NEW YORK — Parts of the eastern United States began sweltering through a forecast three-day heat wave on Tuesday with the mercury topping 100° F (38° C) in some areas and New York City electricity demand setting a new record.
The heat wave moved across the country from California, which suffered more than two weeks of triple-digit temperatures that killed at least 136 people and caused power failures.
Temperatures hit or hovered near 100 degrees Fahrenheit in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, with hotter weather forecast for Wednesday. Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago were sweating it out in equally stifling temperatures.
"It is miserably hot outside and hard on everyone," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters. "This is a very dangerous heatwave. It's really more than just uncomfortable, it can seriously threaten your lives."
The National Weather Service issued excessive heat warnings and said the heat index — how hot it feels when the humidity is combined with the air temperature — was due to hit 115° F (46° C) in New York on Wednesday.
"If people do not take precautions, we could be looking at a significant number of fatalities," said Gary Conte, the weather service's warning coordinator meteorologist, adding that New York City had not suffered such a string of high temperatures since July 1999.
"The forecasted temperatures and heat indices (in 1999) were pretty close to what we're looking at now. The impact from that event resulted in 43 deaths in New York City and New Jersey with rolling blackouts, buckled roads and so forth."
RECORDS BROKEN
The National Weather Service said more than 50 temperature records had been set in the central and western United States in the past two weeks.
"The persistence of the unusually hot temperatures has made the past month one of the warmest since records began in 1895 for the contiguous U.S.," it said.
Meteorologists are analyzing data to determine if July 2006 has surpassed July 1936 to become the hottest on record.
New York City has opened hundreds of air-conditioned "cooling centers" and extended hours at public swimming pools, while urging the public not to open fire hydrants.
"It's too hot. It's hard to work, but we have to suffer to make a living," said Tajdar Sayed, who has been selling fruit from a street stand near New York's Times Square for 15 years.
Electricity grid operators did not expect to have to impose rolling blackouts, aimed at preventing uncontrolled outages, due to any lack of generating capacity.
However, in some regions, power distribution cables could fail, like those that recently left 25,000 Con Edison customers in New York without power for up to a week.
ConEd said late on Tuesday it had set a new record for peak electricity usage, reaching 13,103 megawatts at 5 p.m., which topped the previous record of 13,059 MW set on July 27, 2005.
In 2003, the worst blackout in North American history left up to 50 million people in Ontario, Canada, and eight U.S. states in the dark.
Commonwealth Edison reported about 10,000 scattered outages on Tuesday across its Illinois territory, including 2,700 customers on the south side of Chicago, who lost power Monday when an underground cable failed, spokesman Tom Stevens said.
In El Paso, Texas, heavy rains temporarily broke the region's drought and turned streets into raging rivers that uprooted trees and carried away cars.
Additional reporting by Torrye Jones and Scott DiSavino in New York, Scott Malone and Svea Herbst in Boston, Eileen O'Grady and Jeff Franks in Houston
The New York City region began enduring what is expected to be at least two days of triple-digit temperatures starting today, with public officials urging people to conserve electricity as power usage exceeded the overall record.
The temperature was 100 degrees at La Guardia Airport at 4 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. At 5 p.m. today, electricity usage in Con Edison’s service area reached 13,103 megawatts, surpassing the record of 13,059 megawatts recorded at 5 p.m. on July 27, 2005. One megawatt powers about 1,000 homes.
The heat wave, which killed more than 130 people in California over the past two weeks, extended from the Midwest to the East Coast with no relief in sight until Friday.
There will be little respite from the fierce midday heat, with the nighttime temperatures expected to remain in the mid-80’s with few breezes. And a smog advisory has been issued, with officials advising people to avoid strenuous outdoor activity.
The temperature was already at 97 degrees in the early afternoon when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg held a news conference to discuss the weather and the city’s response.
“It is miserably hot out there,” he said at the Office of Emergency Management headquarters in Brooklyn. “This is a very dangerous heat wave.”
Nevertheless, he said rescue squads and hospitals have reported very few cases of heat-related illnesses. And he said power was on all across the city, with only a few small outages.
He said the city has an adequate supply of electricity but appealed for conservation to ease the strain on the distribution grid. It was the failure of part of that grid in Queens in July that plunged the northwest portion of the borough into sweltering darkness for up to a week.
Asked if he was confident that Con Ed would handle public information about another blackout better than in Queens, he replied “I’m confident we will ask a lot more questions.”
He noted that while the Queens outage inconvenienced thousands of people, no lives were lost and no serious injuries were reported. He and Emergency Management Commissioner Joseph F. Bruno said supplies of water and portable lights were loaded on trucks ready to respond in the event of power failures.
“These are dangerously high numbers and this heat can be fatal,” a National Weather Service forecaster said. “It is important that everyone respects the heat and exercises caution.”
Cooler temperatures are expected late on Thursday after another steamy day, but the Weather Service warned they are likely to be accompanied by thunderstorms that could become severe.
In Chicago, elderly residents of the city’s South Side were evacuated to hotels and the McCormick Place convention center after a power failure on Monday evening left an estimated 20,000 people without air conditioning.
Utility officials said the outage was caused by the failure of a cable and said they expected to restore power later today. In the meantime, air conditioned buses were sent to the area to serve as mobile cooling centers. Nine people were taken to hospitals for treatment of heat-related illnesses, but they were not considered serious.
New York was under a heat emergency declaration, and cooling centers and city pools were extending their hours of operation to provide relief for residents.
Con Edison advised consumers to shut off appliances when they are not being used and to set air conditioners no lower than 78 degrees to conserve power and hold down bills.
Mayor Bloomberg directed city employees to take measures to reduce power use, including turning off some lights in City Hall and those on the East River bridges and other city properties. The flood lights that illuminate the Empire State and Chrysler buildings at night will be turned off until temperatures drop, Mr. Bloomberg said.
Gov. George E. Pataki said admission fees at state park beaches would be waived today and tomorrow so residents could take a cooling dip.
Sewell Chan contributed reporting for this article.
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/us/01cnd-heat.html?ex=1154577600&en=6e071c1a8657e45a&ei=5087%0A 1aug2006
Showers and thunderstorms plagued the Great Lakes for much of the day Sunday, with the heaviest rain falling on Michigan, Wisconsin and western Pennsylvania.
Hail up to an inch across and damaging winds were reported. Power lines and trees were down throughout the region.
Storms also rumbled in the Southeast, with isolated severe thunderstorms near Birmingham, Ala., and St. Johns, Fla.
The Southwest saw widely scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms, mostly on the light side. Light rain fell in parts of the Pacific Northwest.
A heat wave continued across the Plains and parts of the Southeast. Fargo, N.D., hit 100 degrees, breaking a record of 98 that had stood since 1929. Pierre, S.D., reached 111, also a record.
Temperatures in the Lower 48 states ranged from 37 degrees at Meacham, Ore., to 111 degrees at Mobridge, S.D.
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/30/AR2006073000083_pf.html 1aug2006
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