So Hot, So Dry, So Early - Midwest Facing Intensity Of Heat, Drought Unseen Since 1930s [View all]

[hatrack]

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Temperature records are being broken and residents are suffering in what Keeney called a "corridor of extreme heat," generally through Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and into western Kentucky. Heat records are being shattered as are records for the number of days in a row the temperature has hit 100 or higher, he said.

Take St. Louis, for example. The last time the city was this hot for this long was in 1936, said Keeney, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Central Region Headquarters in Kansas City, Mo. Then, the city recorded 13 days in a row of temperatures 100 degrees Fahrenheit or over. That devastating heat wave of the mid-'30s killed thousands of people and destroyed many crops.

The culprit in the current wave is a dome of high pressure that has been hovering over the eastern part of the U.S., said NWS spokesman Pat Slattery in an interview with The Times on Friday. "It's kicked the jet stream way to north, in some places into Canada, so there’s no way for the normal rotation of weather systems to get here into the middle of the country, which would bring us some moisture. So drought becomes more and more a major factor."

Gregg Steele, a farmer for 35 years, has acreage in Missouri's Ray County and has been watching as the heat and drought have damaged his crops. "It hasn't been this hot here this long since the '30s," Steele, of Richmond, Mo., said Friday in a phone interview. On Thursday, it was 105 degrees, he said, and it's been 10 days with no sign of rain.

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-midwest-heat-relief-20120706,0,5668282.story