Facts you may not have known about this week’s heat wave

• Reprints

At 304 pounds Malcom Wooldridge of Elgin doesn't let the heat stop him from a five-mile jog through Elgin. The defensive lineman for the Chicago Slaughter of the Indoor Football League is training for tryouts of the Canadian Football League. Running in the heat is "horrible," Wooldridge said, " I don't even let my kids go outside and swim in this heat." July 21, 2011 | Michael Smart~Sun-Times Media

Related Documents

 

Article Extras

Related Stories

• Humidity, pollution take toll on sick, healthy alike

Updated: October 29, 2011 12:44AM

This sweltering hot spell certainly meets the criterion marking the official dog days of summer. For one local college student, these also could be called dolphin days.

Ryan Ehman, a junior education major and Golden Apple Scholar at Illinois State University, spends part of his time away from campus working as Splash, the mascot at the Dundee Township Park District’s Dolphin Cove Family Aquatic Center in Carpentersville.

As fate would have it, Ehman was off and not available for comment Thursday, the apparent apex of the current steam bath-like stretch of weather.

So no one at the center was wearing the fleece suit and molded head. The outfit was at the dry cleaners, where it’s taken once a week.

Ehman has been playing the part for three of the four years Dolphin Cove has had its mascot. In fact, there was a birthday party at the pool for Splash last Saturday, with cake, not tuna.

“If Ryan were here — if he put on the costume at all — it would be for a very limited period of time, maybe 5 to 10 minutes, if just to wave to the kids,” said Helen Shumate, the DTPD director of marketing and communications.

Shumate noted that staff makes sure Ehman stays well-hydrated, drinking water or Gatorade when he is dressed as Splash. And Ehman takes frequent showers while on mascot duty, Shumate said.

As for the lifeguards working Thursday — when temperatures hit 90 by 9 a.m. — Mike Rice of Sleepy Hollow said he would go through six or seven 12-ounce bottles of water during his shift and put on sunscreen twice.

“It’s not so bad. We rotate shifts every 20 minutes, have safety breaks every hour, try to stay in the shade, and monitor how we feel,” Rice said.

Aquatic supervisor Tim Kopka said the 31 people on duty Wednesday went through a combined 20 gallons of water and two 8-ounce tubes of sunscreen. Kopka anticipated the same tallies Thursday, when another 1,000 guests were expected to visit the water park. A variety of icy treats were selling well at the concession stand.

Criminal behavior

While it’s obvious that pools do good business in hot weather, the evidence is inconclusive, at best, whether crime rises with higher temperatures or languishes in the heat.

“While there may be a correlation between heat and crime, it’s hardly a true predictor of criminal behavior,” Elgin Police Lieutenant Ana Lalley said. “There are just too many variables. It is true that the Elgin Police Department is busier during the summer months, but it’s not necessarily because of the warm temperatures. Daily activities may have increased, leaving people more open to the potentiality of crime.

“The department has not experienced a decrease in certain crimes when temperatures top 90 degrees or more. If hot temperatures were a true indicator of crime, we could minimize some of those crimes before they occurred.”

Based on a quick overview of the research, Elgin Community College associate psychology professor Shawn Mikulay noted that while there is “agreement on the basic ‘heat effect,’ where aggression and violence increase with increasing temperature, there is not agreement on a ‘high heat effect,’ where very high temperatures decrease aggression and violence.”

“Some studies support it while other studies fail to find the effect,” he said. “It does make theoretical sense that there will be a temperature level where it is just too hot to fight, and thus this week should see less violence than earlier in the summer. But earlier in the summer, the days were hot enough to trigger violence; the nights were not. This week, the days may be so hot as to reduce violence, while the nights will be well within the range to activate the heat effect.

“Even with a ‘high heat effect,’ it can just as easily be predicted that the heat-related violence will simply shift until after dinner time.”

Weather portions

During a good portion of this week, cooling down at night has been a relative term, with temperatures only dropping into the high 70s and low 80s along with high humidity levels.

Northern Illinois University climatologist David Changnon explained that with heat and high humidity come high dew points, the minimum temperature at which air can no longer hold all the moisture in it. Dew points and actual temperature are the factors used in the heat index, which lately has been over 100 degrees.

Conditions have been such that for those with no air conditioning and those who spend a great deal of time outside, sweat can’t evaporate to cool the body, meaning “there is no ability for a body” to regain control of itself, Changnon said.

That’s why even people in great shape should avoid jogging outside during midday heat, and even swimmers should be cautious about dehydration, Changnon said.

Things could be worse, he noted. Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas have been hitting daytime highs well above 100 for weeks.

With things here in northern Illinois mostly dry, the area’s bounteous corn crop probably has been putting out significantly less moisture than in past years. Changnon has conducted research indicating that the high per-acre corn crop yields are contributing to the spikes in humidity, making heat waves here since 1990 more sultry than earlier ones.

Of course, Chicago has always been a city of extreme weather. Changnon’s father was born in 1928 in southern Illinois and told him stories about the summers of 1934, 1936 and 1954, which are among the hottest on record in the state.

Back in the ’30s, people would start work very early in the morning, then go back to work after 4 p.m. Coal mining was considered a desirable job, in part because the mines were a cool 50 degrees or so, Changnon was told. People kept themselves cool with blocks of ice put in front of fans.

“And people moved slowly, with minimal effort the rest of the day. The pace wasn’t like we’re accustomed to today,” he said.

Even in the early 1950s, Changnon said, his father was working in an office at the University of Illinois in Champaign where, with no air conditioning, sweat would pour onto paperwork. So employees would start early in the morning, then head back into the office in the early evening.

To keep cool, “They took a lot of baths and showers,” Changnon said.

Diet tips

If you couldn’t already figure it out from clues above, water is an essential ingredient in your diet, too, especially during heat streaks.

Ginger Sorensen, a registered and licensed dietitian with Sherman Health, noted that while eight 12-ounce glasses of water a day might be ideal, people should at least try to have one or two more glasses than they normally do when temperatures soar.

“Especially if they are active,” Sorensen said.

Beverages with caffeine and alcohol can lead to dehydration. Sorensen said that booze can raise your body’s temperature.

At the same time, eating too many cold foods, such as ice cream and other frozen treats, might actually give you a chill, Sorensen said.

She recommended having lighter meals with a warm and cold mixture and choosing foods with higher water content, such as corn, lettuce, cucumbers, juicy fruits and, of course, watermelon.

As for eating spicy foods to keep cool, Sorensen said there is no hard science to support this being true.

“They may help digestion and make you sweat,” she said. And if you enjoy them, have them, she added.

As for her own dinner, Wednesday Sorensen and her family were having a salad with vegetables from her garden, and chicken cooked on the outdoor grill.

Electricity use

Along with cooking outside, for keeping your home cooler and more energy-efficient, Citizens Utility Board spokesman Jim Chilsen offered a host of tips from the nonprofit.

Under ComEd’s air conditioning cycling program, the company pays you $5 to $10 each summer month to cycle the compressor on and off periodically during extremely hot days. Ameren customers should set thermostat on “energy saver” mode.

CUB also recommends cleaning your AC filters once a month and pulling the shades during the day to keep the sun from baking your home. Vent deflectors can be used to guide cool air throughout the house.

Washing clothes in cold water can save you up to $73 a year. Lowering your water heater temperature to 115 degrees keeps your showers cooler and saves up to $30 a year. And each degree you raise your thermostat or air conditioner this summer results in about 2 percent savings on your next month’s bill.

CUB suggests unplugging appliances you don’t use often and investing in a smart power strip. “Vampire power” — the electricity devoured by appliances that are plugged in but not in use — accounts for up to 70 percent of a device’s energy consumption.

Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs not only use 75 percent less energy, but they generate a lot less heat than incandescents, according to CUB.

CUB recommends that in the summer, use the ceiling fan in the counterclockwise direction. The airflow produced creates a wind-chill effect, making you feel cooler, and it puts less stress on the AC unit, meaning using less power.

“The easiest thing to do is to simply stand under the fan, and if you feel a cool breeze in the summer, you’re running it the right way,” Chilsen said.

Finally, for most consumers, Chilsen said that “on standard electric rate plans, you won’t save any money by running the dishwasher or clothes dryer overnight. True, electricity prices on the market get cheaper during off-peak hours, but standard electric rates charge you a flat rate for the supply. And ComEd’s supply charge only changes by the season,” Chilsen said.

However, using such major appliances overnight may help put less stress on the power grid, “and that’s a good thing, especially during a heat wave,” he said. “There is a program that allows customers to pay an hourly rate for electricity and that can save you money if you’re the right customer. In 2009, customers saved an average of 15 percent.”