Bet ya didn't know...

You know what the number one weather killer is in this country??
Nope not tornadoes, and if you said flash floods or Lightning you get a C-. They are number two and three.

It's heat waves.

Interesting thing about heat waves, sometimes it is hard to know if a fatality is a direct result of the heat or a contributing factor. That issue came up during the heat wave in Chicago a few years back. I went through the worst heat wave on record in the plains back in 1980. Somewhere is a tape of me doing the weather outside and it is 113 degrees F.

How bad was it??

One afternoon, we saw a cloud in the sky and everyone ran outside the station to look at it. It was the first cloud we had seen in the sky in weeks.

I had no AC in my car that summer. So when the temp. dropped below 100 degrees, (usually around 10 pm) I would soak a large towel in cold water. Drape it over my head and go to the car. By the time I drove the 35 miles from NW Oklahoma City South to Norman, the towel was completely dry.

Studies have shown that it is not the daytime heat that is the problem.
It's the night time lows.

When the lows at night stay above 80 degrees, the heat related ER admissions sky rocket. If the dew point is high the moisture reradiates the heat back down to the ground and temps. cool only slightly at night. So moisture in the air makes the heat more uncomfortable in the daytime and more deadly at night. Big cities make the heat worse as well because of the heat island effect.

The heat that summer made a lot of people sick. Including me. I make no secret on air of the fact that I hate the heat...now you know why!

I am sooner born and sooner bred, and when I die, I'll be sooner dead..
but I will never spend another Summer in Oklahoma in heat like that!

Later,
Dan