Heat Wave Threatens Holiday Weekend Festivities; NYC Faces Hottest Day Since 2012

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead, with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec. On Bloomberg Radio.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:32)
Power prices from New York to Virginia surging, a sweltering heat threatens to overwhelm US grids and upend travel for the Independence Day holiday. We just talked about some of the outages that are happening in parts of New York. This dangerous heat wave that is trapping over New York City is also trapping people in the city. For more, I want to bring in Lauren Rosenthal, Bloomberg News weather reporter. She joins us from New York.
You go to your bio page on the Bloomberg terminal and you've written so much about this heat wave just in the last couple of days, Lauren. First, I just want to start with an update on what we're hearing from Con Ed, the utility provider here in the city and then broaden out the conversation to a little bit more about the Northeast. We did hear that some places in the northern part of the city were without power. What's the latest?

**Lauren Rosenthal** (1:15)
Yeah, there were some cuts to homes in the Riverdale neighborhood up in the Bronx while crews work on repairs.
The company has also asked about 89,000 customers in the surrounding area, in city islands, some other parts of the city to cut back on power use. So don't run washers or dryers. Try to limit air conditioner use where possible. So if you have multiple units, like just run one and turn up the thermostat if you can, to reduce stress on the system while they make repairs and try to shore up equipment to get through the heat wave.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:47)
Are we supposed to be doing that everywhere, Lauren, or just in the areas that are?

**Lauren Rosenthal** (1:52)
New York City is under what's called a heat emergency, which means the official advice from city officials is to turn up the thermostat on your cooling system to 78 degrees.
That's if you're a home, that's if you're a business. We'll see how many people actually comply.

**Norah Mulinda** (2:07)
Understandably so.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:08)
I feel like there's some Nobel Prize winning economics paper that could be written about this. Are individuals actually going to make the cuts for the community?

**Norah Mulinda** (2:18)
I mean, I'm walking around outside. I have my phone in my hand and my phone's just on fire, just simply from the heat.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:25)
Not yet saying it's too hot to use. You know that ever happens where the...

**Norah Mulinda** (2:28)
It starts putting off an alert?

**Tim Stenovec** (2:29)
Yeah. Well, the temperature says like you have to lower the temperature of... The screen says you have to lower the temperature of this phone in order to actually use it. Yeah.

**Norah Mulinda** (2:36)
It's just insane. But Lauren, tell us... I think that this could be the hottest day ever that we're about to see, but tell us how this is... How it's been historically.

**Lauren Rosenthal** (2:47)
Yeah. So New York is seeing its hottest day measured in Central Park since 2012
We're probably going to come in shy of the all-time record, but it is for sure the hottest it's been in recent memory indeed in more than a decade. There are some parts of the country closer to the Washington DC area, actually heat and humidity are more intense, believe it or not. And we are getting close to some records around the Washington Reagan International Airport. But for the most part, we're looking at temperatures above 100 degrees for a really large swath of the East Coast, not just today, but also tomorrow, and cooling off slightly for the 4th of July holiday, but honestly not by much.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:27)
Heat dome is the responsible party for this. What is the heat dome and why do I keep hearing about these heat domes?

**Lauren Rosenthal** (3:34)
Yeah. It's what it sounds like. You imagine if you're getting room service, one of those silver dome trays that traps the heat in and keeps your food warm, there is a high pressure system that's gotten stuck over the Eastern US, and it's essentially trapping warm air close to the surface.
We do have a cold front that's on its way coming East. It can cause potentially some severe thunderstorms and it may ease the heat a bit in the coming days. Looking ahead into next week, cooler temperatures are on the way for the East Coast. We will be a little bit closer to what's considered normal for this time of year.