ST. LOUIS — The 5 On Your Side Weather Team has issued a Weather Impact Alert for heat and humidity through Thursday. Excessive heat and humidity will be the big story for us this coming week as temperatures continue to rise over the next few days.
An Excessive Heat Warning is in place for the greater St. Louis area and surrounding areas into Thursday evening. Not only will temperatures be a bit hotter each afternoon, but they will struggle to cool down below 80 each morning due to the excessive humidity.
Our dew points the last couple of days have been in the 70s. While this is very humid in itself, it will continue to get even more humid over the next few days. As the heat builds and the two combine, we get our heat index.
As heat continues to build Tuesday and Wednesday, these numbers go up even more.
With heat index readings over 105 for several days in a row, this makes it incredibly hard for the body to cool down and difficult for those with air conditioning to avoid some sort of heat exhaustion.
The biggest impact we will see from the heat is the lack of natural cooling from the humidity in the air. Normally, evaporative cooling naturally allows the body to cool down when you're outside. This becomes much tougher when it's this humid. Heat-related illnesses become much more frequent as people don't take enough breaks in the shade or air conditioning and don't stay hydrated.