Extreme heat wave spreads across U.S.
Visitors get much needed relief from a water sprinkler set up at the National Mall near the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C., Saturday, July 7, 2012. The heat gripping much of the country is set to peak Saturday in many places, including some Northeast cities, where temperatures close to or surpassing 100 degrees are expected. / AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
Last Updated 3:28 p.m. ET
(AP) PHILADELPHIA - Highways buckled across the country, the waters of Lake Michigan were unusually warm for this time of year and even a minor train derailment outside Washington was blamed on heat as the hot weather gripping much of the country only worsened Saturday.
Temperatures of more than 100 degrees were forecast in Philadelphia and excessive heat warnings were issued for several states in the Midwest as the days of smothering heat piled on, accompanied by severe storms that have knocked out power in spots from Michigan to the East Coast.
Most notable was last weekend's sudden and severe storm that drenched the mid-Atlantic region, where thousands remained without electricity a week later.
At least 24 deaths have been blamed on the heat and several others on the weather or a combination of the two. Hundreds of thousands remained without power Saturday, mostly in West Virginia, Ohio and Michigan.
Heat that just won't quit a threat on many fronts
Midwest heat wave unwavering, moving east
Chicago melts in heat wave of triple-digit temps
Many Easterners still without power boiling mad in heat wave
A map of projected high temperatures for the United States as a heat wave swamps much of the nation Saturday, July 7, 2012. The National Weather Service says heat warnings and advisories will be continued or expanded Saturday, with the heat largely centered over Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic states.
/ NOAAThat was the plan for 60-year-old Roger Sinclair of Batavia, Ill., who was headed home Saturday from Detroit, where he'd spent a few days visiting an old friend and catching Friday night's Tigers game.
While he enjoyed the game, a 4-2 Tigers win, the conditions were less than ideal.
"It was 97 at the first pitch and still in the 80s at the time of the last out," he said. "It was tough. There was no breeze."
Before heading home, though, Sinclair wanted to see a Great Lakes ore carrier make its way through the city's waterways. So, he tracked one down the Detroit River, driving ahead of it and parking on Belle Isle, which sits in the middle of the river between the city and Windsor, Ontario.
Sinclair, standing along the riverbank and shielding his eyes from the sun, watched the Algomarine slowly head west.
"You just don't see this in Chicago," said Sinclair, a dispatcher at a plumbing company's call center.
As the vessel traveled out of sight, he walked to his car.
"This is how I've dealt with it the last couple of days," he said. "A lot of time in the car."
At New York City's Penn Station, the air conditioning was falling short of full capacity. Amtrak officials have said for weeks that they've been trying to adjust it. The doors were left wide open at a half dozen locations around the two-block-wide underground station.
"It's so hot I feel like I want to faint," said Betty De la Rosa, 19, of the Bronx, who was working at a station doughnut shop.
Record temperatures were set in several places, including Indianapolis, Washington and Milwaukee. In central Arkansas, Russellville reached 106 degrees Friday, breaking a record set in 1964.
The heat was also blamed for at least 24 deaths.
Nine people in Maryland have died of heat-related causes in recent days, the state said. Authorities in Chicago said heat was a factor in six deaths there, mostly among older people. Three deaths in Wisconsin, two in Tennessee and one in Pennsylvania were also reported to be heat-related.
In Ohio, a man in his 70s and two women — one in her late 60s, the other in her 80s — were found dead this week, said Dr. Jeff Lee, a deputy county coroner in the central part of the state. He said all three were suffering from heart disease but died from stress caused by high temperatures in their houses. Temperatures inside were stifling, recorded in the 90s in two cases, with windows shut and no ventilation. The houses lacked electricity because of recent power outages.
"If they had gotten cooling, we would have expected them to survive," he said.
Relief was on the way in the form of a cold front as the weekend ends, but forecasters expected it to bring more severe weather, too.
The rain should help dry spells in many places. Much of Arkansas is enduring brown grass and seeing trees lose their green, and farmers in Ohio are growing concerned about the dry conditions, considered among the worst of the past decade.
In Chicago, perspiration beaded on the face of street magician Jeremy Pitt-Payne, whose black top hat and Union Jack leather vest weighed heavily as he waited to board a Chicago River water taxi that would take him to his sidewalk stage downtown.
"This is part of the character. I'm a magician from Britain," Pitt-Payne said in a British accent. "I may lose the vest by the end of the day."
Pitt-Payne has worked throughout Chicago's three-day stretch of triple-digit temperatures. His shows have been shorter and crowds have dwindled from his usual of 50 to about 20 people.
His trick for beating the heat? He starts his shows at about 2 p.m. "when the Trump Tower is gracious enough to block out the sun" along his stretch of sidewalk. "That's when I start."
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When the ice sheets and glaciers started to recede about 15,000 years ago, more of the sun's energy was absorbed by the land, and more importantly...the water. As the water warmed, it kick-started the convection current...bringing warm water northward and cold water southward, accelerating the melting process.
The warmer it is, the faster it gets warmer. Thermal dynamics.
Consider the million-mile diameter nuclear blast furnace just across the street. Its energy isn't constant. It ebbs and flows, also in cycles.
Water is an efficient gas sink. The colder it is, the more efficiently it holds onto various gases...and there's a lot of carbon dioxide gas contained in the oceans. As the water warmed, it started releasing those gases at a faster rate...and the warmer it gets, the faster it releases it. This is why water boils when it's heated, and it's why an opened soft drink goes flat in a couple of hours when left at room temperature, but when refigerated will hold most of its "fizz" overnight.
Carbon dioxide isn't the killer anyway. Sulfur Dioxide is a much more efficient greenhouse gas, and so is water vapor...which is also much more abundant with warming oceans.
Consider also that in one single eruption, Mount St. Helens released more toxic gases and other crud into the atmosphere than we have in the last 50 years...and St. Helens was a popcorn poot compared to monsters like Krakatoa and Vesuvius. As we read this, there are no fewer than 20 volcanic eruptions that have been ongoing for years.
Man, in his arrogance, really believes that he can "do something" about a natural geologic event that takes tens of thousands of years to occur...and in some instances...hundreds of thousands of years.
Nothing is stable. The Earth is doing what it's done for nearly 5 billion years. Constant and unending change. The climate chances. The very ground under your feet is moving. In about 50 million years, the Atlantic Ocean will be the Atlantic Channel, and it will be a much different planet. One day, we...like 99.9% of all species that have ever flourished here...will go extinct.
Climate change has happened many times in the past, and it will continue to happen...and there ain't a bloody thing that we can do about it one way or the other.
"Your interpretation of natural events do not align themselves with the science that shows your opinion to be obsolete and incorrect.
For the record, the last ice age ended in 1809.
Have you ever seen the Delaware frozen over like it was when General Washington crossed it on his way to history? No, because it was an ice age at the end of its' cycle."
Do you understand why the warming is accelerating?
And, no. The last Ice Age isn't over yet. We have ice to prove it.
It's called and interglacial...a retreating of the glaciers between freezes...and there have been a half-dozen major glaciations and interglacials and a dozen minor ones. The Earth has been completely free of ice...and it's been almost completely covered with ice. It's a natural geological cycle that will repeat itself...with or without our help...until the sun burns out.
So...Do you know why the melting is accelerating? It's really very simple.
Nah.....the flat earth society kept falling off!
Those who keep saying "it's been hot before" are deliberately ignoring the scale and context of these events, as if said context simply doesn't exist. Unreal stupidity.
Wiki
I might enter the "Earth is Flat" into miscalenious wiki article then talk about it in bunch of blogs, therefore it must be true.
You are either guilty of stupidity or of malicious by propagation erroneous information. Trying to raise the decibels of your bogus argument by amplifying the volume.
They might all be stopped by wise action fast enough to matter.
See www.aesopinstitute.org for an overview of the problems and a few possible solutions.
This has happened a half-dozen times over the last billion years or so...and it's gonna happen again. One day all the ice will be gone, and then in about 50,000 years...it'll be back.
If we hadn't had global warming, Savannah would be under a sheet of ice a quarter-mile thick by now, and we'd all be huntin' Wooly Mammoths for our supper instead of poppin' 'round to the Colonel's for a bucket of dead chicken.
For the record, the last ice age ended in 1809.
Have you ever seen the Delaware frozen over like it was when General Washington crossed it on his way to history? No, because it was an ice age at the end of its' cycle.
Their record of cooperation is dismal.
Their record of human rights is dismal.
Their record of civil liberty is non existent. Just look how they did the Olympics in a dictatorial manner.
They never send foreign aid except to of all countries, North Korea.
They have acted in every way to wage war against the American middle class.
We don't need or want their goods. Stop sending them even if there are shortages.