After record heat, it may not get past 100 Saturday

After one of the most uncomfortable days in the region's history, with soupy humidity brewed at a record 103 degrees, Saturday should be an improvement.

It might not get past 100.

Sunday and Monday will be a bit cooler still. (In the public interest, we will defer discussion of next week's heat threat.)

For now, "it's miserable out there," said Rick Russo, articulating a searing sentiment shared by millions of people throughout the area - and much of the nation.

Russo has watched the heat wither his landscape business and turn his grass wheat-brown, but unlike most of us, he's fighting back. He has erected a massive, lighted "Let It Snow" sign on the roof of his Montgomery County home.

It can't hurt.

At six days, this is the fifth and longest heat wave of the season.

Once again, the temperature is expected to make a run at the daily record, which is 99, and the National Weather Service has extended its excessive heat warning through 8 p.m. Saturday.

At 3:47 p.m. Friday, the official reading reached 103 at Philadelphia International Airport, breaking the 54-year-old record for the date by three degrees. And it felt even hotter, with a heat index of 118.

In Atlantic City, the temperature hit 104, breaking the old standard there by a full six degrees.

"This is just amazing," Dave Dombek, a meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc., said Friday, a day when triple-digit temperatures popped up and records fell from Baltimore to Harrisburg to New York City to Boston. Newark, N.J., recorded 108, its highest reading ever.

In fact, Philadelphia set a record even before the sun came up. It never got below 82 overnight, the highest minimum temperature for that date in the period of record, beginning in 1874. Warm nights are symptomatic of the volume of moisture in the air; humidity inhibits cooling.

Overall, with an average temperature of 92, it was the seventh-warmest day on record in Philadelphia.

Peco probably set a new peak for power usage, said spokesman Ben Armstrong, although the numbers won't become official until Monday.

The Philadelphia Corp. for Aging will keep its Heatline - 215-765-9040 - active through 8 p.m. Saturday for anyone seeking information on coping with the heat.

But as hot as it has been this week, no new heat-related deaths have been reported in Philadelphia, which has had three so far this year.

For some folks in Chester, it was even too hot to seek shelter from the heat. On a sultry day, typically about 80 will show up at the Chester senior center, said director Jamee Nowell-Smith. On Friday, only 40 did.

"I think a lot of people trusted their gut and stayed in so they didn't have to come out at all," she said.

In South Jersey, the young were showing more bravado. Shirtless students from the Fusion Goalie Development camp squared off with their coaches in a water-balloon fight outside Igloo Ice Rink in Mount Laurel.

Meanwhile, inside the complex, about 15 people sought refuge from the heat at an ice-skating session. Five siblings from the Orendac family of Lumberton donned gloves and long-sleeve shirts to enjoy a few hours on the ice. Emily Orendac said the heat outside had been more than she could bear.

"I felt like I was dying," the 10-year-old said. "I couldn't stand it. I felt like I wanted to live on the ice."

Usually, when temperatures approach 100, the air is dryer. The sun heats more efficiently when it doesn't have to burn off water vapor.

This week, however, the air has been swollen with vapor, making it more uncomfortable. "This has been building for days and weeks," said Dombek.

Friday didn't quite measure up to the all-time hottest day in Philadelphia: Aug. 7, 1918, when it hit 108. The Inquirer reported then that "hundreds" were stricken by heat, and 26,000 shipyard employees at Hog Island had to quit working that day.

Nevertheless, Friday was plenty hot enough for Russo, who was preparing to jump into his raised swimming pool. He has 85 landscape customers, but the heat and dryness has put the kibosh on grass growth.

"We're not doing anything," he said.

So, with time on his hands, he put up Christmas decorations that include the hand-sawed, lighted "Let It Snow" sign mounted on his roof. It took him five hours to cut the wood and secure the lights with perfectly spaced staples.

It had the desired effect on people driving by Thursday night. "They were honking and howling, 'Nice lights! Nice lights!'," he said. (Yes, he also has a snowplow business.)

On Monday and Tuesday, the worst of the heat should be over, and highs could fall short of 90. A fresh warm-up is due later the week, and it could hit 98 again Friday. But Dombek said it won't necessarily be a rerun of this week.

"My gut feeling," he said, "is that it isn't going to be that extreme."