Filed under: News
WASHINGTON -- Sweltering temperatures across half the country had people doing what they could to stay cool Thursday. While relief was in sight after one more day of misery in the Northeast, the South was forecast to stay hotter than usual at least through the end of the week.
Some schools in the Northeast planned to close early for a second day Thursday so students would not have to suffer in buildings with no air conditioning. Others canceled classes altogether.
"A lot of people were complaining," said Stephanie Poff, 12, a sixth-grader at an elementary school about 70 miles north of Philadelphia that sent students home early Wednesday. "It is hard to study when it's hot out because all you're thinking about is, `I wish I could be in air conditioning."
In Tennessee, where temperatures in many cities have set records over the past few days, tens of thousands of music fans attending two different festivals were feeling the heat.
"I wasn't prepared for this at all," said Alberta Kelly of New Brunswick, Canada, who got sunburned and had to go shopping for sunglasses when she arrived in Nashville for her first CMA Music Festival, a major country music event. People also began arriving Thursday at a farm 60 miles southeast of Nashville for the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, which runs through Sunday.
"We have more free water than we've ever had and we've put up shade structures," said Rick Farman, one of the founders of Bonnaroo, which messaged attendees ahead of time about what to wear and drink and has set up air conditioned medical tents.
The six-to-10-day outlook from the federal Climate Prediction Center calls for continued above-average readings centered on the mid-South, including Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
In the Northeast, the scorching heat was forecast to subside by Friday as a cold front sweeps in with cooler, drier air. High temperatures across the region are expected to stay in the low 80s through the weekend.
Read more at The Huffington Post.