Temperatures around the nation, as well as the state and city reached record highs during the past three days, with Eugene setting new record highs at 101 degrees Saturday, 105 degrees
Sunday and matching the previous record of 100 degrees Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
Temperatures are expected to begin to cool off today – part of a trend that will continue through the weekend, said weather service meteorologist Rodger Nelson. The current conditions can be traced to barometric pressure holding cooler weather out of the area.
“We have a pretty strong area of high pressure that’s holding steady over our area,” Nelson said. “It’ll be a little bit before that begins to slide south.”
The Portland Weather Forecast Office has issued several severe weather warnings for the Eugene area in the past three days. Tyree Wilde, a warning coordination meteorologist with the Portland bureau, said a severe thunderstorm hit a relatively rural area of Lane County on Sunday causing an unknown amount of damage. The office has also issued advisories for excessive heat, which warns people in the region to take precautions against hot weather.
Betsy Meredith, a Lane County Public Health nursing supervisor, said that especially the elderly and young children should be sure to keep hydrated and keep cool.
“Even those of us who are healthy can be affected very adversely if we don’t cover our heads and take care when it’s too hot,” he said.
Jeanne Seelye, a charge nurse at Sacred Heart Medical Center’s emergency room, said the hospital had admitted approximately 36 to 48 patients and had diagnosed approximately 10 heat-related cases over the weekend.
A spokeswoman for McKenzie Willamette Hospital in Springfield said the hospital had no serious heat-related illnesses or deaths to report except for some minor cases of dehydration.
Seelye said residents should drink a lot of water and avoid prolonged sun exposure, noting that the hospital had treated patients with blistering second degree burns.
The recent heat wave follows the June launch of the new Heat Health Watch/Warning System for Portland’s National Weather Service bureau. The system also covers population centers throughout the Willamette Valley including Eugene, Wilde said.
“Excessive heat is the top weather-related killer in the U.S., causing more fatalities per year than floods, lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes, winter storms or extreme cold,” David L. Johnson, director of the National Weather Service, said in a press release.
Wilde said Portland is the 15th metropolitan area in the nation to implement the new warning system, which he said gives far more accurate extreme heat predictions.
“We used to have a simple index of highs and lows and humidity,” he said. “This (new system) uses statistics. It’s actually a very complicated algorithm.”
The new system crunches numbers from historical weather data and statistics on heat-related illness and death to better project potentially fatal weather.
The goal is to give residents as much warning as possible.
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