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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: 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.