Dateline: Fort Morgan, Alabama. The Heat Is On.

Living in the South, you come to expect certain things: Being the butt of jokes fashioned by highbrow types in cultural hotspots such as Hoboken, New Jersey; an unrealistic sense of fresh, new hope with the dawn of each Fall’s college football season; and the heat. Oh God, the freakin’ heat. But where the temperature’s concerned, there’s something amiss on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. Something that goes far beyond just your normal, everyday tropical heat.

See, a week on vacation at the southernmost tip of Alabama looks good enough on paper. I mean, it’s an idyllic setting along some of the most picturesque, unspoiled beaches in the civilized world. And in August, you know it’ll be plenty warm. But what the websites and travel brochures fail to mention to potential visitors is that it’s also located very close to a heretofore undiscovered opening in the Earth’s crust that leads directly to its molten core. There’s no other explanation for the ungodly temperatures this place endures.

A simple trip out to lunch provides all the proof necessary:


Beer not only sweats, but the bottles actually liquefy and eventually fuse to the tables.


The heat rises so violently that it’s literally pulled the shirts from several patrons and pinned them to the ceiling! Shirley Temples are powerless.


Desperately chugging an icy soda while an order of sautéed crab claws becomes an order of fried crab claws right before our very eyes!


People stupid enough to dally outside are prone to spontaneous combustion so extreme that even the little green globules are eradicated from the seats.


Hey look up there. The sun melted.


Not sure which is worse, the boiling pool or the blast furnace breeze, kids face a unique dilemma.