If you have a dog (or cat) that you take on walks, you have probably heard that you have to be careful of burning their feet on a day that is very warm, since pavement can get hotter than the air. Here is a table that compares surface temperatures of grass, air, and various kinds of pavement on a day that measures 95 F air temperature. This was posted on Facebook by meteorologist Evan Andrews and shared by my friend Chris Robbins, who runs iWeatherNet.com. You can see from the table that with an air temperature of 95 F, blacktop can get as hot as 140 F, way too hot for pet feet (and bare human feet, too). By comparison, the temperature of grass in the shade is 105 F, which is cooler but still hotter than the air. I think this would be especially true if the grass was dry, but that was not measured. In the Southeast many cities see an average high of 95 F quite often in the summer, so this is a frequent occurrence. So if you walk your pets when it is hot outside, make sure that they are not walking on a hard surface so that they don’t burn their feet.
