You've heard the saying: At least it's a dry heat. That might be true when comparing 90 degree temperatures in Arizona to Texas or Florida, but when dealing with truly extreme heat, hot is hot.
With more than two weeks with temperatures above 110 degrees, ABC Arizona meteorologist Jorge Torres talks with the team about the impacts of this record-breaking heat wave on the people, the power grid, and everyday life in Phoenix.
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About the Across the Sky podcast
The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team:
Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.
Episode transcript
Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:
Hello, everyone. I'm meteorologist Sean Sublette. And welcome to Across the Sky, our National Lee Enterprises weather podcast. Lee Enterprises has print and digital news operations in more than 70 locations across the country, including my home base in Richmond, Virginia. I'm joined by my meteorology colleagues from across the sky, Matt Holiner in Chicago, and Kirsten Lang in Tulsa. Our pal Joe Martucci, away from the office today, July 25th.
And we bring that up we often don’t talk about a specific day, but we bring that up because our guest this week is Jose Torres, a meteorologist at the ABC station in Phoenix, Arizona. They have have had more than two consecutive weeks with temperatures of 110 degrees or hotter. And we want to talk about how the city has been handling it, how the people have been handling it.
And, you know, Matt, Kirsten, some of the things you talked about are things that we normally never have to think about here in the central United States or the eastern United States. And some of it was very eye opening.
Yeah. Listen, when he starts to talk about what part of the hospital is actually seeing capacity during this time, because I think that was something that really was surprising to me.
Yeah. And we got into the discussion because, you know, I've seen some people kind of dismiss the heat in Arizona and the Southwest, like, oh, it's just a dry heat and or he's from Texas, but I'm from Texas. So I was like, I want to talk to a guy who has experienced both the heat and humidity and the dry heat and really get an idea of which is worse.
I just the same. So diving in and hearing his description, comparing Texas and Arizona, I really enjoyed that.
Oh, yes, we hear that all the time. Oh, but it's a dry heat, so he'll get into that. I'll talk about power grid, I'll talk about water supply, infrastructure, all that stuff coming up. Or he is a native of Texas, as you alluded to, as a graduate of Texas A&M before he was in Phenix, he worked on the air in El Paso and Albuquerque.
So let's get right to our conversation with Jorge Tourists. Meteorologist Abc15 in Phenix, Arizona.
Jorge, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this brutal heat you've had in Arizona and in Phenix in particular. First off, I want to talk about Phenix. For people who aren't from around Phenix and Arizona and the Southwest, they had this idea. Well, of course, it's hot. It's Phenix. But but talk a little bit about how it is different this year, both in scope and how long this heat wave has been going on.
Yeah, shot. So a lot of people outside of Phenix, the Valley in Arizona think of Phenix as a brutally place which for most the summer it is. The difference this year is the longevity of this excessive heat wave. Now, we actually have to start with the beginning of the year. What it was a cooler and