Heat lingers across US as officials urge caution and power conservation
Sweltering temperatures are lingering in a large swath of the central US, causing misery from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes.
Record high temperatures were recorded on Sunday in Texas and other states. People were told to chug extra water while mowing lawns or exercising outdoors, and to check on neighbors to ensure air conditioning is available. The extreme heat prompted Texas’s electric power grid manager to ask residents to voluntarily conserve power for three hours on Sunday night.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area was prepared to reach 110F (43.3C) on Sunday after hitting 108F (42.2C) on Saturday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Sarah Barnes. The record high for those dates was 107F (41.7C), set in 2011.
The area is not cooling off enough at night, Barnes said.
“That’s really going to contribute to an increased risk of heat-related illnesses,” Barnes said on Sunday. “That’s the main concern when it comes to people and the heat.”
The electric reliability council of Texas (Ercot) on Sunday asked the state’s 30 million residents to voluntarily reduce power use from 7pm to 10pm central daylight time because of “extreme temperatures, continued high demand and unexpected loss of thermal generation”.
Ercot’s request for voluntary power conservation was the second such plea in the past three days. The agency said it was not in emergency operations. Many residents still view the power grid nervously more than two and a half years after a deadly winter blackout.
Meanwhile, parts of Texas’s Gulf coast were also put under a warning for what could be a tropical storm forecast to move ashore on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, other state officials were urging caution during this latest heatwave.
“These high temperatures can [affect] our friends, families, and neighbors who may live alone, especially if they limit their use of air conditioning,” Sarah Russell, commissioner for the emergency management agency in St Louis, Missouri, said in a statement. “We urge everyone to stop and visit loved ones to ensure they are healthy and well during this extreme heat.”
The heatwave causing misery is just the latest to punish the US this year.
Scientists have long warned that climate change, driven by the burn
ing of fossil fuels, by deforestation and by certain agricultural practices, will lead to more and prolonged bouts of extreme weather, including hotter temperatures.
The entire globe has simmered to record heat in both June and July. And if that’s not enough, smoke from wildfires, floods and droughts have caused problems globally.
The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning on Sunday for parts of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska. Heat advisories or watches were also in place in parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports just 600 to 700 heat deaths annually in the United States.
But experts say the mishmash of ways that more than 3,000 counties calculate heat deaths means the public doesn’t really know how many people die from heat in the US each year.