During the summer, Levena Lindal closes the rooms, covers the windows with thick blackout curtains and budgets to manage the monthly electricity costs for the air conditioning.
Lindal, 37, who lives in the US state of North Carolina, said her monthly electricity bills were about $100 before the flight, but they have doubled.
About 70 percent of Americans surveyed say that last year's extreme heat affected their electricity bills, according to a survey conducted by the Associated Press agency and NORC - a public opinion research center.
As tens of millions of Americans go through another summer with the biggest heat waves in history, research results reveal how extreme heat is changing people's lives.
The survey found that about 70 percent of Americans have been personally affected by extreme hot weather or extreme heat waves in the past five years. That makes extreme heat a more common experience than other weather events or natural disasters like wildfires, major droughts and hurricanes, which up to one-third of American adults report being personally affected by.
A substantial share of Americans – about 40 percent – say the extreme heat has had at least a small impact on their sleep, pets or exercise routine.
Jim Graham (54), who lives in Phoenix, in the American state of Arizona, where the temperature exceeds 40 degrees Celsius, says that this year is warmer than usual. His one-story home has central air conditioning, and even setting the thermostat to a high of 27 degrees Celsius results in a $350 monthly electric bill, a huge jump from what he was paying a decade ago.
About 40 percent of Americans surveyed say they had unexpectedly high utility bills in the past year due to storms, floods, heat or fires.
Like Lindal, many see a connection to climate change. About 70 percent of Americans who have experienced some type of severe weather event or weather disaster in the past five years say they believe climate change contributed to it, and 30 percent think climate change is not the cause.
Last year, the Earth was an average of 1,48 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times, according to the European climate agency Copernicus.
Some might see this increase as insignificant, but temperatures vary unevenly across the planet and can be dangerous to human health.
Several regions in the United States of America (USA) set all-time temperature records this summer, and Las Vegas reached 7 degrees Celsius on July 48,9.
According to the survey, about ten percent of Americans say that extreme heat has had a big impact on their sleep in the past year, while 30 percent say it has had a minor impact and 55 percent say it has had no impact. Americans with lower incomes are more likely than those with higher incomes to report the impact of heat on their sleep.
Other aspects of daily life - work and commuting, choosing wedding dates and family or friend gatherings, travel and vacations are less disrupted. One quarter of Americans say their travel or vacation plans have been affected by extreme heat.
Even the simple act of being outside has become more difficult for some. The survey found that about 60 percent of Americans say extreme heat has affected their outdoor activities or their families.
The survey of 1.143 adults was conducted July 25-29 in NORC's "AmeriSpeak" panel sample, which is representative of the US population. The margin of error is plus or minus 4,1 percentage points.
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