Remember this weekend, specifically Saturday night, when the air actually felt almost cool due to a gentle breeze and The Weather having returned to its senses? Well, your memories are all you have now so hold on tight: This week kicks off with another heat wave, and while it currently looks less severe than the first of the summer, it is still the second scorcher within two weeks.
According to the National Weather Service, we can expect temps to creep all the way up to 90 and beyond this afternoon: The peak should come around 2 p.m., when heat and humidity combine to make you feel like you're melting in a 93-degree slow cooker. There's also a "minimal risk" of thunderstorms between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., which may give way to relentlessly sweltering night temps: The heat index may not get any cooler than 85 degrees by midnight, with humidity around 68 percent. Nope! But also, unfortunately, very much a yep.
Tuesday's temps may peak (and hold) around 94 degrees by about 3 p.m., giving way to overnight heat indices in the low 80s. Granted, we may get (and likely sleep through) an arguable respite tomorrow morning, when the low bottoms out at 77 around 5 a.m. But we may also see more hot storms tomorrow night: A small chance of rain from 10 p.m. through Wednesday (I regret to report that this becomes a likelihood from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m.) and into Thursday, accompanied by a full chance of thunderstorms. Unfortunately, this sky tantrum might not exhaust itself until late Thursday morning, at which point it will (at least) not be as hot: Wednesday brings a low of 75 and a maximum heat index of about 88, with temps dropping to—you love to see it—72 overnight. Thursday morning may wallow in the low-to-mid 70s before we get a real feel in the 80s that afternoon. But the mini heat wave (in NYC, that means three consecutive days of above-90-degree weather, so we are right on the line here) will at least be behind us.
In the interim, however, your friendly neighborhood power company, Con Edison, urges you to take precautions to avoid another mass blackout. If you can, use fans instead of air conditioning units, but definitely make sure your AC filters are clean to amp up efficacy. Unless you have pets, make triple sure to turn off the AC when you leave the house, and when you're home, run it at the highest temp you can handle. And close your dang curtains! The less energy we use, the less likely we are to overload the grid and plunge pockets of NYC into a suffocatingly hot, dark hell. Unless Con Ed, now known to be chronically unprepared for precisely this situation, just decides to turn off the power again. In which case, see you out on the fire escape for an extended heat dumping session.
