In July 1995, temperatures in Chicago sizzled above 90 degrees for seven straight days and hospitals were overrun with so many patients overwhelmed by heat-induced conditions that emergency rooms at 23 facilities had to shut their doors. More than 700 people died that week because of the scorching weather, according to the Center for Disease Control, and hundreds of other fatalities scattered the rest of the Midwest.
Get ready, Kansas City, because that type of disaster could become all too familiar in coming decades.
Yesterday the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report that suggests: "If our heat-trapping emissions continue unabated, heat waves like these are projected to become routine in Missouri."
Thanks to global warming, it's about to get a hell of a lot hotter in the uncomfortably near future.
In June, the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonpartisan, science-based nonprofit based in Cambridge, Mass., began a series of reports called "Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Midwest." Yesterday, it published a study focused on the Show-Me State -- and the results should make Missourians sweat.
For instance, between 1961 and 1990, the city of St. Louis hit 90 degrees an average of 36 days per year. According to the UCS projection, that sweltering number jumps to 50 days per year by 2040 and a drenching 105 days by the end of the century. By 2050, St. Louis can look forward to extreme heat waves, like the 1995 Chicago disaster that killed hundreds, at least three times every summer.
Kansas City won't fare any better. "Other Missouri cities, such as Kansas City and Springfield will face similar conditions," the report notes.
And what happens when temperatures exceed 90 degrees in a car-clogged Cowntown? Ozone alerts. Already, Kansas City is facing sanctions from the Environmental Protection Agency because, too often during the summer months, smog levels spike to make our air unsafe for all and hazardous for children, the elderly and folks with respiratory conditions. Just wait until 90 degree-days become the summer standard, the report warns.
Those high temperatures will come with torrential rains, too, UCS suggests. "In St. Louis, heavy rainfalls [defined as more than two inches of rain in one day] are projected to increase by more than 40 percent over the next few decades," the study says. "Toward the end of the century, heavy rainfalls are projected to double in frequency."
That's not just an inconvenience, but a costly public problem. Like St. Louis, Kansas City has a serious sewer overflow issue. Douse the streets in two inches of heavy rain and it doesn't take long for raw sewage to bubble up from below. And that shit doesn't smell good in 90-degree heat, either.
Is there still time to reverse the brutal temperatures and flooding rains? Read the full report here.
Comments (0)