The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 119, No. 29, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 16, 2009 Page: 4 of 32
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THURSDAY 1 S JULY 2DD9
NEWS PAGE
THE CANADIAN RECORD
How hot is it? Triple-digit temperatures
threaten to break 11-year-old record
Triple digit temperatures lit up Canadian's
weather gauges last Wednesday like a belated
Fourth of July firecracker, and persisted for
a week until a brief respite arrived yesterday
morning n the form of partially cloudy skies
and a smattering of rain that provided little
relief. By mid-afternoon, the temperature had
rebounded to 100 and was expected to continue
climbing.
Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle residents
were forewarned last week when the National
Weather Service issued heat advisories warn-
ng of "unseasonably high" temperatures for
the next seven days. They were not exaggerat-
ing.
Last week's 100-plus degree temperatures
began with a relatively mild 102 on Wednesday
before rocketing to 112 on Thursday and 110 on
Friday. Temperatures on Saturday and Sun-
day topped out at 106 before dropping to 104
and 105 Monday and Tuesday and dipping back
down to a balmy 100 on Wednesday afternoon.
Betty Talley—who with her late husband,
Bonn:!! Farrar photo of 118 degree heat
Shea Burns, manager of Canadian s munici-
pal swimming pool, said this week she had
been surprised by the lack of impact scorching
temperatures have had on her admissions. "It's
not been busy at all,"Burns said, "probably be-
cause mostpeople are smarter than we are and
stayed inside where it's air conditioned." In
fact, Burns —who compared last week's heat
and wind to a convection oven—said she's ac-
tually had complaints about the water, which is
kept at 86-degrees, being too cold. Still, Burns
was surprised when things didn't pick up last
week when the temperature hit 110—and by
some accounts, even higher, as Bonnie Farrar
noted in this photo (above) takenwhile waiting
to get a sno-cone at Doxi's last week. Farrar
swears her temperature gauge hit 120 before it
pegged out, but said her friends in other states
complained about 100-degree temperatures.
"If they only knew!"she said.
John, began keeping
Canadian's weather re-
cords twenty years ago
this month—reported
that last Thursday's 112
degree peak was the
highest she has ever re-
corded. The closest she
had ever come was 111
degrees, posted on June
25,1994.
Even so, this is hardly
the worst heat wave Tal-
ley has recorded in her
two decades of weather
watching. In 1994, she
posted 24 days of 100-
plus temperatures. In
2000, the mercury rose
to triple digits 32 days,
and in 2001,30.
But the granddaddy
of all scorchers occurred
over a five-month pe-
riod in 1998, when Talley
charted 100-plus tem-
peratures for 46 days $perry•family of Flomont seeks respite from Tuesday's heat in the relatively cool waters of the Canadian River. Catty
a oge er. i ana lan was ^perry said she and her children—Gage, Cash, Savannah, Blame and friend Kaison Hubbard—have been visiting
not alone in. its suiicr~ "
. . " their father, an employee at Williams Welding, this week, and happened upon the local swimming hole by happy ac-
liiQ* During tnG suiymigi*
f iqqq i oo a f cident. The Record photographer found them swimming among the minnows and perch in the shade of the Canadian
OI J-t/t/o 3il0n6t —do Cl3iVS OX -y~% • tt« j T-« . j rn i pj
100+ temperatures were R™r Highway Bridge Tuesday afternoon.
recorded in the Texas and
Oklahoma Panhandles—eight of them back-
to-back.
That heat wave, and the accompanying se-
vere drought, affected an area from Texas and
Oklahoma east to the Carolinas. It is blamed
for at least 200 deaths and caused from $6 bil-
lion to $9 billion in damages to the agriculture
and ranching industries.
It even earned honorable mention on the
Amarillo's National Weather Service list of
"Top 10 Weather Events of the 20th Century."
That list includes such chart-toppers as the
Dust Bowl of the 1930s, during which the Pan-
handles suffered their longest period of heat
and drought and posted five of the ten warmest
years on record, and the tornado of April 1947,
which destroyed Glazier, very nearly decimat-
ed Higgins, and remained on the ground for 5
hours and 20 minutes, carving out a path from
White Deer, Texas to St Leo, Kansas and 1.11-
ing 68 people.
No one died during Canadian's recent heat
wave, though some may have wished they had.
Hemphill County Courthouse employees found
themselves without air conditioning Monday
morning, and literally limped through the next
two days with fans and buckets of ice. Only
those few with offices on the top floor—which
runs or: its own cooling system—were spared.
Hemphill County Tax Assessor Collector
Debbie Ford rated the misery index as pretty
high—until she thought about the American
troops serving in Iraq, where highs forecast
for the next seven days range from 110 degrees
to 114 and the chance of precipitation is a con-
sistent 0 percent. That's when Ford said she
quit whining.
Although he has heard few reports of heat-
related illnesses, Hemphill County Hospital
administrator Robert Ezzell said air condi-
tioning breakdowns at the EMS building and
the physicians' clinic have kept his staff scram-
bling. One particular concern has been keeping
drugs stored at the proper temperature. "The
heat really takes its toll," said Ezzell.
Logan Coffee, owner of Coffee Heat & Air,
said the record-breaking heat has kept him and
his employees running very hard. "It's good for
business," he admitted, "but bad for my body."
Coffee said his phone has been ringing
steadily—on average, about 15 heat-related
calls a day. The most frequently voiced com-
plaint is that the air conditioner cannot keep up
with the outside heat. He offers homeowners
one preventive maintenance tip:
"Kill the breaker to the outdoor unit and
hose it down," Coffee said. "That will keep the
compressor running cool in the hot weather."
Xcel Energy reported some outages re-
lated to the high heat last week, and urged its
customers to use energy wisely between the
peak hours of 4 and 7 p.m. "This is the time
when we sometimes experience outages be-
cause of overloaded transformers," said Xcel's
Media Relations specialist Wes Reeves. "The
best tips to prevent these types of outages are
to gradually turn down air conditioning ther-
mostats, use box and ceiling fans, and put off
Rain on Ma i falls ma nly in vain
chores that use high-energy appliances until it
gets a bit cooler outside."
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Brown, Laurie Ezzell. The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 119, No. 29, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 16, 2009, newspaper, July 16, 2009; Canadian, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth252758/m1/4/: accessed July 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hemphill County Library.