Officials warn of outdoor activity during heat wave

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Good Hope’s Tyler Byrd takes a dip in an ice bath during Friday night’s game against West Point. Moving kickoff to 8 p.m. didn’t do much to alleviate the heat. First responders kept busy off the field with several heat related calls, while trainers dealt with heat related issues on the field. Play was stopped several times due to players’ legs cramping up.

Temperatures are finally breaking cooler now to more moderate seasonal heat — but for the past week and counting, the Cullman area has found itself in the grip of a sweltering late-August heat wave.

As if on cue for the start of local classes and the return of high school football, the thermometer hovered in the mid and upper 90s all of last week, granting little respite even in the evenings as temperatures descended to still-stifling lows that remained in the 80s, even in the dead of night. Predictably, that meant local EMS crews have seen more than the customary number of cases of heat exhaustion and similar illnesses in recent days — though the persistent warm-up, now gone from the foreseeable forecast, didn’t leave the area significantly the worse for wear.

“EMS did have some heat related calls for sure,” said Cullman EMA director Tim Sartin as temperatures stayed put in the 80s on Monday. “But thankfully, we didn’t see anything worse. With it being a 115 degree heat index on several days last week, that’s exactly what you’re going to expect, and that’s what we saw — nothing tragic or anything that has lasting consequences, but it was a safety concern for anyone who was working or doing athletic activity outdoors.”

Even with the heat abating, north Alabama is seeing the emergence of other seasonal weather concerns as temperatures subside. Tropical Storm Idalia was closing in on the Gulf coast Monday, expected to make landfall later this week in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane — a signal of the typically turbulent stormy season bound for the Deep South as the home stretch of hurricane season approaches.

“This one shouldn’t affect Cullman at all, though it probably could affect south Alabama a little bit,” said Sartin. “We may get some rain out of it, but nothing more. We’ll just have to wait and see as the forecast gets clearer, but it is that time of year.”

Even though the immediate forecast calls for wetter, cooler weather across the next several days, it’s not necessarily a final reprieve before this year’s summer sizzle leaves Cullman County behind for good. “I don’t know if it’s going to be long term, but for this week at least, we’re supposed to have highs in the 80s instead of the upper 90s and those high heat indices into the 100s,” said Sartin. “We’re just enjoying it while we can and hoping for the best.”

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