Revisiting the heat wave of 1995
The past couple days, the weather people have reminded us of the deadly, infamous heat wave of mid-July 1995. This was a month after I graduated from high school. It was *hot*. I have a clear memory of going to Windmill Fest--which would have been this past weekend--and watching my friend's band on a Thursday afternoon when it was 104F. We got dropped off by another friend's family, and I recall getting out of the van and the heat hit us, but after a few minutes we acclimated and it didn't seem so bad. Granted, I was 17. You likely wouldn't find me doing that now. Then again, the guy I liked also happened to be in the band, so it was no major sacrifice for me to be there. That's my main memory from all that, going to that performance at probably 4 in the afternoon, so just about the hottest part of the day, and the stage faced west that year so I'm sure the band was just getting baked. I seem to recall that overnights didn't get below the 80s, which is just brutal. Reading through some of the articles, there was no air flow, no breeze; the air just sat there and stagnated.
My dad sometimes will watch Channel 9 on the weekends in the morning, and Tom Skilling was on yesterday, as a special guest, talking about how other places, which regularly get such high temperatures, were scratching their heads as to why things got so bad here. We had hundreds of deaths at the time. It was frightening to hear about. It was that stagnant air that played a role, that and the high dew points, which were also in the 80s. You couldn't cool off. When you're in the desert and it's in the 100s, the air is dry and you're still able to sweat and have that evaporate. When the air is saturated, there's no place for your sweat to go. You don't cool off. You overheat. You die. That's basically what happened to many, many people.
Chicago has been so proactive since then. They make announcements on the news when a heat warning comes up. They open cooling shelters and have buses available so if you have no place else to go, if you don't have personal access to air conditioning, you can go there. That was one of the lessons learned, that so many people either didn't have AC or didn't turn it on because of the cost; the heat in their homes was suffocating. This is why, in subsequent years, I would make phone calls to my grandparents to make sure they would turn on their AC when it got hot. I know we all die eventually, but this is not how I want you to go. Not when it's preventable by flipping a switch. If money is an issue, let us know--we'll help. Because my grandfather had the family that lived below him to think about--their apartments shared heating and AC--they would usually let him know when it got too hot for them. Considering they lived in the basement, you *know* it must've been hot if they had to ask for it to get turned down. Grandma, I've told her that if it gets to be 80F in her place, she needs to turn the AC on. No questions. She's the one to tell me, oh, old people like it warmer! They don't sweat as much! Yes, because your body is losing the ability to regulate its own temperature. I don't want you to bake in your own skin. You're going to have to trust me, and if you don't, check with your doctor.
I'm glad our most recent heat wave never got quite that hot. It's been a while since we've seen triple digits. It was still uncomfortable at times, hard to sleep at night, but at least we did get some rain, we did get some wind, and for the past couple days, we did get some relief. The other day, we didn't even break 80F. It's nice to be able to sleep with the window open to get some fresh air. It's going to get warm again starting tomorrow, and we're back to the mid-90s by the weekend if predictions hold out. At least now we're better prepared to handle such a thing, thanks to what happened 25 years ago.
My dad sometimes will watch Channel 9 on the weekends in the morning, and Tom Skilling was on yesterday, as a special guest, talking about how other places, which regularly get such high temperatures, were scratching their heads as to why things got so bad here. We had hundreds of deaths at the time. It was frightening to hear about. It was that stagnant air that played a role, that and the high dew points, which were also in the 80s. You couldn't cool off. When you're in the desert and it's in the 100s, the air is dry and you're still able to sweat and have that evaporate. When the air is saturated, there's no place for your sweat to go. You don't cool off. You overheat. You die. That's basically what happened to many, many people.
Chicago has been so proactive since then. They make announcements on the news when a heat warning comes up. They open cooling shelters and have buses available so if you have no place else to go, if you don't have personal access to air conditioning, you can go there. That was one of the lessons learned, that so many people either didn't have AC or didn't turn it on because of the cost; the heat in their homes was suffocating. This is why, in subsequent years, I would make phone calls to my grandparents to make sure they would turn on their AC when it got hot. I know we all die eventually, but this is not how I want you to go. Not when it's preventable by flipping a switch. If money is an issue, let us know--we'll help. Because my grandfather had the family that lived below him to think about--their apartments shared heating and AC--they would usually let him know when it got too hot for them. Considering they lived in the basement, you *know* it must've been hot if they had to ask for it to get turned down. Grandma, I've told her that if it gets to be 80F in her place, she needs to turn the AC on. No questions. She's the one to tell me, oh, old people like it warmer! They don't sweat as much! Yes, because your body is losing the ability to regulate its own temperature. I don't want you to bake in your own skin. You're going to have to trust me, and if you don't, check with your doctor.
I'm glad our most recent heat wave never got quite that hot. It's been a while since we've seen triple digits. It was still uncomfortable at times, hard to sleep at night, but at least we did get some rain, we did get some wind, and for the past couple days, we did get some relief. The other day, we didn't even break 80F. It's nice to be able to sleep with the window open to get some fresh air. It's going to get warm again starting tomorrow, and we're back to the mid-90s by the weekend if predictions hold out. At least now we're better prepared to handle such a thing, thanks to what happened 25 years ago.