wait as a passenger until 3 am for the temperature to drop enough
Not uncommon.
I can recall a track trip on the Friendly where we blew a water-meth hose at Tennant. MEL sent up a ginger beer to fix the bit but there we were with nil stocks of water. Departed dry at around 0-dark-30 to get a temperature just low enough to scrape over the end of the strip. They were fun days on the Fokker.
On another occasion, on the B727 freighter after a week of 40+ at PER, we had to delay the evening flight back to MEL until a lot later than scheduled for the same reason.