About 100 million Americans were under hot weather advisories as a blistering heat wave dragged on for a fifth day Friday and the nation approached its first summer weekend.
While New England was to finally see a return to cooler weather — a welcome shift for a region where the unusually early spell of heat set records and led officials to declare heat emergencies — heat was continuing to rise to dangerous levels in the mid-Atlantic states and elsewhere in the country.
The swelter was real Friday. By early afternoon, New York City reached temperatures it hadn’t measured in almost two years.
Central Park hit 94 degrees Friday, the hottest mark the Belvedere Castle weather station has observed since Aug. 9, 2022. Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey climbed to 100 degrees, the first triple digits recorded at the site since Aug. 9, 2022, and only the 15th time the airport has seen 100 in June.
Over the next couple of days, some locations could see the highest temperatures they have experienced in years.
In Washington, D.C., and other cities along the Interstate 95 corridor, temperatures may exceed 100 degrees. If Washington hits 100, it will be the first time the nation’s capital has been that hot since Aug. 15, 2016.
The heat index, a measure of how conditions feel with humidity factored in, could reach 103 degrees or higher in Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky and Ohio on Friday. Arizona in particular was expecting brutally high temperatures: The heat index in the cities surrounding Phoenix was forecast to reach 113 degrees, the highest in the country.
But forecasters said these Arizona cities were not threatened by the heat as much as some parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes regions, specifically Indiana and Ohio, as well as parts of Illinois, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where people are less used to such extreme temperatures at this time of year.
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