Icon through the years Solar eclipse guide 😎 Previous US disasters Play to win 🏀
WEATHER

Summer swelter: Heat wave scorches from coast to coast

Doyle Rice
USA TODAY

Yes, it's summer, and it's supposed to be hot, but this is a bit on the extreme side.

Fairgoers Patricia Speed, of Enterprise, left, and her friend Beverly Lee, center, and others try to cool down in the pavilion at Founders Square at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Miss., Wednesday, July 29, 2015.

As of 2 p.m. ET Wednesday, 110 million Americans in at least 35 states were sweltering under a temperature of least 90 degrees, according to WeatherBell meteorologist Ryan Maue.

About 35 million people were enduring a heat index of at least 100 degrees, he said. (Most of that group was also in the first group.) The heat index is what it feels like outside when both temperature and humidity are factored in.

Some of the worst heat was around Memphis, where heat index readings of 111 to 113 degrees were recorded, Maue said.

At the Memphis International Airport, "you don't have any shade or anything out here," airfield worker Charlie Douglass told the Commercial Appeal on Wednesday. "All you've got is the heat of the sun reflecting up off the concrete."

Few record highs are expected, but it's still miserably hot out there. In New York City, subway riders were comparing where the hottest platform in the city was, WABC-TV meteorologist Amy Freeze tweeted. One claimed that the A-train line had a temperature of 122 degrees.

Getting rid of the heat will be a slow process: A series of fronts will gradually trim humidity and temperatures across the Midwest and into the Appalachians starting later this week and into the middle of August, according to AccuWeather long-range expert Paul Pastelok.

No relief from the swelter is forecast for the Deep South, however, Pastelok said.

Parts of the Desert Southwest and interior California are also enduring triple-digit heat Wednesday, though the humidity is much lower than in the eastern and southern U.S.

Meanwhile, in International Falls, Minn., the mid-afternoon temperature was "just 62 degrees," where "it feels like fall," tweeted Ian Burns, a resident of the northern Minnesota city.

Featured Weekly Ad