'We were just cooked': The heat wave that gripped the American heartland

In July 1954, snow was in the forecast for Kansas City, Missouri, despite the triple-digit heat that gripped the city.

The road-buckling heat had caused a city weather beacon to malfunction and forecast snow, an old clipping of the St. Louis Post Dispatch read.

During the 1954 Midwestern heat wave, triple-digit temperatures enveloped the heart of the nation from the last week of June to the first week of September during a time when air conditioning was still relatively new. Across a significant portion of 11 states, from eastern Colorado to South Carolina, the heat wave refused to let up. However, parts of the Midwest seemed to be the center of the heat.

Record-breaking heat ripples through Midwest

"We were just cooked," 83-year-old Frances Sanner of downstate Union County recounted to OutdoorIllinois Online of the Department of Natural Resources, which dubbed July 14, 1954, "the hottest day ever." She and her husband had been living in an apartment in St. Louis that summer.

"If they could find someplace, a basement, a cellar, a cellar at a relative's house, they would go there," Sanner said. "On July 14, when it was 115 in St. Louis, you absolutely couldn't stand to be inside. It was actually cooler out on the sidewalk."

Across the river, East St. Louis, Illinois, saw the mercury rise to 117 degrees on July 14, the highest recorded temperature in the state during the heat wave. The record still stands as the state's all-time high record.

For 22 days throughout the heat wave, the St. Louis Lambert International Airport recorded temperatures of at least 100 degrees. Kansas City recorded seven daily record highs, which were reached between July 11 and 19. Four of those records were reached consecutively, on July 11 through July 14.

Earlier during the month, as the heat was building, spectators at the Kansas City Zoo reportedly watched a group of animals led by an ostrich run for the lake at the middle of the habitat after being released from their indoor enclosures, according to a newspaper clipping from the Kansas City Times.

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The city of Chicago started the month of June with five consecutive days on which the highs failed to break out of the 60s, according to the Chicago Tribune, but the cool air didn't last for long.

On June 13, a Chicagoan identified as Mrs. John Hanssen felt her building shake. Just outside, she witnessed a fresh scar in the pavement. A section of concrete one-and-a-half feet wide and 18 feet long had buckled on the fifth consecutive day of 90-plus degree weather, according to an article from The Chicago Tribune.

The year is also remembered for a deadly thunderstorm-induced seiche that slammed into the lakefront the morning of June 26. The 8- to 10-foot high wave crashed across the Chicago shoreline, following a squall line that had moved through the city earlier, according to the Tribune.

While the heat wave occurred around a time when affordable air conditioning would be available, it was still new enough that it was not a widespread commodity, according to Dr. Nancy Westcott, who worked as a weather and climate researcher for the Illinois State Water Survey, in her publication "The Prolonged 1954 Midwestern U.S. Heat Wave: Impacts and Responses."

Westcott is widely recognized as the person who investigated and assembled the climate and weather research around the heat wave. Her work involved collecting newspaper clippings and reports that best tell the human aspect of the event as well as examine the lasting impacts.

All this with no air conditioning

"Only a small percentage of the people had air conditioning even in the wealthy areas, and in the poor areas, no one had air conditioning," AccuWeather Founder and CEO Dr. Joel Myers said, adding that the problem with heat during the summer, particularly without air conditioning, is that "the heat builds up in the buildings, day after day as the cement and concrete and the brick absorbs the heat."

Many hospitals were only partially air-conditioned, which would come to impact even former president Harry Truman, Westcott recounted from Kansas City Times newspaper coverage at the time.

At the age of 70, Truman underwent surgery on June 20, 1954, to have his gall bladder and appendix removed. Afterward, he spent several weeks of recuperation in a Kansas City hospital with no AC as temperatures surged.

During the recovery process, Truman was gifted a box of snowballs by a Cleveland, Ohio, cold-storage plant around the time when temperatures in the city were pushing 109 degrees, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, via Westcott.

The former president returned home in Independence, Missouri, around mid-July after an air conditioning unit was installed in his bedroom.

As for residents who didn't have access to air conditioning, some resorted to boarding up their windows during the day, finding an area in the shade where they could catch the breeze. Some even spent nights sleeping outside, Illinois State Climatologist Dr. Tent Ford told AccuWeather Reporter Emmy Victor.

"I've seen newspaper clippings of families bringing the car to the local park where it's a little bit shaded and sleeping outside because again they can get the wind and a nice gentle breeze to try and cool them down, whereas in homes it's just not the case," Ford said. He noted that this happened especially around the St. Louis area.

Nighttime temperatures offered little relief outside of any breeze that might temper the extent of the heat. Because the daytime had such high temperatures, nighttime temperatures couldn't cool down fast enough, according to Ford, meaning the nighttime lows dwindled only to the low to mid-70s.

"That's just not cool enough for people to open up their doors and windows in their homes and cool down, and so that's what forced people to sleep outside," Ford said.

One story from The Chicago Tribune, provided to AccuWeather by the Chicago History Museum, mentioned that while installations of air conditioning units totaled 37,000 by the end of 1951, the installations were projected to tally 100,000 by the end of 1954 with the increase in sales.

The harbinger of the heat wave

"Heat, tremendous record heat, usually occurs after very dry weather," Myers said.

And 1954, prior to July, had without a doubt been a dry year.

The first half of 1954 was relatively dry for the St. Louis Lambert International Airport, according to its records. In the seven-month period of time from January to July, the airport recorded about 12 inches of rainfall -- less than half of their typical rainfall during that time period, Ford said.

This also meant that the soil would be dry. With no moisture to evaporate, the sun's energy then instead heats the soil, in turn, heating the air.

"Lack of rain begets lack of rain," Myers said. "And the dryness exacerbates the heat because it takes a lot of heat to evaporate water. There's no water to be evaporated from the soil, then the ground heats up much more and in turn heats the air."

Typically an area wrought with moisture, the conditions during July of 1954 had all aligned to set Illinois up for the record-breaking heat -- dry soil, pre-existing drought, a big high-pressure system, southerly flow and, on top of it all, Ford said, topography also played its part in East St. Louis' record heat.

"That station that was measured was down near the river, which means that that hot air can tend to pool, and we tend to see higher temperatures down near the river in St. Louis than we do farther out," Ford said.

Another undercounted death toll

Across the nation more than 300 deaths were attributed to the heat wave, and most of the victims were between 50 to 90 years of age, according to Westcott.

"The death toll was probably much more than reported," Myers said, explaining that the number of people who died from dehydration was probably far greater than those marked down as dying directly from heat exhaustion or heatstroke.

Carl Posey, in an article published by Weatherwise in 1980, estimated around 978 deaths occurred in 1954 from the heat wave, also stressing the point that some fatalities during heat waves may have been associated with other conditions.

"It is not known how many deaths are advanced by heat wave weather -- for example, how many diseased or aging hearts surrender that would not have under better conditions," Posey wrote. "Heat waves bring great stresses to the human body, among the aged and infirm are many who cannot run another summer race."

Myers added that more people die from extreme heat than all other severe weather causes combined, with the one exception being poor air quality.

Will Illinois have another 117-degree day?

It's easy to ask the question: "Will Illinois see such a temperature again?" However, the answer isn't as simple.

"Overall, our temperatures have increased in Illinois, in all seasons over the last 100 years," Ford said. "However, in the summer when we tend to get the most extreme heat, the warming's been disproportionately in minimum temperature."

This means that the state has seen an increase in warmer nights -- nights that have seen temperatures bottom out in the 70s or higher. In fact, he added, the state has seen a slight decrease in the number of days above 100, though it's not because the area overall is cooling down, but rather because the temperatures are capped by an increase in rain. Without the dry air and dry soil, the temperatures haven't been able to reach the extreme 117 degrees.

With that said, that doesn't mean that reaching those temperatures is entirely out of the question. According to Ford, under a high carbon emissions scenario, projections from models consistently indicate an increase in extreme temperatures in the summertime by the end of the century.

"Recent estimates for Illinois from the recent climate change assessment here in the state showed projections indicating a potential for an additional 30 to 50 days above 95 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century," Ford said. But while this certainly increases the chances of seeing very high temperatures, he added that because it's so extreme to see temperatures of 115 degrees or above in the state, that it's difficult to assess whether the specific risk of reaching that temperature once more is also increasing.

However, under a low carbons emissions scenario, an alternative scenario where carbon emissions are curbed in 10 to 20 years from now and those levels sustained through the end of the century, Ford said models then show a "significant reduction" in the projected number of very hot days and very warm nights.

"It is important to indicate that that projected increase in extreme temperatures is very sensitive to actions between now and the end of the century," Ford said.

Additional reporting by AccuWeather Reporter Emmy Victor.

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