Eastern U.S. Endures a Sweltering Day

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Commuters up and down the East Coast sweated on their way to work Wednesday and others stayed close to fans and swimming pools as the temperature and humidity climbed back up to heat wave levels after a night of little relief.

In the stifling subway tunnels, there was no air conditioning on three cars of the train Sayed Bukhari rode into Manhattan.

"People were crying," Bukhari said.

The National Weather Service posted heat advisories and warnings from Maine to Oklahoma. Triple-digit temperatures were forecast Wednesday along the East Coast as far north as parts of Maine and New Hampshire.

By 11 a.m., the heat index at Washington's Reagan National Airport was 103 — a combination of the 94-degree heat and 51 percent humidity — and up north in Boston thermometers read 93, for a heat index of 101, the national Weather Service said. The temperature at Newark, N.J., already had hit 95.

Even before dawn, the temperature was already above 80 in Nashua, N.H. New York's LaGuardia Airport still had 92 degrees at midnight and eased only to 86 degrees by 6 a.m., the weather service said.

Great moments in public transportation.