Texas Heat
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103 in New Orleans, 104 in Galveston, 105 in Kansas City. It sounds like a lineup of FM radio stations doesn't it? But instead of the hits that keep on coming, it's the September temperatures that keep on rising. Hi I'm Dave Thurlow for The Weather Notebook.

The Labor Day weekend brought the hottest weather that's ever been recorded deep in the heart of Texas. People were laboring just to stay cool on Labor Day and the day after. It got up to 109 in Houston, 111 in San Antonio, and a scorching 112 in Austin.

Now if you've ever felt your shirt plastered to your back like cement, you know how sticky Texas heat can be. But this time the humidity wasn't much of a factor. That's because of the way the atmosphere set up to cause such high readings. Instead of blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico, the winds came mostly from the west and north. That brought air from the drought-stricken Texas prairie right down to the coastline, where it almost never breaks 100. Since the air and the ground were so dry, they heated up much faster than usual. During the afternoon, the relative humidity plunged to as low as15 or 20 percent.

A similar type of thing can happen on the East Coast. There, the hottest, driest weather often comes with a west wind blowing offshore. If the winds are light from the west on a hot day in New England, that's when Boston or Providence is liable to set a record high.

Whether it's humid or parched, you can't do much about 112 degrees except grimace and bear it...or get creative. One Texan reportedly put a sheet of cookie dough on the hood of her car. By that evening, she had cookies--just a little underdone. All she needed was to fry an egg on the sidewalk and she'd have a meal to remember, solar energy courtesy of the Texas Labor Day heat wave of 2000.

Bob Henson from Boulder, Colorado, wrote our show today. We are funded by Subaru, the beauty of all-wheel drive, and by the National Science Foundation.