Millions of Americans face dangerous temperatures as heat wave bears down

By — Geoff Bennett Geoff Bennett By — Jackson Hudgins Jackson Hudgins Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/millions-of-americans-face-dangerous-temperatures-as-heat-wave-bears-down Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Audio Dangerously high temperatures are set to scorch much of the country as a brutal heat wave bears down on the East Coast and Midwest. Hundreds of cities could hit record highs by Friday, when more than 175 million Americans will face either major or extreme heat risk, according to the National Weather Service. Geoff Bennett discussed more with Jeff Berardelli, a meteorologist at WFLA in Tampa Bay. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. Geoff Bennett: Dangerously high temperatures are set to scorch much of the country this week, as a brutal and long-lasting heat wave bears down on the East Coast and Midwest. Hundreds of cities could hit record highs by Friday, when more than 175 million Americans will face either major or extreme heat risk, according to the National Weather Service. For more, we turn now to Jeff Berardelli, meteorologist and climate specialist at WFLA in Tampa Bay. Jeff, welcome back to the program. So the National Weather Service, as we said, described this as a prolonged and extremely dangerous heat today. What should we know as we head into the holiday weekend? Jeff Berardelli, Chief Meteorologist, WFLA-TV: It's going to get worse as we head towards Thursday, Friday, and also into Saturday. We're going to see the potential for a couple of all-time record highs, or at least very close to those record highs. Generally, the I-95 Corridor, that's going to be ground zero for the hottest weather. We could see temperatures max out between 100 and 105. But when you factor in the humidity, there are going to be feels-like temperatures around 110, some places a little bit higher than that, and, again, the worst Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and it starts to get a little better, little, slowly better as we head to Sunday. Geoff Bennett: So give us a sense of the next few days. Walk us through it. Jeff Berardelli: Yes, the next couple of days, actual high temperatures, 95 to as much as 105 degrees. When you factor in the humidity, it feels-like temperatures are going to be about 105 to 110 in some of the hottest cities. And I think, along the I-95 Corridor, we will likely exceed 110 for that heat index. So it is going to be oppressive. Geoff Bennett: Yesterday, there was a heat index of 106 in Chicago, 113 in Milwaukee. We have seen cities like Philly and New York City declare heat emergencies. Put this in perspective for us. How hot are these temperatures compared to average? Jeff Berardelli: Right. So, again, we could see one or two all-time records, but the heat dome or the heat wave is not necessarily unprecedented. But I'd put it somewh