Weather with a Vengeance: Heat, Storm and Flood

In New York City, where the temperature last Thursday surged to 104DEG ice-cream sellers made up for a lot of their losses suffered during the blackout. Said one good-humored vendor "Now this is an act of God." Less than five months after the worst winter in memory finally relaxed its strangle hold the eastern two-thirds of the nation was racked by a heat storm that harried citizens, strained power, drained water supplies and threatened crops.

So many people crowded the banks of the Charles River in Boston, where the high was 102DEG, that it seemed like any summer Sunday afternoon; actually it was midnight last Wednesday, and the beantowners were just looking for some late-night relief. But not in the city's "Combat Zone," where one prostitute lamented her lack of trade: "They don't want to do it now--it's too hot. They all want air conditioning. You think I got air conditioning?" In Detroit, workers at the big automobile companies asked the same question. As temperatures in the foundries rose to nearly 130DEG, they were sent home or, in some cases, walked out on their own. At the White House, Press Secretary Jody Powell had to explain why Jimmy Carter wanted to lunch alfresco in 93DEG heat: "It's an old Southern tradition to sweat in your food."

Concentrated Devastation. Mid-July temperature records were cracked in more than a dozen cities, making newspaper weather listings read like hospital-ward fever charts. Before the heat wave began to break at week's end, New York sizzled through nine straight days of above-90DEG temperatures; Boston, six; Chicago, eleven; Washington, ten. In a normal year, about 175 Americans die from the effects of hot weather. This year the count is just beginning, but the latest Red Cross estimate is that several hundred have died from the heat--and it's a long, long time from now to September.

The wicked weather also brought drought, flood and one major tragedy In Johnstown, Pa. (pop. 41,000), site of the deadliest deluge in U.S. history,* a seven-hour thunderstorm produced floods that left at least 46 people dead more than 50,000 homeless and an estimated $200 million in damages.

While it did not match the flood in concentrated devastation, the heat wave caused woeful damage. In Minneapolis, about a hundred marchers and spectators at a summer parade were treated for heat prostration. With the heat wave came an atmospheric inversion that sent air pollution indexes soaring in many cities. The result: New York's weekly death rate jumped by nearly 10%.

Water pressure dropped ominously as sweltering city dwellers illegally opened fire hydrants to wet themselves down. Utility companies set power-output records in Milwaukee, Boston, New York and other cities, and air-conditioner salesmen could scarcely keep up with demand. Newspaper-headline writers warmed to the occasion. The New York Daily News ran, AT 102DEG, WE'RE A BAKED APPLE, and the Boston Globe, ON THE 5TH DAY OF SIMMER.

Hog Heart Attacks. The dog days of summer hit animals hard too. After sniffing down a robbery suspect, Kemo, a German shepherd with the Connecticut state police tracking team, collapsed and was given a few days off. Said a humane-society official in Miami: "Saint Bernards have a terrible time. The only breed that wouldn't is the African Basenji." Chickens also had rough going. Said Les Waterman, a poultry hand from Farmington, Conn.: "They can't sweat like humans or horses. They gasp for air and drink a lot of water. Then they sit down and give up." More than 80,000 chickens died in the Maryland-Virginia-Delaware region. The Impoco Poultry Farm in Agawan, Mass., used a novel approach to cool the cluckers: they were taken for drives at night. For livestock the heat was not as much of a threat, but farmers in the Midwest were warned not to take their hogs to market during the heat wave: they could suffer heart attacks in stifling, cramped trucks.

The combination of high temperatures and low rainfall produced a drought that endangered millions of acres. By last week the Government had declared drought disasters in parts of 30 states, and now fully 30% of the nation's agricultural area is severely suffering. Rainfall has been only one-third of normal in many areas of the South. Georgia corn farmers have lost more than $160 million, while in South Carolina, losses of feed crops are estimated to exceed $100 million. Louisiana officials fear that the same fate may await the state's sugar cane. Said Parish Agent Kermit Breaux: "Two more weeks and we'll really start to hurt if we don't get some rain. And the Weather Bureau is not giving us much encouragement."

Parts of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota are hurting because the subsoil moisture is evaporating quickly and is not being replaced by enough rain. Water is still rationed in nearly 40% of California, and reservoirs and riverbeds remain dry.

Stagnant Air Mass. In the seven-county Johnstown area, it was not the dearth of precipitation but the downpour that brought disaster. The flood struck when almost nine inches of rain fell during the nightlong thunderstorm. Johnstown has prided itself on being the "flood-free city" since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did extensive control work after a flood in 1936 killed eight people. But the 30-ft.-high floodwall was not high enough.

Ralph Turner, a supervisor in nearby Richland County, remembered 1936: "This flood was worse than that. A van went right down into a hole in the road. It was just sitting down there, with a bunch of other cars. Some of the drivers jumped out, but four or five of them stayed with their cars. They haven't been found yet." Said Army Survey Technician Stephen Werner: "I've never seen anything like it. The main part of the Holiday Inn was flooded out. They opened the basement doors, and the water came out like a river." Mary Ann Hall, a widow, described the horror scene: "It was unreal, like something you read about. You look out, and cars and houses are floating down the street."

Weather trackers in nearby Pittsburgh had at first figured that the rainstorm was of normal intensity, but as one said later, "It just hung up there all night." Air stagnation had caused that--the same stagnation that brought on the heat storm. In June a high-pressure air mass began building up just east of the Rockies. It stayed there, with some up-and-down movement of air, and slowly turned into a supergiant oven. Simultaneously, a Bermuda high--a high-pressure mass that forms off the Atlantic Coast grew and spread; then it just sat. The high, stretching westward almost as far as the Rockies, raised temperatures in the East 3DEG to 7DEG above normal for the first two weeks of July. Meanwhile, upper-level westerly winds coming off the Pacific moved straight across Canada--hundreds of miles north of their normal seasonal path. Says Don Oilman, director of the National Weather Service's long-range prediction group: "We've got a pattern where cold fronts don't amount to anything--they aren't moving down into the U.S. very much." To a large extent, the strong Bermuda high would not let them.

Meteorologists do not know if this summer's Big Heat and last winter's Big Freeze reflect a long-term change in the climate. They do agree on one point: the earth has cooled slightly in the past few decades; since the '40s, average temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere have dropped about a half of one degree Fahrenheit. While some scientists argue that the cooling has stopped or at least slowed down, almost all concur on one ominous development: extremes of weather are becoming more common. One explanation for the phenomenon is that for reasons still unknown, the winds that sweep around the polar regions have become more erratic as they swoop down or up and twist and swirl, like the bottom of a hoop skirt, around the continents. The larger the undulations of these powerful winds, the greater the extremes of weather underneath.

The weather scientists cannot help Americans cope with the heat. But common sense will help all except mad dogs and Englishmen. Dr. Kenneth Bird in Boston advises: "Do what Henry David Thoreau did--go into some nice cool woods and think." Malkah Notman, a psychiatrist in Brookline, Mass., adds, "Think cool." If that's not enough, think ahead. The break in the heat wave that began at week's end may be temporary, but the long-range forecasters at the National Weather Service guarantee that winter is getting closer every day. Their prediction: yet another supercold one.

* The Johnstown flood of 1889 killed 2,200 people.

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