Caution: Heat danger

Withering heat and humidity this weekend will likely leave many people desperate for cold air – and some area workers sweating to provide it.
“The past two days my phone has been ringing off the hook,” Tim Owens, owner of Waynesboro-based Owens Heating and Air, said Friday during a break from installing a new air conditioner. “I’ve gotten 30 or 40 calls today alone.”
Even as he works to keep customers cool, Owens has to be careful not to get overheated himself.
“Sometimes we get lucky and it’s a basement unit,” he said. “But a lot of times it’s an attic. And attics can be severe.”
Much of Virginia, including the Augusta County region, was under a National Weather Service excessive-heat watch Friday. The watch is expected to remain in effect at least until Monday afternoon, as temperatures hover in the mid-90 degree range, said Jerry Stenger, research coordinator for the State Climatology Office at the University of Virginia. Extreme humidity will probably drive the heat index as high as 110 degrees during that period, he said.
“In the next few days, conditions could equal or perhaps exceed some of the daily high temperature records in the area,” he said.
While these hot, muggy weather conditions would be expected in July or August, they are unusual this early in the year, Stenger said, which might increase the risk of heat-related illnesses: The abrupt heat wave might catch some people’s bodies off guard, because people typically acclimate to increasingly intense summer heat as the season progresses, he said.
“Coming on the heels of the nice weather we’ve had in recent weeks, this certainly comes as a shock to the system,” he said.
That makes common-sense precautions such as drinking lots of fluids even more important, said Kim Craig, director of Emergency Services at Augusta Medical Center. Whenever possible, people should stay in cool places with circulating air during the hottest parts of the day, and avoid alcohol, she said. 
Hot weather puts children and the elderly at particular risk, Craig said.
“If you’ve got an elderly parent or friend, you need to be checking on them and making sure their home or apartment is cool and that that they have access to circulating air,” she said.
Waynesboro resident Tammy Fisher, 40, said she copes with the weather by taking her two kids to the city pool in Ridgeview Park on a daily basis, and by cranking up her house’s air conditioner. Neither option is available to backpacker Joe Peterlin, 44, from Cleveland, Ohio, who was passing through Waynesboro on Friday on his way up the Appalachian Trail.
“This is definitely the hottest it has been yet,” said Peterlin, who started his trek April 8 in Georgia. “You just drink lots of water and slow down a little bit.”