No Relief in
Sight
More Than 10 Deaths Blamed on Heat
Taking a break from directing traffic, Farmers Branch Police Lt. J.S. Ashabranner uses a
towel he keeps in an ice chest to cool off in Farmers Branch, Texas, July 17. Temperatures
climbed past 100 for the seventh day in a row in North Texas.
(LM Otero/AP Photo)
July 19 —
A deadly, relentless heat wave continues to bake the Southern tier of the United States,
and there’s no end in sight.
Record heat is forecast again for today across
the South. On Tuesday, temperatures climbed past 100 for the seventh day in north Texas,
where at least 12 deaths are blamed on the heat.
Hotspots in Alabama were Tuscaloosa and Evergreen, where the
temperature reached 101 degrees. The mercury edged past 100 in Tuscaloosa at about 5 p.m.
making it a record 14th straight day that the temperature in the west Alabama town had
broken the century mark.
Temperatures of 100 degrees were reported in Montgomery and
Dothan.
The summertime heat wave has been blamed for the deaths of 12
Texas residents, seven in Houston. In Louisiana, five deaths were being investigated as
possibly heat related.
“When the humidities are so high, it’s more difficult
for evaporation to occur in your body and therefore, your body can’t cool and
that’s how you accelerate into heat exhaustion and in extreme cases, heat
strokes,” says Weather Channel meteorologist John Erdman.
Drought
Conditions Concern Farmers
The heat has been especially tough on farmers who are also grappling with persistant
drought conditions.
“The crops that are up and growing you can see the heat just
— each day, they wilt down and don’t grow,” says eastern Colorado farmer
Lynn Shook.
No relief is expected anytime soon, creating fear that the worst
is yet to come.
“It’s so much drier for this time of year that
it’s frightening to think what may be in August,” says Colorado sheep farmer Bea
Lowell.
The hot weather and little rain is also adding to concerns about
dwindling water resources.
More than 120 towns and cities in Texas are under water
restrictions because of drought conditions. Residents in Throckmorton are racing to get a
14-mile water pipeline in place before the town’s sole water supply dries up, likely
in about two months.
In drought-withered Alabama, forestry officials took the rare
step of banning outdoor burning. All 67 Alabama counties have been declared federal
disaster areas by Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.
ABCNEWS Radio and The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
