Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [64]
WITH NEW YORK’S press continuing to mock the efforts of William Dunn of the United States Weather Bureau, including his “fleeing” the city, not to mention his cool aerie on top of the Manhattan Life Insurance Building, and especially his low temperature readings during the heat wave, the New York Journal turned to Dr. Thomas Draper of the New York Meteorological Bureau. For twenty-eight years Draper had manned a set of thermometers, barometers, and wind gauges atop the Arsenal in Central Park.
On August 11 the Journal gave Draper center stage in an article entitled “WHY SO MANY HAVE DIED: Dr. Draper Explains the Conditions of the Long Heat Plague.” “Because of the high temperature, abnormally high humidity, and the absence of wind,” Draper explained. “The temperature has been higher before, but not for so long a time. This heated spell began on August 4,” he noted, giving a table of temperatures that was markedly different from the official temperatures collected by Dunn. Draper observed temperatures both in the shade and in the sun. Even his “shade” temperatures were several degrees warmer on any given day than Dunn’s observations. On August 5, the second day of the heat wave, the official temperature hit 89, while Draper observed a temperature of 95 in the shade. On the same day, he observed a temperature of 131 in the sun. This pattern repeated throughout the heat wave. On August 7, the fourth day of the heat wave, the official temperature hit a high of only 91. Draper, however, recorded 97 in the shade, and 132 in the sun. On August 10, Dr. Draper noted a temperature of 137 in the sun.
Draper emphasized the importance of high humidity and lack of wind, two key characteristics of the heat wave that were absent from Dunn’s observations. “The wind charts show that during the hours of sleep there has not been a strong breeze any night this week,” Draper said, “and on some nights the speed has been less than a mile an hour.” Because wind aids evaporation, humidity reached its highest, most suffocating levels at night. On most afternoons during the heat wave the humidity was only around 50 percent. Yet during the early mornings, from 2:00 until 8:00, the humidity soared to the 80 percent and 90 percent levels. On August 7 nighttime humidity hit 94 percent, and on August 9 humidity reached an unbearable 97 percent. Using a modern heat index calculation, this meant that even during the coolest moment of August 9, when the temperature, according to Draper, sank to 82, the temperature a body would feel still sat at an uncomfortable 94 degrees. During such a night, almost a week into the heat wave, New Yorkers attempting to get a restful night’s sleep were thwarted. With high humidity and no wind, there was no relief. The night of August 11, the eighth night of the heat wave, would prove to be little better, with a low temperature of 81, but with humidity at 85 percent. Workers continued to die by the score, and tenement dwellers continued to bake and gasp on the Lower East Side.
Even the New York Times, a paper usually loath to dramatize the plight of the city’s poor, offered a grim picture of the day’s suffering. “In the tenement-house districts yesterday the suffering was most intense,” the paper observed, “and helpless women and children, enervated by days and days of hopeless, squalid, sweltering, sat or lay drowsily on stoops.”
The writer had apparently walked along Cherry