Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1901 — HOT WAVE SCORCHES. [ARTICLE]

HOT WAVE SCORCHES.

WHOLECOUNTRY SUFFERS FROM HIGH TEMPERATURE. Blistering Zephyrs Are Felt Over Wide Area—Many Deaths and Prostrations Reported—Great Suffering; ia Cities— Record Broken in Chicago. Reports to the weather bureau in Washington Sunday from pointe throughout the hot wave area showed remarkably high temperatures generally, with little or no rainfall. Some of the high temperatures reported at the bureau were the following: Atlantic City 94 Marquette, Mich. ..96 Boston 92 Memphis 90 Chicago 97 New Orleans ~.,..94 Cincinnati ........96 North Platte, Neb. .92 Davenport, lowa. .98 Omaha 98 Denver 94 Pittsburg 94 Des Moines, 10wa.96 St. Paul 90 Indianapolis 94 Springfield, 111. ...98 Jacksonville 94 Vicksburg, Mi55....90 Kansas City 98 Washington, D. C.. 98 Little Rock 90 St. Louis 100 Special dispatches from various points Indicate that all portions of the country suffered from the extreme heat. At Pittsburg eleven deaths between Saturday night and midnight Sunday are directly traceable to the heat. Within eighteen hours fifty-nine burial permits were issued, the mortality being greatest among children. The normal death rate for the same period would be sixteen. In New York City nineteen persons were killed Sunday by sun stroke, and the list of prostrations was a long one. Of these many cannot recover. Horses died by the hundred. The fact that it was Sunday alone is responsible for the reasonably small number of deaths and prostrations, when the terrific heat ia taken into consideration. The day also saved the horses. Two hundred and fifty died on Saturday, but as not many were in harness Sunday the list killed was small. Philadelphia experienced the hottest Sunday since 1897, the temperature in the streets reaching above 100. Ono death and twenty-five prostrations art recorded. Three deaths occurred Saturday in Lawrence, Mass. At Manchester, N. H., there were three deaths from the heat. Boston reports only one death attributed to heat, but there were many cases of serious prostration. The suffering was terrible among the poor people and the hospitals were crowded to the uttermost. Cleveland experienced the hottest Sunday of the year. One death from sunatroke is reported. Sunday was the hottest June day Chicago has experienced since 1872. Tho temperature in the high-up weather tower rose to 97 degrees and held to this mark for over two hours during the middle of the afternoon. On the street thermometers registered 102 degrees in tho shade. The sizzling period came after a tolerable morning. Midway between 2 and 3 o’clock, the wind shifted from southeast to southwest, and the thermometer went up 13 degrees at a jump. In the history of the government office in Chicago for official weather forecasting and registering, the day will go dowa as a record breaker—for June—with just one exception. That day was June 19, 1872, when the thermometer recorded 98 degrees. While the greater mortality is noticeable in the East, the West and Southwest are suffering from drought. Live stock is .suffering heavily, as wells have dried up and the pastures are bare. At Burlington, lowa, much illness ia traceable to the stifling heat. Frank Dunham, a veteran in the railway mail service, was killed by sunstroke. At Benton, 111., Ambrose Rice, a farmer, demented by the heat, hanged himself. Various Illinois points report a temperature exceeding 100 in the shade.