Weather turns infernal
Staff writer
Marion was a ghost town Monday afternoon. Fierce afternoon sun kept anyone with an air conditioner inside, as the late afternoon temperature hit a record high for the date.
It hit 106 degrees in Marion, according to the Weather Underground service, and 104 according to Kansas Mesonet. Car temperature gauges popped higher.
But work went on. Hot workers were those who had the outside jobs: repairing roads, working on roofs, building new homes.
Ben Shields, 46, was laboring on a four-man crew laying a new 17-inch storm drain pipe in concrete across Main St. He had his own solution: a small personal air conditioner he could hook onto his belt and blow cool air up his shirt.
“It works for about three hours,” he said. “It’s nice.”
He and the others on the crew took the heat as a given.
“I was working with an asphalt company right out of high school,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for years. It’s really not that bad.”
His boss, Dave Hett, wore a wide-brimmed cowboy hat and insisted the weather was just fine.
“I’ve been doing this for 67 years. They never let me inside,” he joked.
A few blocks down, roofers Arturo Adorna, 26, and Hercules Hernandez, 30, walked gingerly across new shingles of a roof on Cedar St.
“Come up and see how hot it is,” Ardona invited in Spanish.
At the top of the ladder, the shingles sizzled in the sun, adding a new layer of caliente to the work. The men sprayed the shingles and themselves with a hose.
“When we are finished here, we go to the next house,” Hernandez said, pointing to a neighbor’s home.
A few blocks away, at Freeborn and Lawrence Sts., Waldo Juarez, 29, and Trent Koehn, 18, were working on a crew building a home and garage. They shrugged off the conditions.
“I don’t mind the heat. You get used to it,” Juarez said. “You just make sure you drink plenty of water.”
The temperature in Marion varied by weather services, but all were higher than the 101 degree higher than the record set in 1980. The National Weather Service does not have a reporting station in Marion, but said temperature in Newton was 104. The weather was expected to cool appreciably for the rest of the week.