So when...with no discussion and no input...our president invoked emergency powers to declare it was going to paint it a light powderpuff blue? I'd thought it was just going to be embarrassingly tacky, conferring all the dignity of a putt putt golf hazard in Ocean City.
But the cerulean he wanted first wasn't patriotic enough, and so what we got instead was a deep, dark blue, so blue it's almost black.
My second thought, having seen the images of the "New and Improved Pool," was that the color was far more elegant and way less tacky than I'd feared.
"American Flag Blue" now covers every inch of the seven acre concrete rectangle of the pool, which is now being filled. Millions of gallons of water will be poured into it to fill it, at a shallow depth of 18 to 30 inches. It will look striking. Very very dark, but striking. From my own subjective aesthetic standpoint, I think it's going to be attractive.
But that was my second thought.
My first thought was: Wow, that's going to get hot.
Very hot.
If you paint a surface a dark color, solar energy isn't reflected, but absorbed. If you then cover that surface with a shallow layer of water, the combination is going to act as a heat sink. It'd be like making a baby pool out of asphalt. The water is shallow enough that it doesn't cool, but absorbs energy all the way down, and then continues to heat up. That's the exact principle of any garden variety rooftop solar water heater.
That, in effect, is what the Reflecting Pool has become. A seven acre open-faced solar water heater.
This will have two effects. First, radiant heat will make the ambient temperature around the pool considerably higher, possibly as much as 10 to 20 degrees warmer on a hot day. Second, at the height of summer that heated water will evaporate far, far faster than previously, shedding as much as an additional 100,000 gallons a day in evaporative loss. On a day with still or modest breezes, that will supercharge the humidity right around the Pool, pushing the hyperlocal wet-bulb temperature to dangerous levels.
Meaning, simply, that on days exceeding 90 degrees, the human beings who spend considerable time around the Reflecting Pool and the nearby Memorials will be hotter, and it'll be so much more humid that the air won't take up more moisture. Sweating won't cool them off, and shade won't help.
It's likely to mean more heat-related illness for anyone who spends any significant time around it on a hot summer day.
Particularly on the Fourth of July. Especially on the Fourth of July. The Mall typically sees four hundred thousand visitors that day, folks who settle in and linger for hours to wait for fireworks. On a typical Fourth, that won't be too big a deal, because temps usually are in the 80s. People will just be a little more uncomfortable, and the pool will be like bathwater.
But if the temperature is in the mid to upper 90s with clear skies, especially if that's been the case for several days? You couldn't design a more effective heat-stroke hazard if you tried.
Here's hoping I'm very wrong. And if not, that the Park Service and local hospitals are prepared, or that the 4th is unseasonably cool with high clouds.
Because what an absurd emergency that would be.
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