PHILADELPHIA – Highways buckled in Illinois and Wisconsin, water use was cut back in Indiana and those who had power in the mid-Atlantic were urged to conserve it, but the heat gripping much of the country was only expected to worsen Saturday.
Temperatures of more than 100 degrees were forecast in Philadelphia, authorities warned of excessive heat in the Midwest and the power outages surpassed a week in the mid-Atlantic, where extreme heat was expected into the weekend. A major storm in the area last week left behind damage, which combined with the high demand for power to stress the electrical system’s capabilities, a Washington-area utility said. Hundreds of thousands remained without power Friday night in the Appalachians and mid-Atlantic, mostly in West Virginia. Tens of thousands were still without power in the Midwest as well after storms there this week. Utilities hoped to restore service over the weekend in Michigan, where temperatures were forecast in the 90s.
One man in the state figured out a way to beat the heat: stay in the car. That was the plan for 60-year-old Roger Sinclair of Batavia, Ill., who was headed home Saturday morning from Detroit, the city of his birth. Sinclair, a dispatcher at a plumbing company’s call center, visited the Motor City over the past few days to see an old friend and catch Friday night’s Tigers game. While he enjoyed the game, a 4-2 Tigers win, the conditions were less than ideal. “It was 97 at the first pitch and still in the 80s at the time of the last out,” he said. “It was tough. There was no breeze.”
Before heading home Saturday, though, Sinclair wanted to see a Great Lakes ore carrier make its way through the city’s waterways. So, he tracked one down the Detroit River, driving ahead of it and parking on Belle Isle, which sits in the middle of the river between the city and Windsor, Ontario. Sinclair, standing along the riverbank and shielding his eyes from the sun, watched the Algomarine slowly head west.
“You just don’t see this in Chicago,” he said.
As the vessel traveled out of sight, Sinclair walked to his car.
“This is how I’ve dealt with it the last couple of days,” he said. “A lot of time in the car.”
Record temperatures were set Friday in the Indiana cities of Indianapolis, South Bend and Fort Wayne, where temperatures could reach 106 degrees but feel more like 114. In central Arkansas, Russellville reached 106 degrees, breaking a record set in 1964.
