Heat Wave Back, Haunts Central U.S.

Hot air settled over the central United States Thursday, driving temperatures back into the 90s and 100s.

“The heat wave is being brought on by a bubble of hot air that extends well into the atmosphere and is forecast to settle into the middle Mississippi Valley over the next couple of days,” National Weather Service forecasters said.

“It’s certainly going to put some stress on (crops and livestock) again,” said Raymond Saxby, an agriculture official in Portage, Wis., of the return of the hot weather to an area already hard-hit by the drought.

Bob Wendt, manager of the Champaign County Farm Bureau in Illinois, said the durability of the corn would depend on how much rain a given area received in the past few weeks.

“It’ll really scorch some areas that didn’t get too much rain,” he said. “It’s not going to help anyone. But if we could get some rain in the next weeks that would help.”