Live Updates: Heat Wave Pummels Eastern U.S. for 4th Day (2024)

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Here’s what to know about the heat.

Some 94 million Americans — more than a quarter of the U.S. population — were under extreme heat advisories, watches or warnings as of Thursday morning, the National Weather Service said. The Weather Service’s “heat risk map” for Thursday is stained deep purple, for the highest risk category, across most of Ohio, northern Pennsylvania, southern Maine and New York’s Southern Tier.

One piece of welcome news: People who scrambled for refuge at cooling centers and in outdoor fountains on Wednesday should have more options on Thursday, when senior centers and libraries that were closed for the Juneteenth holiday will reopen.

Here are the details:

• A blistering heat dome: The meteorological phenomenon, a high-pressure system in the outer reaches of the atmosphere, has locked the heat in place. The heat index on Wednesday broke 100 in some areas of central Maine; in Albany and Rochester, N.Y.,; and in Manchester, N.H. The unlikely location of Caribou, Maine, near the state’s northern border with Canada, tied its record high temperature of 96 degrees.

• Hot nights: Perhaps even worse than daytime highs for those without air-conditioning, record warm overnight temperatures on Thursday “will prevent natural cooling and allow the heat danger to build over time,” the Weather Service said.

• When will it end?: That depends where you are. The Weather Service said that conditions in New England should improve by Friday, when a cold front moves in. In New York, too, temperatures were expected to peak on Friday. The Mid-Atlantic should continue to have temperatures 10 to 15 degrees above normal into Sunday, with a brief reprieve on Monday — though this could be short-lived, as higher temperatures are likely to return to the region by midweek.

• Next up, the Great Plains: The worst is yet to come for cities like Wichita, Kan., and Lincoln, Neb., which have been spared so far this year. By early next week, they will see heat indexes over 100.

Judson Jones contributed reporting.

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The heat wave has set records in Boston, Chicago and other cities.

A high of 97 degrees in Hartford, Conn., on Wednesday likewise set a daily local record, exceeding the previous high from 1995, the Weather Service reported.

Overall, 20 daily high-temperature records were tied or broken at National Weather Service observation sites on Tuesday and Wednesday, the agency said.

The temperature hit a reported 97 degrees at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on Monday, eclipsing a previous record of 96 degrees for that day.

Communities at higher altitudes have not been spared.

The small, leafy city of Elkins, W.Va., in the Appalachian Mountains, set record highs on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the temperature reaching 90 degrees on Wednesday, the Weather Service said. The previous record for the date in Elkins was 89 degrees.

Jerry Marco, the mayor of Elkins, said the weather was “very, very unusual” in the city of some 7,000.

“People are coming together to make sure that their neighbors are taken care of,” Mr. Marco said.

Many other cities and towns have tied or approached records.

Locales that have matched records include Wheeling, W.Va., where it was 95 degrees on Tuesday; Albany, N.Y., where the temperature hit 94 degrees on Wednesday; and Caribou, Maine, which experienced 96-degree heat on Wednesday, according to the Weather Service.

In Caribou, in the northeast corner of Maine, near the U.S. border with Canada, the heat index was reported at 103 degrees on Wednesday, an unofficial record. The heat index is a measure of how the air feels when accounting for humidity.

More records may yet fall. The peak of the heat wave is forecast to arrive in New England on Thursday, and the worst of the weather may not reach the Mid-Atlantic until the weekend. The temperature in Philadelphia is forecast to flirt with triple digits on Saturday and Sunday.

The Weather Service projected a high for Philadelphia on Sunday of 99 degrees, which, if reached, would break a record for the date of 97 degrees set in 1888.

Most New York City pools are still closed as temperatures soar.

Mayor Eric Adams announced on Tuesday that the city would devote $1 billion to improving the city’s network of public pools over the next five years, though the new funding won’t help sweltering residents this year. Eventually, it will cover the costs of building two new indoor pools and renovating existing facilities.

“New York City’s pools and beaches are incredible places for New Yorkers to come together, learn to swim and beat the heat — and as climate change makes heat waves like this week’s more common and more severe, the need for pools has never been greater,” Mr. Adams said in a statement on Tuesday.

Like cities across the country, New York also faces an ongoing lifeguard shortage. Last year, pools opened when the city had around half the 1,000 lifeguards it usually has on hand, prompting parks officials to close sections of some pools. Now, the city says it is in better shape after it agreed to raise lifeguard wages for the second time in two years, this time to $22 per hour. The city will also offer a $1,000 retention bonus to lifeguards who worked last year and who agree to remain on duty through this year’s peak season.

Indoor swimming pools are open year-round, though there are far fewer of them in the city and most New Yorkers must pay an annual membership fee to use them. Adults 65 and older qualify for a discounted rate, and people 24 and younger can swim for free.

With pools closed this week, families sought out fountains and shade in parks. Gov. Kathy Hochul said admission and parking at New York State Parks would be free on Wednesday and Thursday.

Though it might feel as if summer is already in full swing, New York’s outdoor pools aren’t opening any later than they have in recent years. They opened on June 29 last year, and June 28 in 2022.

The increased funding announced Tuesday isn’t set to change when pools open, but Councilman Shekar Krishnan proposed legislation this year that would both open the pools earlier in the year and keep them open longer each day.

“On the most sweltering days in New York City, like what we’re experiencing this week, New Yorkers escape to our public pools and beaches to cool off,” Mr. Krishnan, whose district is in Queens, said in a statement. “But pools are useless, and beaches are dangerous, if they are closed and unstaffed.”

Currently, outdoor pools are set to open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day, with an hour for cleaning starting at 3 p.m. Mr. Krishnan’s proposal would require that they open at 8 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.

Camille Baker contributed reporting.

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Phoenix is sizzling today, too. But here is why cities in the Northeast may be more worrisome.

Hot and dry temperatures are par for the course in Phoenix, which has weathered heat in the triple digits for much of June. That may help explain why Phoenix is rated a Level 3 for today (on a scale of 0 to 4) in terms of the health risk to the population, according to the HeatRisk tool by the National Weather Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which takes into account how unusual the heat is for the time of year, as people become acclimated to higher temperatures during the warmer months.

High HeatRisk conditions are associated with spikes in emergency room visits and heat-related emergency calls in Phoenix, according to the National Weather Service. Phoenix and the surrounding south-central region of Arizona are also under an excessive heat warning.

Large swaths of New York state and parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont are rated a Level 4 on the HeatRisk scale, indicating that there is an extreme risk for the entire population from a rare level of heat.

Phoenix had a record 31-day streak of high temperatures at or above 110 degrees in 2023. For the year, Maricopa County identified a total of 340 heat-related deaths in Phoenix.

High temperatures in Maine are stressing the state’s infrastructure and essential services.

Versant Power, one of the major power providers in Maine, reported higher system loads than usual on Wednesday but no heat-related outages, according to Marissa Minor, a communications supervisor for the company.

“Of course, everyone was running their air-conditioning and other devices,” she said. Versant expected a higher load on Thursday, too, she added.

Storms brought tree branches down on power lines on Wednesday evening, leaving around 7,000 customers without power in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties, Ms. Minor said. Power was beginning to be restored for many of those customers as of Thursday morning.

Versant crews responded only to power outages yesterday and will be doing the same today, Ms. Minor said, and regular construction and maintenance work will resume only after temperatures decrease. The company expects to have all power restored today, she said, but customers without power should seek cooling centers in the meantime.

“They want to get everyone’s power back on, but they want to do it safely,” Ms. Minor said.

About a dozen crews from the Maine Department of Transportation will be back at work on the roads on Thursday, after taking off for the Juneteenth holiday. Troy Leonard, an operations manager at the department, said the crews would be following standard heat precautions as they worked, taking plenty of breaks and staying hydrated.

Crews will have teams of four road flaggers monitoring traffic control instead of the usual two, so they can rotate in 20- to 30-minute shifts and rest in air-conditioned vehicles, Mr. Leonard said.

In Waterville, Maine, Everett Flannery, a deputy chief at the fire department, has been spreading the word about the city’s cooling center, especially among homeless people. Since Waterville began enforcing a no-camping ordinance in April to break up a homeless encampment in a park, the city’s unhoused population has spread out and become harder to reach with information, he said.

One homeless woman spent most of Wednesday in Waterville’s cooling center, and Mr. Flannery said the fire department had set her up with a doctor.

“It was a pretty good win for us,” he said.

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Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to the heat, doctors warn.

“Of all the associations that we hear about connecting environmental factors like what you eat or what you drink to risks, this one has quite a bit of science behind it,” he said.

Pregnant women should remain indoors in a cool environment, if possible, get enough rest and avoid going outside during the hottest times of day, he and other experts said. Since dehydration can lead to preterm contractions and premature birth, pregnant women should drink plenty of fluids. Cool showers may also help.

The risks are well documented, Dr. DeNicola said. Fatigue and dehydration can lead to a cascade of prostaglandins, hormone-like compounds produced by the body, that in turn cause Braxton-Hicks contractions — preterm contractions that normally do not lead to delivery.

Extreme heat has also been associated with a higher risk of having a low-birth-weight baby, as well as increasing the chances of stillbirth.

Women in their third trimester are at greatest risk of early labor, but pregnant women at any gestational stage should be sure to maintain “tons of hydration,” Dr. DeNicola said.

“You almost can’t drink too much water,” he said. “If you find yourself getting thirsty, you’re already way behind.”

Other signs of heat exhaustion, which may precede heat stroke, are dizziness, nausea, weakness and excessive sweating, which may signal that the body is struggling to cool itself.

Typically pregnant women who go to the emergency room suffering from heat exhaustion will be told to rest and given fluids, orally or through an IV, which can reverse the condition and forestall early labor, Dr. DeNicola said.

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It’ll be warmer farther from Lake Michigan, forecasters said. Today’s predicted high at O’Hare International Airport, about 12 miles inland, is 89 degrees.

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Climate change made heat wave in Mexico and Southwest U.S. last month 35 times more likely.

“The results of our study should be taken as another warning that our climate is heating to dangerous levels,” Izidine Pinto, a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute who worked on the analysis, said in a statement.

The scientists examined temperature data from five days of the hottest daytime and nighttime temperatures between late May and early June and compared recorded temperatures with a hypothetical planet in which humans had never pumped any greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The extreme heat the scientists studied was caused by a heat dome, where clear, sunny skies radiated the hot air trapped near the ground by a high-pressure weather system. The excessive temperatures were exacerbated by feedback loops caused by an ongoing drought, particularly in Mexico, and warmer ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean.

“This essentially is the same dome of high pressure that started over Central America, ballooned to the Southwest, and now is over the Eastern side of the U.S.,” said Shel Winkley, a meteorologist and weather and climate engagement specialist with Climate Central, a climate communications nonprofit.

This level of heat used to be a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence back in 2000, but with the amount of warming that has happened since then, the average person could experience such an event five or six times in their life.

Heat across the region included in the report caused wildfires, power outages and a mass die-off of endangered monkeys. Dangerous temperatures in Mexico have caused at least 125 deaths since March, according to the study, along with more than 2,300 cases of heat stroke.

The report was released after Mexico recorded its hottest day ever, when temperatures peaked at 125 degrees Fahrenheit in the Sonoran Desert. Temperature records were also broken in Guatemala and Honduras, along with Mexico City, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Death Valley in California.

“Heat deaths are often underestimated,” said Karina Izquierdo, the urban adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean from the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center and a contributor to the report.

Heat-related deaths tend to be confirmed months after the heat event, if they are reported at all. Yet, heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer, and dozens of environmental and labor groups are pushing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to declare heat a major disaster.

Some of the groups at greatest risk include agricultural laborers, construction workers and street vendors who face direct exposure, Ms. Izquierdo said, along with unhoused people, pregnant people, young children and older adults.

She said, “Refugees and migrants in transit are particularly vulnerable due to the long and physically demanding journey,” which includes exposure to high temperatures. Between May 31 and June 10, eight bodies of possible migrants were found in the borderlands of southern New Mexico and West Texas, while the region was experiencing excessive heat.

You’re not imagining it. Summers are getting hotter.

Not every summer is hotter today; some areas still see average or colder than average seasons from June through August. But the distribution of summer temperatures has shifted so that many more places endure hot summers more often than they did in the past. And the most drastic change has occurred at the hottest extreme.

Less than 1 percent of summers in the middle of the 20th century were extremely hot for their location, according to the analysis, compared with more than a quarter of summers over the last decade.

This summer is again expected to be hotter than average across much of the United States, and in other parts of the world, too.

Globally, each of the past 12 months has been the warmest on record for that month. And 2023 was the hottest year since modern record-keeping began in the mid-1800s.

“Extreme heat is one of the most direct ways in which we are experiencing the impacts of global warming,” said Deepti Singh, who leads the Climate Extremes Lab at Washington State University.

And it’s also one of the clearest signals of how the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are changing the planet’s climate, she added.

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Here’s how heat affects the brain.

“Many of us think that we are immune to heat,” said Dr. Cedeño, now an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health and justice at Rutgers University. “So something that I wanted to test was whether that was really true.”

It turns out even young, healthy college students are affected by high temperatures. During the hottest days, the students in the un-air-conditioned dorms, where nighttime temperatures averaged 79 degrees, performed significantly worse on the tests they took every morning than the students with A.C., whose rooms stayed a pleasant 71 degrees.

A heat wave is once again blanketing the Northeast, South and Midwest. High temperatures can have an alarming effect on our bodies, raising the risk for heart attacks, heatstroke and death, particularly among older adults and people with chronic diseases. But heat also takes a toll on our brains, impairing cognition and making us irritable, impulsive and aggressive.

How heat hurts our cognition

Numerous studies in lab settings have produced similar results to Dr. Cedeño’s research, with scores on cognitive tests falling as scientists raised the temperature in the room. One investigation found that just a four-degree increase — which participants described as still feeling comfortable — led to a 10 percent average drop in performance across tests of memory, reaction time and executive functioning.

This can have real consequences. R. Jisung Park, an environmental and labor economist at the University of Pennsylvania, looked at high school standardized test scores and found that they fell 0.2 percent for every degree above 72 Fahrenheit. That might not sound like a lot, but it can add up for students taking an exam in an un-air-conditioned room during a 90-degree heat wave.

In another study, Dr. Park found that the more hotter-than-average days there were during the school year, the worse students did on a standardized test — especially when the thermometer climbed above 80 degrees. He thinks that may be because greater exposure to heat was affecting students’ learning throughout the year.

The effect was “more pronounced for lower income and racial minority students,” Dr. Park said, possibly because they were less likely to have air-conditioning, both at school and at home.

Why heat makes us aggressive

Researchers first discovered the link between heat and aggression by looking at crime data, finding that there are more murders, assaults and episodes of domestic violence on hot days. The connection applies to nonviolent acts, too: When temperatures rise, people are more likely to engage in hate speech online and honk their horns in traffic.

Lab studies back this up. In one 2019 experiment, people acted more spitefully toward others while playing a specially designed video game in a hot room than in a cool one.

So-called reactive aggression tends to be especially sensitive to heat, most likely because people tend to interpret others’ actions as more hostile on hot days, prompting them to respond in kind.

Kimberly Meidenbauer, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University, thinks this increase in reactive aggression may be related to heat’s effect on cognition, particularly the dip in self control. “Your tendency to act without thinking, or not be able to stop yourself from acting a certain way, these things also appear to be affected by heat,” she said.

What’s happening in the brain

Researchers don’t know why heat affects our cognition and emotions, but there are a couple of theories.

One is that the brain’s resources are being diverted to keep you cool, leaving less energy for everything else. “If you’re allocating all of the blood and all the glucose to parts of your brain that are focused on thermoregulation, it seems like it’s very plausible that you just wouldn’t have enough left for some of these kind of higher cognitive functions,” Dr. Meidenbauer said.

You could also be distracted and irritable because of how hot and miserable you feel. It turns out that’s actually one of the brain’s coping responses. If you can’t get cool, your brain will “make you feel even more uncomfortable so that finding the thing you need to survive will become all consuming,” explained Shaun Morrison, a professor of neurological surgery at Oregon Health and Science University.

Heat’s effect on sleep could play a role, too. In the Boston study, the hotter it got, the more students’ sleep was disrupted — and the worse they performed on the tests.

The best way to offset these effects is to cool yourself off, as soon as possible. If you don’t have access to air-conditioning, fans can help, and be sure to stay hydrated. It might sound obvious, but what matters most for your brain, mood and cognition is how hot your body is, not the temperature outside.

The United States is facing hotter heat waves, but one of the worst was in 1936.

The heat wave, which pushed temperatures to 100 degrees in Illinois and 120 degrees as far north as North Dakota, left some 5,000 people dead.

In New York, a high of 106 degrees was recorded in Central Park. Desperate for relief, people slept on roofs and fire escapes and flocked to public pools, which stayed open until midnight. New York City recorded 21 drownings as adults and children who didn’t know how to swim but were desperate to cool off jumped into the water.

The Dust Bowl, the drought in the Great Plains that was partially caused by agriculture practices, appeared to supercharge the heat wave. Its duration made it especially challenging: Temperatures hit 100 degrees for 12 straight days in Springfield, Ill., according to the National Weather Service.

Altered farming methods and better cooling technology may have staved off repeats of the 1936 heat wave since then. But the United States has had longer and more frequent heat waves in recent decades as the planet warms, according to government data.

In the summer of 2023, a ferocious, sustained heat wave settled over the Southwest. Phoenix logged temperatures of at least 110 degrees for 31 straight days, from June to July, smashing an 18-day modern record the city had set in 1974. Maricopa County, which surrounds Phoenix, reported 404 heat-related deaths in July.

The global air temperature likely was the hottest in modern times, scientists said.

This year, it seems, the United States may be in for another blistering summer.

An early-season heat wave has arrived in the Northeast and Midwest. In Chicago, the temperature hit a record-breaking 97 degrees on Monday. In New York, a high of 96 was forecast for Friday.

The period could be most punishing for a region stretching along the Ohio River and continuing into upstate New York and New England. Among the cities in the cross hairs were Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.

This heat wave could be similar to one in June 1994 that roasted Pittsburgh. That year, the temperature in the city reached 95 degrees for six straight days, a stretch of highs that could be matched or eclipsed this week, according to the local National Weather Service office.

Over the last three decades, concerns have grown about the dangers of extreme heat in urban areas.

In July 1995, a severe heat wave enveloped Chicago, hitting the city’s senior population especially hard. Neighborhoods lost power, hospitals filled up and, one day, the temperature reached a sticky 106 degrees. Morgues filled, and the death toll was later estimated at 739.

Because many of the people who died were older residents living alone, the heat wave served as a “turning point” in how many people think about heat waves, said Ashley Ward, director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability.

“The social and economic structure of society has a big impact on who dies,” she said.

Another factor influencing the human costs of heat waves: the novelty of extreme heat in regions not used to them.

Three years ago, typically mild Portland, Ore., was caught off-guard when the temperature climbed to 116 degrees. Researchers said that the heat was almost certainly energized by global warming and that there was 0.1 percent chance of such an event in any given year in the region.

One day, the high temperature at Portland International Airport was about 40 degrees warmer than normal. Although the heat wave only lasted a few days, it still had a devastating effect in the Pacific Northwest, where some do not have air-conditioning.

The medical examiner in Multnomah County, which includes Portland, attributed 69 deaths to the record-breaking temperatures. Before 2021, deaths from heat in the county were rare, with none recorded in 2016 or 2018, according to the medical examiner.

Most of the people who died in 2021 lacked air-conditioning, the medical examiner reported.

Portland’s unusual weather fulfilled old predictions that climate change would ultimately intensify heat waves in places where extreme heat was unfamiliar, climate experts said.

The 1936 heat wave may loom large in the history of U.S. heat waves. But J. Marshall Shepherd, the director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program, said it should not be held up as an argument against evidence that climate change is now driving more extreme weather.

“Grass grows naturally, too,” he said, comparing grass to heat waves. “But when we fertilize our lawns, it grows differently.”

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How to stay cool indoors during the heat wave.

Starting Tuesday, cooling centers — indoor, air-conditioned spaces for public use — will be open during the day in New York. The city’s fire department is also turning some fire hydrants into water sprinklers. If you’re staying at home, here’s what you can do to stay as cool as possible indoors, whether you have an AC or not.

What’s the ideal temperature for your home?

While you should do what feels most comfortable for you, Carrier, an air-conditioner manufacturer, suggests on its website that 72 degrees is the generally accepted “comfortable indoor temperature for many people.” It continues, “It strikes a good balance between comfort and energy efficiency, making it a popular choice for residential settings.”

If you’re away from your home, set your thermostat for higher than usual to save energy and to prevent your AC unit from potentially busting. At night, because heat can disrupt sleep, 60 to 67 degrees is recommended by the Cleveland Clinic.

How do you keep your furry friends safe?

It depends on the animal, and its size and type, but pets are generally less tolerant of higher temperatures than humans.

Dogs, the most common pet in the country, tend to overheat when the temperature is between 81 and 85 degrees, according to the American Kennel Club. “An ideal temperature doesn’t exist for all dogs, since their normal body temperature will vary according to size,” the organization states on its website. It also suggests installing a temperature alarm that can notify your phone if your AC fails and you’re not at home to notice.

How do you maintain your AC?

If your AC is broken, it might be too late to find a repairman to fix it in time for the heat wave, but going forward, experts recommend servicing your AC unit once a year. A technician will typically check for and diagnose issues with the system, clean it and change out the filter.

Depending on your unit, you may be able to change your filter yourself. Carrier suggests inspecting your filter every two to three months, and certain factors might affect how often you’ll need to change it. (For example, if you have a pet, you may need to replace the filter more frequently because of its shedding.) You can look for an online guide on how to change the filter — whether it is for a window unit, floor-mounted or other. Just make sure to turn your system off first.

What can you do if you don’t have an AC?

You can close your blinds or cover your windows to minimize your exposure to direct sunlight. Stick-on solar film, which can be bought online or at home-improvement stores, is also an option. This can deflect infrared heat that would otherwise come in through your windows.

What are some things to avoid indoors?

Steer clear of using appliances that generate heat, such as an oven, clothes dryer, iron or blow dryer. New York Times Cooking has a list of “No-Cook Recipes for a Heat Wave” so you can prep a meal without turning on your stove top.

Try to avoid dark fabrics for curtains, upholstery or clothing, as they can absorb heat more easily. You can also turn off lights — having too many on close together can heat the surrounding air.

Avoid thick covers and blankets. Percale sheets tend to be more breathable, and Wirecutter has a guide for bedsheets for hot sleepers.

Can I report my landlord if my apartment is unreasonably hot?

While some cities, like Dallas, have air-conditioning requirements for rental apartments, New York City does not. (Landlords in New York are legally obligated to provide heat and hot water.) But if you live in an apartment that had an AC when you moved in, landlords are responsible for maintaining it and replacing it if it’s broken.

If they refuse to fix it or are unresponsive, you have options. Ronda Kaysen, a real estate reporter and former “Ask Real Estate” columnist, suggests paying to replace the AC unit yourself if you can then negotiate your rent, asking for the same amount for the upcoming year. You could also take your landlord to court, but that could be more time-consuming and expensive than paying to fix it yourself.