It’s been hot out. You may have heard. It broke the record.
But how hot is it?
If you ask the National Weather Service, they will tell you it hit 96 in Boston Thursday because they work in numbers.
That’s one way to look at the question. The other way is as the setup to a punchline.
At the New England Aquarium, it was so hot that the seals outside got fishicles, which are just what they sound like. Officials there also reported that their penguins were considering taking off their tuxedos.
It was so hot at Fenway that Dave Mellor, the Red Sox groundskeeper, said he could probably fry enough eggs on the Green Monster to feed the entire city. Not possible, mathematically, but he could probably fry enough for everyone in the stadium.
At Brookline Ice Co., Anthony Botta, the chief executive, said they were about to become a water company and were changing their Facebook status to “Wet.” Also, he was dismayed by something that happened during the heat blaze: one of their trucks was towed making a delivery, to Starbucks. “That’s never happened before,” he said. “Who tows an ice truck on a record heat wave day?”
It was so hot that four Boston Pedicab drivers parked their bikes, jumped in the harbor from the end of Long Wharf, then got dressed in the Rings Fountain on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. None of them had ever been in the harbor before.
It was so hot that Katie Pallotta and Patrick Stevens, who were handing out free ice cream samples, had each received a marriage proposal.
Dina Rudick/Globe Staff
Dan St. Cyr tried to beat the heat while landscaping the Berkeley Community Garden in Boston's South End.
It was so hot that people were complaining about the Christmas carols playing in a store in Faneuil Hall, even though the store is called Christmas in Boston.
It was so hot that Nia Lamrock of Dorchester was walking through the Financial District with a squirt gun asking people in suits if they wanted to be shot. They did.
At Castle Island, it was so hot that there was no one in line at Sullivan’s at 1 p.m. Unprecedented on a sunny day. Just up the walk, several hundred kids were in the water. Exactly zero were in the playground.
It was so hot that Boston Duck Tours said its boats were molting.
It was so hot that kids were jumping off the top of the bridge that people in Charlestown call the North End Bridge and people in the North End call the Charlestown Bridge. The kids were wearing sneakers to jump, swim, and run through Constitution Marina when the police were called.
Just up the road at H.P. Hood, they said it was so hot they were drinking Hoodsie cups with a straw.
At the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory in Milton, it was so hot that feet were getting stuck in the tar outside and the air conditioner had blown.
And it was so hot that their thermometers, which have been recording temperatures since 1885, had never gone higher on the 21st of June.