Fwd: #Ferocious Heat Maintains Grip Across the West - New York Times

July 24, 2005

I don't need anyone to tell me how hot it's been. But I hadn't realized it was

so far reaching. Here in Tahoe, don't ordinarily have this kind of heat in July.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/23/national/23heat.html?ei=5065 & en=90d9cc144e279\

434 & ex=1122696000 & partner=MYWAY & pagewanted=print>

[Zeppnote: NOAA is forecasting a sharply hotter and drier August than

normal, and winter rains and snow to be late]

July 23, 2005

Ferocious Heat Maintains Grip Across the West

By JOHN M. BRODER

PHOENIX, July 22 - A relentless and lethal blanket of heat has settled

on much of the western United States, forcing the cancellation of dozens

of airline flights, threatening the loss of electrical power, stoking

wildfires and leaving 20 people dead in Phoenix alone in just the past week.

Fourteen of the victims here are thought to have been homeless, although

the heat also claimed the life of a 97-year-old man who died in his

bedroom, a 37-year-old man who succumbed in his car and two older women

who died in homes without air-conditioning.

Daytime highs in Phoenix have remained near 110 degrees for more than a

week, and municipal officials acknowledge that it is almost impossible

to deal with the needs of the estimated 10,000 to 20,000 people living

on the streets. The city has barely 1,000 shelter beds, and hundreds of

them are available only in the winter.

The lack of preparation for the homeless here is obvious to those

sweltering on the sidewalk outside the Society of St. Vincent de Paul

relief center in a zone of desolation between the office towers of

downtown Phoenix and the State Capitol.

" I'm dying out here, " said a homeless man in his 40's who goes by the

name of Romeo, crouched in a sliver of shade on a littered sidewalk

while waiting for a handout meal and a bottle of water. " The police are

making us move all over the place. Where do they expect us to go? They

need some more shelters. "

The Phoenix police and private social service agencies have been passing

out thousands of bottles of water donated by grocery chains and

individuals. But the fierce heat continues to take a toll.

" We've not seen anything like this before, " said Tony Morales, a Phoenix

police detective. " We get heat-related deaths every summer, usually 5 to

10 deaths through the whole summer, but nothing like this. "

In Maricopa County as a whole, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs,

21 people died of heat exposure all of last year, just one more than the

city's toll in the last several days.

Officials of the National Weather Service estimate that more than 200

heat records have been broken in the West during the last two weeks. On

Tuesday, Las Vegas tied its record for any date, 117 degrees. Reno and

other locations in Nevada have set records with nine consecutive days of

temperatures at 100 or higher. The temperature in Denver on Wednesday

reached 105 degrees, making it the hottest day there since 1878. The

highest temperature for the entire region during the heat wave has been

129, recorded at Death Valley, Calif.

The weather forced airlines to cancel more than two dozen flights this

week, remove passengers from fully loaded planes, limit the number of

tickets sold on some flights and take other measures to withstand the heat.

The reasons for that are related to engineering. Aircraft manufacturers

have customarily set temperature limits at which their planes can be

safely operated. (The limits are lower at higher altitudes, as in the

Rocky Mountains, and higher at lower altitudes, as in the desert that

surrounds Las Vegas.) High temperatures mean aircraft engines must take

in more air in order to create the greater thrust the planes need to

leave the ground. But airplane makers also have limits on the amount of

thrust that an engine can produce. If the engines exceed those limits,

they may not perform properly. At that point, aircraft manufacturers

advise, the airlines should remove weight from planes - either

passengers or cargo - or, in the worst cases, not fly at all.

United Airlines canceled seven United Express flights out of Denver on

Wednesday, when the record-tying temperature there exceeded the

operating limit for the carrier's propeller planes, said a spokesman,

Jeff Green. " It was just so extreme, and stayed on so long, that we had

to cancel flights, " Mr. Green said.

America West canceled 22 flights out of its Las Vegas hub this week, 11

each on Monday and Tuesday. The temperature of 117 there was approaching

the limit for America West's regional jets: 117.26, above which they

should not fly, said Linda Larsen, a spokeswoman for Mesa Airlines,

which operates the flights for America West.

On the other hand, Southwest Airlines, one of the biggest carriers

operating in Las Vegas and Phoenix, has not canceled any flights because

of the heat, a spokesman said. And Frontier Airlines merely refused to

fly any pets.

The extraordinary heat has lasted for many weeks in the Southwestern

desert, where it has exacted a high price in lives along the Mexican

border. Officials of the United States Bureau of Customs and Border

Protection say 101 illegal migrants have died of heat so far this fiscal

year, which runs from October through September. That compares with 95

heat-related deaths in all of the previous 12 months.

Twenty-one border crossers have died in Arizona just since July 1, said

Salvador Zamora, a spokesman for the border agency. The agency has

stepped up its efforts to rescue migrants from the heat, using trucks

and helicopters to aid people in distress in the brutal sun.

Here in Phoenix, where the issue of rescue involves the homeless, Moises

Gallegos, the city's deputy director of community services, said that

space was available in downtown shelters but that some of the homeless

refused to use it. Some are drug or alcohol abusers who do not want to

be tested and treated, a condition for entry, and others are mentally

ill and refuse all offers of help, Mr. Gallegos said.

But some private social service agencies contend that there is a

critical lack of shelter space here, and criticize officials for not

opening a 500-bed city-owned homeless shelter that is used only in the

winter.

" We need a year-round overflow shelter, " said Terry Bower, director of

the Human Services Campus Day Resource Center.

Elsewhere in Arizona, firefighters are struggling to contain a swarm of

20 wildfires around the state, most sparked by lightning, including a

60,000-acre blaze northeast of Phoenix that shut several major highways.

Across the West as a whole, 32 large wildfires are burning, fueled by

the heat, dry conditions and a profusion of brush created by the

winter's heavy rains, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

And in California, the state's Independent System Operator, which

handles the flow of power to three-quarters of California customers,

declared a Stage 2 emergency on Thursday and Friday, the first in two

years. Stage 2 means that utilities are within 5 percent of their

maximum production of electricity and that interruption of power to some

customers is possible.

Stephanie McCorkle, a spokeswoman for the Independent System Operator,

said the emergency was in effect for Southern California and asked

residents to conserve electricity. Ms. McCorkle said the system had

experienced 14 consecutive days in which demand in Southern California

was near capacity.

" The Bay Area is not hot, and that has been our saving grace, " she said.

" L.A. is sizzling. "

Craig Schmidt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's

regional headquarters in Salt Lake City, said records had been falling

across the Western states since the heat wave started on July 12.

In Phoenix, it was at least 110 every day from July 11 to 19; on Friday

the temperature peaked at 108.

There may be some relief in sight, though: monsoons are moving into the

area. The rain and cloud cover will cool things down a bit, officials

said, but humidity will rise, prolonging the misery.

" Throughout the Western states - you have to estimate, but more than 200

records have probably been broken, and that's just talking daily

records, " Mr. Schmidt said. " These records are no fun to break. "

Among the most remarkable was the one in Las Vegas, where the 117-degree

reading on Tuesday matched the record for any date, set in 1942. The

95-degree low on Tuesday was also a record for Las Vegas, as was the

average temperature that day, 104 degrees.

In Death Valley, meanwhile, the temperature never dropped below 100

degrees in two 24-hour periods.

--

The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making ten-thousand revolutions a

minute and man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is

the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him

the ride. --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

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July 24, 2005

Check out those WHITE LINES in MILITARY airspace!!

Not CONtrtails, but CHEMtrails and ALL that they CAUSE!

http://www.bariumblues.com

http://www.rense.com

http://www.chemtrails.com

DitziSis <mk2967 wrote: