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Southern states bake in scorching, dangerous heat wave

Scorching heat is spreading across much of the South, where temperatures are expected to soar over 100 degrees and persist into next week

By Associated Press
Published: July 20, 2018, 5:22pm

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Scorching heat was spreading Friday across much of the South, where temperatures are expected to soar over 100 degrees and persist into next week.

The National Weather Service posted heat advisories and warnings from the New Mexico-Texas border eastward to parts of Alabama. Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, west Tennessee and parts of Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky were all under heat advisories or warnings Friday. In Texas, the nation’s largest prison system took the unprecedented step of allowing all inmates and staff unlimited access to cold water and opportunities to cool off in air-conditioned spaces.

“This one will be rather long-lasting in the areas it affects,” said David Hamrick, a forecaster at the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md.

The hot temperatures will combine with high humidity, which could be lethal to some people, forecasters said. They were warning that children, older people, those without air conditioning and outdoor workers will be particularly at risk.

Highs Friday were expected to be 109 degrees in the Dallas and Oklahoma City metro areas; 111 degrees in parts of western Oklahoma; and 100 degrees in Shreveport, La.

With highs that hot, temperatures in many places were in the 80s during the pre-dawn hours Friday. In Dallas, for instance, the low temperature early Friday was 85 degrees, Hamrick said.

The heat wave has already broken records in Texas set more than 90 years ago.

“I have records all over the place,” said Bianca Villanueva, a National Weather Service forecaster in north Texas. “It looks like we’ll probably break most of the records that we have through the weekend.”

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