NEW YORK — A heat wave scorched the East Coast with another day of triple-digit temperatures Saturday, forcing power authorities to throttle back the voltage to protect straining electrical grids as residents cranked up the air conditioning.
Temperatures reached 105 degrees in Atlantic City, N.J., 102 in Baltimore, nearly 101 in Washington, and 100 in Philadelphia and at New York’s Kennedy airport, but humidity made it feel hotter in most places across the region.
In New York’s Times Square, tourists crowded into patches of shade along a baking Broadway, where Tony Eckinger, 34, was selling spray bottles with fans attached for $30. He had bought them at a drugstore earlier in the day for $15. “All the stores here are sold out,” Eckinger said. “Everybody’s trying to keep cool.”
The heat will begin to ease today but will remain in the 90s, National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Pollina said.
The bubble of hot air developed over the Midwest last week and caused more than a dozen deaths as it moved eastward. As of Saturday, the medical examiner’s office in Chicago listed heat stress or heat stroke as the cause of death for eight people.
In south-central Pennsylvania, authorities said a 63-year-old man in York died Friday of overheating in an apartment that hit 110 degrees.
