Audio clip
David Glenn
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Staff Photo by Dan Henry Teenagers skate under the shade of the First Tennessee Pavilion while waiting for the heat to let up before entering the adjacent Skate park on Wednesday. The guys were playing "SKATE", a game similar the basketball game "HORSE" where someone performs a trick and everyone else attempts to replicate it.
If you went outside Wednesday, you likely felt stifling heat and humidity.
Forecasters say you shouldn't expect any relief for at least the next seven days.
Wednesday's high temperature in Chattanooga reached 94 degrees, records show. That's four degrees shy of the record, but with the humidity factor one forecaster said it felt a whole lot hotter.
"Today's high is going to be around 96, but with the humidity, it's going to feel like 100," said David Glenn, chief meteorologist for WTVC NewsChannel 9.
On Wednesday, strong storm systems floated over areas just west and east of the Tennessee Valley, knocking out power and dropping rain, but Chattanooga and the surrounding communities avoided them, Mr. Glenn said.
"There may be a few storms ... a few pockets of isolated evening rain ... but the real story is the heat," he said.
That hot weather will stick around all weekend, with just a few chances for rain, and well into next week, Mr. Glenn said. There's a slight chance of a weak cool front coming through Saturday evening with bits of rain, but that's not going to throw the area off course for 90-degree or higher temperatures for the next seven days, he said.
The National Weather Service in Morristown, Tenn., on Wednesday issued severe thunderstorm warnings for parts of Kentucky and eastern Tennessee, according to a statement.
The severe thunderstorm watch area was issued for an area from about 40 miles north of London, Ky., and 55 miles southeast of Knoxville, the weather service advisory stated.
Elsewhere in the state, the bad weather caused trouble and may have spun off a few tornadoes.
A brief storm left at least 20,000 people without power in Middle Tennessee, mostly in the Clarksville area, but there were no reports of severe damage, according to the Associated Press.
Mark Rose, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Nashville, said they had several reports of severe weather and funnel cloud sightings in Rutherford and Davidson counties.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Adam Crisp covers education issues for the Times Free Press. He joined the paper's staff in 2007 and initially covered crime, public safety, courts and general assignment topics. Prior to Chattanooga, Crisp was a crime reporter at the Savannah Morning News and has been a reporter and editor at community newspapers in southeast Georgia. In college, he led his student paper to a first-place general excellence award from the Georgia College Press Association. He earned ...
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