| Soaring mercury, power outage cause misery to millions in US |
NASHVILLE (US) Temperatures in the triple digits were causing misery in the eastern and southern United States late on Friday, with both Columbia, South Carolina and Nashville, Tennessee reaching all-time records of 109 degrees Fahrenheit.
The heat is suspected in the deaths of three young children.
Marked in pink on a Weather Underground map of the United States, a heat advisory spread like a rash over a third of the country, from Nebraska east to New York and south to Florida.
A heat advisory is typically issued when the heat index - a combination of temperature and humidity - exceeds 100 degrees and there is a risk of people and animals suffering heat exhaustion. As of mid-afternoon, the mercury had hit 41 degree Celsius in Baltimore, Maryland and 42 degree Celsius in Petersburg, Virginia, according to Accuweather.com senior meteorologist John Dlugoenski.
“We expect records to be broken from the mid-Atlantic down through the Carolinas,” Dlugoenski said.
Temperature records for the month of June were broken Friday in Washington, DC; Atlanta, Georgia; and Louisville, Kentucky. In all three cities, the temperature hit 104 40 degree Celsius, according to the National Weather Service.
Friday’s heat had spread east from the south central Plains and Mid-Mississippi states, where temperatures continued to meet or break records on Friday.
Separately, powerful storms struck the mid-Atlantic states with hurricane-force gusts, knocking out power to more than one million people in the region and prompting the West Virginia governor to declare a statewide emergency.
The US National Weather Service posted a severe thunderstorm watch for portions of the District of Columbia, eastern Kentucky, western Maryland, southwestern Pennsylvania, much of Virginia and parts of West Virginia.
Agencies
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