By Brendan O’Brien
(Reuters) – Severe weather disrupted parts of the United States on Wednesday, with a tropical storm skirting Hawaii, thunderstorms knocking out power in Kentucky and Tennessee and a relentless heat wave stubbornly parked over the Southwest.
Poor air quality, which threatened to cause health issues for millions of Americans over the last few days, lifted in many places. But air heavily laced with smoke from hundreds of wildfires burning in Canada lingered in scattered locations.
HEAT WAVE
Some 80 million Americans remained under excessive heat warnings, watches and advisories on Wednesday as the prolonged and dangerous heat wave hung over a swath of the country stretching from Southern California to the Deep South.
The blazing hot afternoon temperatures were expected to reach 102 degrees Fahrenheit (39 degrees Celsius ) in San Bernardino, California, 117 F (47 C) in Phoenix and 105 F (41 C) in San Antonio, Texas, the National Weather Service said.
Phoenix looks assured of notching its 20th straight day with temperatures of 110 degrees F or higher. On Tuesday the city broke the record with its 19th consecutive scorcher.
The massive heat dome was expected to bring oppressively hot temperatures and high humidity levels across the southern tier of the United States through the weekend and into next week.
The zone of extreme heat could expand into the northern Plains and Midwest beginning the middle of next week, the weather service said.
DEATHS IN TEXAS PRISONS
In Texas, at least nine inmates in prisons without air conditioning have died of heart attacks this summer, the Texas Tribune reported. Another 14 have died due to unknown causes during periods of extreme heat, the Austin newspaper found.
On Tuesday during a rally in Austin, the state capital, family members and advocates called for state lawmakers to take action and install air conditioning in the more than two-thirds of the state’s prisons that do not have cooling in living areas.
A state prisons spokesperson told the newspaper that investigations into the deaths have found they were not heat-related.
Representatives of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which runs the state’s prison system, could not be reached immediately for comment.
TROPICAL STORM, POWER OUTAGES
In the Hawaiian Islands, Tropical Storm Calvin lashed the Big Island on Wednesday with strong winds and heavy downpours as it slowly passed south of the Pacific archipelago. The storm was expected to dump as much as 8 inches (20 cm) of rain as it packed winds of up to 60 miles (97 km) per hour on the Big Island.
The storm could cause flash flooding, dangerous surf and mudslides, the weather service said. Hawaii Governor Josh Green declared a state of emergency, closing all state offices and schools in anticipation of the storm.
AIR QUALITY
Although most air quality alerts across the nation expired on Wednesday morning, smoke from Canadian wildfires drifting across the United States caused poor conditions in several spots in Virginia, the Carolinas and along the East Coast.
Forecasters urged people who have respiratory illnesses, the elderly and children to reduce prolonged or heavy outdoor exertion.
New York, the most populous city in the United States, was listed on Wednesday morning as No. 6 on a list of major cities around the world with the worst air quality, according to IQAir.com, a website that tracks global pollution.
POWER OUTAGES
In western Tennessee and Kentucky, about 90,000 homes and businesses were without power after several rounds of prolific thunderstorms knocked down power lines and trees across the area overnight and into Wednesday morning, according to .
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
