Transcripts

SPEAKER: After a late starting and fairly mild summer, Minnesotans are getting a real blast of heat this week, and it's breaking records. The mercury is expected to be well into the 90s again today. At the Twin Cities airport yesterday, the thermometer hit 97, smashing a record last set when some of today's baby boomers were still in diapers. But as Matt Sepic tells us, the heat is not keeping folks away from the State Fair or from school.

MATT SEPIC: The crowd trudging down Dan Patch Avenue in the mid afternoon, sun, wearing sweat-soaked ball caps, melting snow cones in hand wasn't as big as on opening day. But it was still respectable. Some stepped off the steaming asphalt and beelined for the closest shade tree. A weary few turned into the medical aid building on the West End of the fairgrounds.

You might think with weather like this, the doctors and nurses here would be overwhelmed with people passing out from heat stroke. But most people in the building were there to enjoy a few minutes in the air conditioning with a cool glass of water. Matt Simpson, Deputy Chief of the Saint Paul Fire department says there's been no uptick in heat-related illnesses at the state fair. He says on Sunday, medical staff saw 80 people, mostly for minor problems, and only four of those people needed to go to the hospital. Unlike the temperature, Simpson says the number of sick cases is average.

MATT SIMPSON: We actually brought one additional ambulance in just to prepare for that additional heat potential. But we haven't seen that influx in our transports yet, which has been really good for us.

MATT SEPIC: Day five of the fair was also day one of the school year across the river in Minneapolis. Most of the district's buildings are air-conditioned, but a dozen and a half are not. It's 3:00 o'clock at Patrick Henry High School in North Minneapolis, and 18-year-old Senior Meng Thao is glad to be out of the stuffy school and outside, and can exactly call it, fresh air. An old brick building holds in the heat like a pizza oven on a sweltering day, and Thao says one classroom on the top floor of the building felt especially miserable even in the morning.

MENG THAO: We got free water from the district. So that was a plus. And then that the teachers popped open the windows.

MATT SEPIC: Did they have fans going?

MENG THAO: Yes, a lot.

MATT SEPIC: Thao, captain of his tennis team, said practice was canceled because of the heat. While the kids at Patrick Henry said, give me AC or give me the day off, teacher Matthew Muir says everyone in the building handled the heat just fine.

MATHEW MUIR: If it did anything, it made them more complacent because it was too hot to do anything else than just to sit there and listen to your teacher. So it was actually a really nice first day of school.

MATT SEPIC: While the teachers and students at Patrick Henry High didn't have the luxury of air conditioning, it seems everyone else in the Twin Cities metro who did had it cranked up to 11. That caused some trouble for the folks at Xcel Energy who've been playing a bit of whack-a-mole fixing rolling blackouts. Part of South Minneapolis went dark for a few hours Sunday night, and Excel's website reported several thousand outages at various times during the day yesterday. Xcel Spokeswoman Mary Sandok says, the supply of electricity isn't the problem. But she says, with all the demand from air conditioners, sometimes bottlenecks crop up in the equipment that sends the juice that last mile to your home.

MARY SANDOK: Mechanical equipment can sometimes break down when it's in an overload situation, and that's what will happen in excessive heat situations on our electricity system.

MATT SEPIC: Sandok says you can help reduce demand by turning up the temperature on your thermostat and running appliances at night. Excessive heat warnings remain in effect for the southern third of Minnesota, including the Twin Cities through tonight. Highs in the lower 90s are expected by m which relatively speaking, may feel like a bit of relief. Matt Sepic, Minnesota Public Radio News.