Letcher, manager of City of Tulsa Animal Welfare. “Every year heartbroken families discover that while running a simple errand, they made a decision that caused the death of their pet.”
Letcher and Tulsa Animal Welfare staff would like to remind Tulsa area residents that hot weather means hot car interiors. If your pet likes to ride in your car, remember NOT to leave him/her in the car alone, even for a short period of time.
“People are surprised to learn how quickly the interior of a car can heat up,” Letcher said. “A Stanford University study shows that even on comparatively cool days, such as 72 degrees, a car’s internal temperature will rocket to 116 degrees within 60 minutes. And in a closed vehicle, when the temperature outside is only 83, the interior can register a temperature of 109 degrees. That temperature continues to rise with the outside temperature, reaching a blistering 119 degrees inside the car when it is 101 outside.”
A chart that appears on the website, My Dog is Cool, provides three scenarios. The chart shows the outdoor temperature in relationship to the temperature inside a closed automobile, an automobile with four windows cracked open and an automobile with only two windows cracked open. Surprisingly, cracking a window does not make it significantly cooler inside a car. That enclosed space, essentially a metal box, heats up as quickly as an oven. The website’s chart also lists the temperature inside the car as registered by either an indoor/outdoor thermometer, or an oven thermometer. The chart provides hourly temperatures from about 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and provides a comparison between the different cracked window scenarios.
For instance, on Day 1, the outside temperature is 94 at 10:30 a.m. Inside the closed car, the indoor/outdoor thermometer reads 114 degrees. The oven thermometer reads 115. At noon on that same day, the outside temperature has reached 101 degrees. The indoor/outdoor thermometer reads 119 and the oven thermometer reads 127.
Day 2, the scenario with four windows cracked reveals that keeping the windows open hardly slows the temperature rise at all. At 10:30 a.m., the outside temperature is 90. The indoor/outdoor thermometer reads 108 and the oven thermometer reads 108. At noon on that same day, the outside temperature has reached 95. Now, the indoor/outdoor thermometer reads 113, and so does the oven thermometer.
These temperatures are life threatening to animals left for any length of time in a vehicle, whether or not the windows have been cracked open a few inches.
Remember, never leave your pet in the car during hot weather season. It can mean the difference between life and death!
Updated 06-23-2009
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