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Heat Wave to Hit Two-Thirds of the U.S. Here’s What to Expect.
Dangerously hot temperatures are expected to spread across the Central and Eastern United States on Wednesday through the weekend, with temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the hardest-hit places, the National Weather Service has warned.
And even when the sun dips below the horizon, temperatures in many places are expected to remain in the 80s.
The hottest part of the country? Smack dab in the middle.
Everyone living in the region stretching from northern Oklahoma and central Nebraska through Iowa, Missouri and western Illinois should brace for a “prolonged period of dangerously hot temperatures and high humidity,” the warnings say. People in central and south central Kansas should expect to endure highs of about 102 degrees; the temperature in Des Moines was expected to hover around 100.
Excessive heat warnings have also been posted farther east, for parts of New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania.
All told, at least 15 million people across the United States are currently being warned of dangerously high temperatures that could affect human health between Wednesday and Friday.
By the weekend, what meteorologists are calling a “heat dome” in the middle part of the country is expected to spread into the Great Lakes and the East Coast.
Extreme heat can kill. Here’s what you can do to stay safe.
“The combination of heat and humidity can take its toll on someone who is outside and overdoing it,” said Richard Bann, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center. “It can be life-threatening.”
Last year, 108 people died from extreme heat, compared to just 30 who died from cold, according to statistics on weather-related fatalities released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Here are four safety recommendations from the National Weather Service:
Drink plenty of fluids.
Stay in an air-conditioned room.
Stay out of the sun.
Check on relatives and neighbors, especially the elderly.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 18 2019, @10:39AM (25 children)
This is not an especially bad heat wave for Oklahoma. It's in fact a rather cool summer out there. I've seen years where it didn't drop below 95F even at night for over a month. The highs of 115+ made you appreciate the 90s a lot more though. Okay, no, you didn't really appreciate them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 18 2019, @12:07PM (18 children)
Y'all are moisture challenged. Down South, when it gets much over 100F that triggers the thunderstorms which cool things off a bit.
You need to get you some Gulf of Mexico breeze, then un-drain your swamps to keep the moisture around.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 18 2019, @12:36PM (10 children)
Well, OK ain't a desert but it ain't as humid as where I live in TN now either. The reason it never got down below 95F that month is the vegetation held the heat too well. Doesn't happen like that in proper deserts.
Tangent: Don't pay any attention to the "heat index". It's completely worthless. 115F in OK is far more tolerable than 95F in TN. When it gets that hot in OK your sweat evaporates and cools you down. When it gets that hot in TN you just get wet as well as hot; no cooling effect.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 18 2019, @12:43PM (4 children)
The thing I've found to be most uncomfortable is when the dew point is above the current temperature, as will happen in the mornings especially in places like the Florida Keys. It's only 78F, but not only can't you cool by sweating, the air has condensed on everything around you, and the dew is maintaining that 101% humidity. After the sun bakes things a bit it actually becomes, relatively, bearable.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 18 2019, @12:50PM (2 children)
Right there with ya. It was ~90F yesterday at 2pm here in TN and there was still dew on the ground.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 18 2019, @01:32PM
I can feel the sticky air in my lungs...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 19 2019, @02:44AM
I am reminded why for my Southern Sabbatical, I moved to the SoCal desert and not to Tennessee. (Apparently I only live in extreme climates.)
And those of us who have lived in real heat without air conditioning are just croggled by how easily some folks melt.
Can't wait to hear the equally dire warnings when the next rough winter comes along...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday July 18 2019, @03:05PM
I used to live and work in the Southeast. Mornings like that would be the worst. Temperature was often only in the mid-70s, but by the time I parked and walked 1/3 to 1/2 mile to the building I actually worked in, my shirt was often drenched. I took to keeping a couple shirts in my office so I could change right away and not look awful. A few hours later, I could walk outside for a while and be somewhat okay, even with the higher temperature -- because something would actually evaporate.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:26PM (4 children)
I've lived in Phoenix for the last 30 years, I've ridden my motorcycle around at 122F / 50C (n.b. a leather jacket helps you feel cooler at those temperatures compared with no jacket) and I'll tell you that the hottest day I ever experienced was on a trip to Houston in July. Parked in a covered parking garage, and wasn't sure I was going to make it the 100 yards to the door of the building. How people swim through air at that temperature and stay alive is something that I'll never understand.
(Score: 3, Touché) by krishnoid on Thursday July 18 2019, @08:36PM
Adaptation, man [youtu.be].
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 19 2019, @02:52AM (2 children)
Yeah, I'd like to know the physics of this.. only experienced it on a hot day in Reno, where the wind was blowing like a bitch, but it FELT significantly cooler OUT of the wind. Kinda like your leather jacket when biking at 122F.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Friday July 19 2019, @05:20AM (1 child)
In my experience, above about 110 or so the heat gain from all the hot air going past your body is more than the cooling you get from sweat evaporation. Not quite the same in still air, but quite noticeable at 45 mph. Putting on the jacket vastly reduces the amount of hot air interacting with your skin - so you don't gain as much heat, and sweat evaporation can keep up. Don't think I'd want to try it with a tight-fitting jacket, though.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 19 2019, @07:40AM
I'd also thought it must have something to do with evaporation rate vs heat. But I never experienced this weird phenomenon at all in the SoCal desert (lived there 28 years), which gets considerably hotter than Reno, and if anything is more windy, but may not be quite as dry.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:39PM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 18 2019, @04:50PM (5 children)
But, don't the blizzards make up for it? I almost never see snow, much less a blizzard - they look like fun ;-)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:49PM
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Thursday July 18 2019, @05:56PM
Well, here in MN we are known for the cold in winter, but during summer 90's are common and we reach 100+ a few times a year. Usually we get high humidity along with those temps, which generally gives rise to afternoon thunderstorms. Generally the hot days don't go on for a long stretch like down south. This year has been particularly wet.
Gotta love the continental climate; 100+ in summer, -30 or lower in winter.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 19 2019, @07:42AM (2 children)
Oh good -- I've just found a volunteer to shovel out my driveway! :D
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday July 19 2019, @11:26AM (1 child)
The exact reason my classmate moved back from Boston after 18 months working there...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 19 2019, @02:46PM
Hah, that's just baby blizzards. If you want to see REAL blizzards, where you're digging out of 12 foot drifts, come to the Great Plains!
Wyoming's "Storm of the Century" documentary, suitable for frightening southerners:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl6Iz4dXGdg [youtube.com]
I found weather maps of the storm, and pretty clearly it was in fact a mega-hurricane, but over land rather than ocean. (And small potatoes. Siberia has these every winter, only bigger.... last year one Russian city out in the backbeyond had snow up to the 3rd floor windows.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 18 2019, @03:48PM
My first year in Arkansas was like that. It stayed over 100 for almost three freaking WEEKS. Night time lows were around 95, like you say. I kept checking the map, to see if I made a wrong turn, and went to hell instead of Arkansas.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 18 2019, @08:46PM (4 children)
What year was that? I'm genuinely curious what year you remember that happening and what the nearest NWS station or major municipality is. Because the NCDC records for the highest lows ever recorded for Oklahoma City are nowhere near 95F. They have only exceeded 80F a couple dozen times in July and August, ever. And they have never exceeded 85F since records began in the 1800s. If you'd rather not, I can check the data for all stations and records in Oklahoma, but I'd have to wait for processing time for all that data.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 19 2019, @03:08AM (3 children)
I experienced a night in Billings Montana in 1976 when the overnight low, according one of the radio stations, never got below 103F. (And it sure felt like it, too.) Yet when I checked the records, I found highest lows nowhere near that... but the records are from up at the airport, 418 feet higher than the city proper -- and a completely different microclimate than down below the rimrocks, let alone near the river. Probably was in a spot where the day's hot air never dissipated.
Where I live now, my front yard and back yard have different microclimates, sometimes to a rather astonishing degree. Matter of air that passed over the river and slid over the hill vs air that passed over the highway and yonder flats, which apparently clash right at my house. Many a time I've looked out the front door, dressed for the obvious weather, then went out back to the barn and found myself dressed entirely inappropriately for the wtf??-weather. (Yes, I did finally learn to look out the back door instead. :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @04:33AM
I know how all that stuff (oasis effect, heat islands, reservoirs, etc.) works. I also know how the models work, and imputation and interpolation work, and the mesonets. I also know that many random yahoos don't measure meteorological and climatological effects properly, like a radio station or bank not using a good shade temp. And, I know that peoples memory tends to exaggerate or confabulate over time, even when malice is absent. I'm interested in the actual truth. Hence, my willingness to see and analyze the actual data.
In addition, I am also willing to admit any mistakes I made. Like the one where I said the lows in Oklahoma City never exceeded 85, which was wrong as I data I thought was a proper model output was instead raw from a single station in Norman, OK (SE side of town). With a low-resolution local-effects model, a fast microclimate model and the metro data, the warmest daily low temp. for Oklahoma City, if you take the top of the confidence interval as the actual value, was just under 88 and that was a single day in 2012 just south of Lake Hefner on the NW side of the metro area, although the Downtown area got close. But, that is still a bit away from 95 degrees, but I haven't gotten the low-priority computer time to analyze the whole state, use a higher-resolution local-effects model, or a better microclimate model.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @06:15AM (1 child)
Also, that is almost 30 degrees warmer than the record temp (76) that BYZ posted here [weather.gov]. Even unadjusted that is far beyond most major microclimate considerations that I have a hard time believe it was anywhere close to that in actuality. Heat index, maybe; but not air temp.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday July 19 2019, @08:07AM
Yeah, that's the page I was looking at. And yeah, who knows how accurate a private station was. But I've become a little suspicious of some official records, too. When I lived near Belgrade during the hard winters of the 1970s, me and my neighbors would often note dawn readings around -60F, even tho the official record at Gallatin Field never got that low. And the official frost line is something like 35", but pipes froze down past six feet every January.
I'm about 15 miles down the road from Billings (near Laurel) now, and the highest overnight temp I've seen here was about 83 (I'm in a little banana belt, we don't get quite the swings they do up at the airport). But at night I can easily have a 15 degree gradient between my front yard and the hill behind my house. And it may be blowing 40mph right across the road yet be calm in my yard. It's really quite bizarre. :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.