NYC’s encore to a blackout: a heat wave

New York City isn’t the most pleasant place to be when the mercury soars toward three digits. Stifling subway platforms turn into virtual saunas, nauseating stenches can waft into the air on any block, and alreadyshort tempers can get shorter.

Usually in July and August, when heat waves are most likely, you’ll hear a 1966 song by The Lovin’ Spoonful frequently played over various media. (I would have said on the radio, but no one really listens to music on the radio anymore.) Hot town, summer in the city Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty Been down, isn’t it a pity Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half-dead

Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

With the National Weather Service forecasting that temperatures could pass 100°F (37.7°C) in New York this weekend, city dwellers are wary of experiencing another electrical power outage, or blackout, as they just did on July 13, which could compound the heat’s misery.

A downpour on Wednesday evening provided a respite to the week’s stifling temperatures. In fact, one of those subway saunas added a pool as rainwater gushed through a temporary wall at a Queens station.

Last Saturday, some 72,000 customers of the Consolidated Edison Co of New York, the local utility giant, lost power for about six hours.

Subways and elevators stopped in their tracks, and the show couldn’t go on at most Broadway theaters. A Jennifer Lopez concert at Madison Square Garden came to a halt mid-dance number.

With New Yorkers’ vaunted image of stepping up in a crisis, the blackout produced its share of impromptu heroes, such as the pedestrians who took it upon themselves to direct traffic with their smartphone flashlights, or in one case, a toy light saber.

But when a crisis strikes, there’s always plenty of blame and sarcasm to go around.

Mayor Bill de Blasio was out of town when the lights went out, campaigning in Iowa for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Governor Andrew Cuomo gladly stepped in to fill the media crisis-center void. Cuomo sent a not-so-veiled message to his fellow Democrat, saying he could “count on my fingers” how many times he has been out of the state in his eight years as governor.

This weekend, de Blasio will stay in the city.

“Friday is going to be bad. Saturday is going to be really, really bad,” de Blasio said of the heat in a video posted on social media on Thursday. “Take it seriously.”

“We expect that there could be service outages,” Consolidated Edison spokesman Mike Clendenin told WPIX-TV on Wednesday. “Those things happen during heat waves. Our crews are ready to respond. We are going to be prepared for this. It’s going to be intense.”

This week’s heat wave follows a report on Monday from US space agency NASA that last month was the world’s hottest June since record-keeping started in 1880.

Beijing experienced sizzling heat earlier this month, with a temperature of 42.9 degrees Celsius recorded on July 4 in the city’s Changping District.

This weekend in the New York area, the heat index (how hot it actually feels) is expected to range from 105 to 110 degrees.

The city’s Office of Emergency Management has already declared an emergency and opened 500 “cooling centers” on Wednesday.

It’s not only New York City feeling the heat.

A high-pressure system is stretching across the US from coast to coast, keeping temperatures elevated. What makes things more uncomfortable is the humidity, with moisture in the air coming from the Gulf of Mexico, much of it left over from Hurricane Barry.

The heat index could hit 110 (43.3) in Washington DC on Saturday and 109 (42.8) in Chicago and Detroit on Friday, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of Weather Underground.

As if the politics on Capitol Hill weren’t generating enough heat, Thursday marked DC’s eighth straight day with temperatures of at least 90 degrees, and that streak was expected to last for another four days. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this story.