By Dan Verbeck
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-980295.mp3
Kansas City, MO. – Brutally hot weather wrapped Kansas City and surrounding towns today, setting a record of 107 degrees for the date at KCI this afternoon. There is small relief close at hand.
A forecaster at the National Weather Service at the Pleasant Hill, Mo. office pledges that the wave is broken. The question to meteorologist Dan Hawblitzel was, will this kind of heat come back ? He said, looking at the 4 p.m. reading--"No, We're starting to top out right now. KCI actually went down a degree to 106. Downtown, 109, but this time of day the heating is pretty much slowed down or stopped." The forecast for tomorrow brings a relative temperature dip to 98 degrees.
Hawblitzel charted a 4 o clock reading of 110 at Johnson County Executive Airport at Olathe, 108 at Lees Summit, Missouri. Those are official readings for those cities.
The official Kansas City temperature is always recorded at the International Airport, a standard practice in most U.S. cities, says Hawblitzel. With the population bulk positioned miles south of KCI, the downtown airport reading is more taken to heart.
The meteorologist doubts we will have this kind of heat again this year. The hottest ever recorded in Kansas City, he says, was 113 in the 1930's.