Soaring temps bring dangerous heat to South
Warnings issued as humidity exacerbates triple-digit highs
NEW ORLEANS — Scorching heat was spreading Friday across much of the South, where temperatures are expected to soar over 100 degrees and persist into next week.
The National Weather Service posted heat advisories and warnings from the New Mexico-Texas border eastward to parts of Alabama. Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, west Tennessee and parts of Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky were all under heat advisories or warnings Friday. In Texas, the nation’s largest prison system took the unprecedented step of allowing all inmates and staff unlimited access to cold water and opportunities to cool off in air-conditioned spaces.
“This one will be rather long-lasting in the areas it affects,” said David Hamrick, a forecaster at the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
The high temperatures will combine with high humidity, which could be lethal to some people, forecasters said. They were warning that children, older people, those without air conditioning and outdoor workers will be particularly at risk.
Highs Friday were expected to be 109 degrees in the Dallas and Oklahoma City metro areas; 111 degrees in parts of western Oklahoma; and 100 degrees in Shreveport, Louisiana.
With highs that hot, temperatures in many places were in the 80s during the pre-dawn hours Friday. In Dallas, for instance, the low temperature early Friday was 85 degrees, Hamrick said.
The heat wave has already broken records in Texas set more than 90 years ago.
“I have records all over the place,” said Bianca Villanueva, a National Weather Service forecaster in north Texas. “It looks like we’ll probably break most of the records that we have through the weekend.”
The high temperature in Texas on Thursday was 112 degrees in Wichita Falls, breaking a previous 111-degrees mark set in 1925 and also 1936. Wichita Falls is about 120 miles northwest of the Dallas area.
Villanueva says DallasFort Worth International Airport hit 108 degrees Thursday, breaking a previous record set in 1925. In central Texas, Waco also reached 108 degrees on Thursday, breaking the previous record set in 1951.
The heat wave prompted a federal agency to warn residents who were displaced by Hurricane Harvey and still living in government-provided mobile homes to make sure their air conditioning was working. More than 2,300 families displaced by Harvey were still living in mobile homes and travel trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, spokeswoman Lauren Hersh said Friday.
Harvey made landfall in South Texas last Aug. 25, leading to torrential rain that swamped parts of Houston and the BeaumontPort Arthur area of south Texas.