It’s another day of excessive heat in Central Texas.
Temperatures are expected to go into the triple digits — again. And the heat index, which is a combination of the heat and humidity levels, is expected to hit 120.
The National Weather Service said there’s high pressure in the atmosphere right now, making each day feel hotter and hotter.
“Since you don't get any change in the air over the area, it just allows it [the heat] to sort of bake day after day after day,” NWS meteorologist Bob Fogarty said. “So it warms up a little bit each day, and then the high pressure itself tends to make things warmer because air sinks under high pressure. … That's sort of where we are now. We're in the middle of it.”
The NWS said Georgetown saw a sudden heat burst on Saturday, where the temperature jumped from 82 to 99 degrees in just two hours.
It appears as if Georgetown just experienced a heatburst over the last 2 hours. At midnight, the temperature was 82 and it skyrocketed to 99 at 1:10AM! See the time series plot from the TX mesonet. Humidity dropped to as low as 17% as well. #txwx pic.twitter.com/4ptB3WyxNF
— NWS Austin/San Antonio (@NWSSanAntonio) June 17, 2023
Fogarty said he expects the heat to ease toward the weekend.
Austin Energy responded to two equipment malfunctions that led to outages over the weekend. The public utility said they were caused by demand and high temperatures.
"You've kind of got a double impact there where you've got a lot of load — meaning a lot of current — going through an electrical distribution system, specifically wires and circuits,” Matt Mitchell, a spokesperson with Austin Energy, said. “And then you also have extremely high temperatures that are sustained throughout the day and into the days in procession."
The high temperatures caused some of the system to malfunction, Mitchell said, and "there's no real way to weatherize" that equipment.
To keep your home cool without running up your energy bill, Mitchell recommends keeping your blinds down, your doors shut and your lights off. Use fans instead of the A/C when you can.
Austin has opened cooling centers at its parks and recreation facilities and libraries for residents who need to get out of the heat. More information on that can be found here.
