In an average June, just a few days reach 90 degrees in Detroit. But by the time the year’s first blast of summer breaks in the Motor City this weekend, nearly a week of intense heat will have passed.

And some of the most dangerous heat waves are those just like the one gripping parts of the Midwest and Northeast this week: hitting early in the season, when people have had less time to adjust to the conditions, and in places well outside the Sun Belt where people don’t often experience such sustained levels of tropical-like warmth.

“We’re starting pretty early in the year,” said Abdul El-Sayed, health officer for Wayne County, Mich. “People aren’t as used to heat this early in the summer.”

As global temperatures rise, intense heat is arriving sooner and raising risks of illnesses and death among people who aren’t acclimatized to it, experts said. In many cases, heat can overwhelm the body well before a person realizes it, they added – especially at this time of year, when memories of heat-beating strategies are stale and physiological adaptations to heat need a jump-start.

That has health and environmental officials across a baking swath of the East on alert and in action this week. In Boston, they are deploying misting stations and handing out cooling kits. In Fort Wayne, Ind., garbage pickup is happening earlier and YMCAs are opening splash pads to the public. And in Ann Arbor, Mich., officials are standing by in case they need to impose a heat emergency plan normally activated only when the heat index surges well into the triple digits.

“A hearty Michigander might tell you we’re used to having all the seasons in one day,” said Susan Ringler-Cerniglia, a spokeswoman for the health department in Washtenaw County, which includes Ann Arbor. But the reality is that with such a sustained first dose of summer heat, “now is when we start to worry more,” Ringler-Cerniglia said.

“It’s a little earlier than we tend to see these kinds of heat waves happen,” she said.

WHY EARLY-SEASON IS HARDER TO HANDLE

Research has shown that death tolls from early season heat waves are higher. Data in a 2010 study showed heat-related deaths increased by 5% during the first heat wave of the summer and by 2.7% during later heat waves, as compared with non-heat wave days.

That deadly effect was more pronounced in the Northeast and Midwest when compared with the South, the study found – places where people are likely to experience all four seasons of the year, with both cold, snowy winters and hot, muggy summers.

The effect is physiological and psychological, researchers said.

When the body is adjusted to heat, it manages by initiating sweating sooner, sending more blood to the skin, increasing thirst sensations and retaining more salt, said Jennifer Vanos, an associate professor in the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

But in the first heat wave of the season – or even when another strikes weeks after a previous bout of heat – those adjustments don’t happen immediately. That is true of people who haven’t felt heat in months, as well as those who might live in a hot environment but spend most of their time in air conditioning, Vanos said.

“In order to have those adaptations, we have to expose ourselves to the heat,” she said.

At the same time, people who aren’t used to the heat are also less likely to take precaution or behave in ways needed to keep themselves cool, researchers said. They might overestimate how much heat they can withstand while working outside or sunning on a beach, for example.

After enduring multiple days of extreme heat in a row, “people start to get dehydrated and they don’t realize they haven’t caught up,” El-Sayed said.

Many people underestimate the toll that heat may be taking on the human body, said Kristie Ebi, a professor at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington. There is no strong feedback mechanism to make us aware if our core body temperature is starting to rise, she said. Making that more difficult to discern: that the first symptom is often confusion.

“People can get in trouble with heat before they’re even aware they’re having heat stress,” Ebi said.

HOW ARE WE CONFRONTING HEAT RISKS

That means work to keep vulnerable populations cool is especially urgent in communities where this week’s temperatures are perhaps not uncommon for summer, but are arriving earlier and lasting for longer than is typical.

According to a new HeatRisk tool the National Weather Service expanded across the country to help the public better gauge how dangerous heat might be, heat is forecast to have “extreme” impacts this week from the Great Lakes states into New England. That is not just a measure of absolute temperature, but also of the degree to which the conditions could be dangerous without intervention to keep people cool.

“We’ve done things we usually do in August,” said Thomas Gutwein, health commissioner in Allen County, Ind., which includes Fort Wayne. He said authorities will be monitoring how many people are using cooling centers and will be prepared to open more, if necessary.

And they are considering what may become necessary longer-term, if heat waves like this one arrive while school is in session, for example, Gutwein said.

In Toledo, where temperatures hit a record-setting 99 degrees Monday, the rise in heat is converging with increases in heavy rain and increasing chances for mosquito-borne illnesses or mold. They are the sorts of tropical challenges that are unfamiliar in a place like Toledo, where many residents don’t have air conditioning because they didn’t used to need it, said Karim Baroudi, commissioner of the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department.

“We’re going to have to adjust as much as we can,” Baroudi said. “We have to be as fast and as nimble as the weather is changing.”

Residents of often snowy Boston have found it impossible to ignore a lack of plowable snow for two winters running and are used to closely watching their city’s street-clearing performance in colder conditions. But they may be less likely to recognize their rising risks of exposure to extreme heat – or the actions city officials are taking to minimize those risks, said Oliver Sellers-Garcia, who directs the Green New Deal program of Mayor Michelle Wu. That may be especially true in Black communities where the burden of heat is greater, in part because the impact of redlining includes less tree cover, as well as higher rates of asthma, he said.

Heat waves like this one could be starting to change that perception, he added.

“We’re getting there,” Sellers-Garcia said. “It’s reaching the level of how we mobilize for snow emergencies.”

Copy the Story Link

« Previous

Rifts seem to appear between Israel’s political and military leadership over conduct of the Gaza war

Next »

Iran signals a major expansion in nuclear program at key site