Here & Now

Wisconsin Melts Under Heat Wave

Frederica Freyberg:
Conditions are brutal in parts of Wisconsin heading into the weekend. Today, Governor Tony Evers declared a state of emergency for the city of Madison and Dane County due to power outages and extreme heat. The National Weather Service declares southern Wisconsin is in the throes of an excessive heat warning. In the midst of the heat, Evers sent all non-essential state employees in downtown Madison home and the state Capitol closed Friday. That’s because two substation fires at Madison Gas and Electric caused power outages across the downtown. The utility says it is not believed the strain of excessive heat caused the fires and outages. They said it was a mechanical issue. But the cause was under investigation. At the same time, southwest Wisconsin saw roads and highways closed because of flooding after nearly six inches of rain Thursday into Friday.
We check in now with Tim Halbach who is on the phone with the National Weather Service in Milwaukee. And thanks very much for being here.

Tim Halbach:
Yeah, no problem.

Frederica Freyberg:
So the governor declares this state of emergency for Madison and Dane County because how dangerous are power outages in the midst of this kind of extreme hot weather?

Tim Halbach:
Well, everybody really relies on their air conditioning to keep them cool during these times when we have extreme heat like this. It’s pretty rare for us to get to these types of thresholds of heat and that combination of that with the humidity. So people really rely on that air conditioning to keep them cool. So if that goes away, that could be a big issue for people to try to beat the heat.

Frederica Freyberg:
What is your prediction as to actually how hot that heat index, that “feels like” temperature, is going to be Friday into Saturday morning?

Tim Halbach:
Yeah. So for today some of our high temperatures or the temperatures that we’re sitting at right now, there’s a lot of places that are between 90 to 95 degrees for the air temperature, and then on top of that most places have a dew point of around 80, which normally when you get to about 65 to 70 for a dew point, that’s when you start feeling the humidity. It’s very rare for us to get that high. So that combination of the air temperature and the dew point like that is what’s causing the heat index to be so high. And right now some of the measurements we have are the heat index up around 110, 115 degrees. A very dangerous situation we’re looking at right now. We did extend the excessive heat warning for the southern part of the state until tomorrow going into the afternoon. So that includes Dane County as well.

Frederica Freyberg:
Okay. So when the index gets into that range, it’s dangerous even for healthy people.

Tim Halbach:
That’s correct. Yeah. So you don’t want to be doing anything unnecessarily outside. The biggest concern is typically with people that are living on their own that might have health issues that might not have gone and put their air conditioning unit into their window even if they had power. Those are the people we always tell, check on them, your neighbors, your friends or family members that might be living on their own that may not have been able to physically put in that air conditioning unit. So dangerous all around.

Frederica Freyberg:
Meanwhile, it seems like there is potentially some wild weather out there. I’ve seen some tornado watches. Across the border in Minnesota, there appear to be tornado warnings. But also there’s been flooding in southwest Wisconsin. What do you know about the status of that flooding?

Tim Halbach:
So for the flooding, a lot of heavy rain that fell overnight from the La Crosse area through southwestern Wisconsin where they had about four or five inches of rainfall. Storms that just didn’t move and just kept on dropping a lot of rainfall in the same area. So that’s what caused quite a bit of flash flood warnings last night. A lot of the river, the Kickapoo River basin jumped up and will be going into the flood stage, moderate flood stage there as well. So quite a bit of flooding in that portion of the state from the overnight storms.

Frederica Freyberg:
What are we gearing up for over the weekend? More storms? More rain? More heat?

Tim Halbach:
Yeah. The initial concern is for tonight in the northern part of the state. There’s going to be very widespread wind damage and potential for long track tornado set-up up there. So there’s concerns about that severe weather to start off. The heat continues into tomorrow morning and afternoon for the southern part of the state before the cold front finally comes through. That’s why we extended the excessive heat warning for the southern part. We also have a chance for severe thunderstorms as that cold front comes through in the afternoon in that same area. So pretty active stretch going into Saturday. But once we get through that, looks like Sunday through the rest of next week looks to be much more on the calmer side.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Thank you very much for our personal weather update. Tim Halbach out of Milwaukee. Thanks.

Tim Halbach:
No problem.