Heat Waves

Heat Waves

A heat wave is a prolonged period of excessively hot weather, which may be accompanied by high humidity. While definitions vary, a heat wave is measured relative to the usual weather in the area and relative to normal temperatures for the season. Temperatures that people from a hotter climate consider normal can be termed a heat wave in a cooler area if they are outside the normal climate pattern for that area. The term is applied both to routine weather variations and to extraordinary spells of heat which may occur only once a century. Severe heat waves have caused catastrophic crop failures, thousands of deaths from hyperthermia, and widespread power outages due to increased use of air conditioning.

Read more about Heat Waves:  Definitions, How They Occur, Health Effects

Famous quotes containing the words heat and/or waves:

    Even if you find yourself in a heated exchange with your toddler, it is better for your child to feel the heat rather than for him to feel you withdraw emotionally.... Active and emotional involvement between parent and child helps the child make the limits a part of himself.
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    the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies
    lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold. Broken,

    beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up
    they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising
    in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.
    William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)