With records poised to fall, city folk flee heat if they can
PROMISED LAND, Pa. (AP) — It’s not exactly flowing with milk and honey — just ask the area’s struggling black bears — but Promised Land offered respite, Sunday, for city folks in the Northeast trying to escape a nearly weeklong hot spell that only threatened to intensify.
Those with the resources fled to pools, beaches and higher elevations like Promised Land State Park, at 1,800 feet in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains and a drive of about twoand-a-half hours from New York City and Philadelphia.
From the Pacific Northwest to the southern Great Plains to the heavily populated Interstate 95 corridor, more than 85 million Americans were under excessive heat warnings or heat advisories issued by the National Weather Service. The agency warned of “extremely oppressive” conditions from Washington to Boston.
Even in Promised Land, temperatures were forecast to soar above 90, but with shade from the forests, cool lake water and mountain breezes, it was more than tolerable, visitors said.
Rosa Chavez, 47, a high school teacher in Manhattan, applied sunscreen at a beach on Promised Land Lake. She and friend Arlene Rodriguez, who accompanied her, had just experienced Europe’s own heat wave while vacationing last week in Florence, Italy.
“The heat is following us,” said Rodriguez, 47, a real estate agent and property manager.
Numerous record highs were expected to be tied or broken in the Northeast, the weather service said.
Philadelphia was forecast to hit 100 degrees, Sunday, before even factoring in humidity. Newark, New Jersey, saw its fifth consecutive day of 100 degrees or higher, the longest such streak since records began, in 1931. Boston also hit 100 degrees, surpassing the previous daily record high of 98 degrees set, in 1933.
At least one heat-related death, in New York, has been reported. Around the region, athletic events were shortened or postponed.
Philadelphia officials extended a heat emergency, through Sunday, sending workers to check on homeless people and knock on the doors of other vulnerable residents. The city also opened cooling centers and stationed air-conditioned buses at four intersections for people to cool off.