‘Feels like hell’ in South, Midwest heat

High humidity worsens thermometer readings

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Forecasters are warning about days of scorching, dangerous heat gripping a wide swath of the U.S. South and Midwest, where the heat index on Monday eclipsed 120 degrees in one town and climbed nearly that high in others.

With temperatures around 100 degrees at midday and “feels like” temperatures soaring even higher, parts of 13 states were under heat advisories, from Texas, Louisiana and Florida in the South to Missouri and Illinois in the Midwest, the National Weather Service reported.

“It feels like hell is what it feels like,” said Junae Brooks, who runs Junae’s Grocery in Holly Bluff, Mississippi. Around her, many of her customers kept cool with wet rags around their necks or straw hats.

Some of the most oppressive conditions were in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

The heat index soared to 121 degrees by late afternoon in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and to 119 degrees in West Memphis, Arkansas, the weather service reported. Similar readings were expected in eastern Oklahoma.

In Alabama, the temperature hit 100 degrees with a heat index of

106 degrees by mid-afternoon in Birmingham, the state’s largest city.

Heat exhaustion and heat stroke were the leading threats.

“You are more likely to develop a heat illness quicker in this type of weather, when it’s really humid and hot,” said Gary Chatelain, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Shreveport, Louisiana, where a wet summer contributed to high humidity.

More of the same is in store for Tuesday, when heat and humidity will again make for dangerous heat indexes over a wide area. However, an approaching cool front should help ease the intense heat by Wednesday in some areas, Chatelain said.

“If you’re going out in the summer, prepare for the worst,” he said.

In Alabama and Tennessee, high school football coaches were adjusting practice schedules Monday and Tuesday, with some moving the workouts indoors and others conducting training in the early morning or evening, The Tennessean reported.

Cooling stations were open in several cities, including Tulsa, Oklahoma; Memphis, Tennessee; and Little Rock, Arkansas, officials said.

Andrea Smith The Associated Press Kai Frazier and Chance Seawright, brothers visiting from Aiken, South Carolina, cool off Monday in the Fountain of Rings in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. A heat wave that has hit 13 states in the South and Midwest is projected to last for days.