Is it June or August? Temps don’t match the calendar

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

In Dan Baker’s business, the order of the day is safety, quality, then quantity.

With temperatures almost 20 degrees higher than the seasonal average, Baker, director of sales for Variety Construction, said he lets workers decide when it’s too hot to work, though in very hot weather, they may work a job from 6 to 10 a.m. The company has offices in Burns Harbor and throughout Lake County, as well as Illinois.

“It’s up to the guys,” he said, adding he had crews working in Highland, Gary and Munster Tuesday. “I don’t tell the guys they have to work in extreme weather. We’ll see how it goes.”

“People have been known to die in this heat,” he said.

The unseasonably hot weather will continue through Wednesday night, when a cold front is expected to bring cooler, wet weather through the rest of the week. Until then, though, the region’s residents will have to find a way to keep their cool.

Tuesday’s high was 95 degrees, with a heat index of 99 degrees, and Wednesday won’t be much better, with a forecast for around 95 degrees and a heat index hovering around 100 degrees.

“For both days, the normal high temperature is supposed to be 77 degrees,” said Rose Sengenberger, a meteorology intern with the National Weather Service office in Romeoville, Ill.

A warm front moved in early Monday morning, with south winds pushing a hot air mass from the Gulf of Mexico northward.

Adding to the balmy outdoor conditions, around 2,700 NIPSCO customers were without electricity on Tuesday afternoon. The majority of those outages were in DeMotte, Lowell and Crown Point as crews worked to repair lines after Saturday’s storm.

Crown Point resident Mike Strunk sat outside on his back porch and cheered with his neighbors as the lights turned back on around 10 p.m. Monday.

Strunk is an electrician so he understood the hard work NIPSCO crews had before them to restore electricity. His house lost electricity 5 p.m. Saturday after the storm blew through the area, but he considered himself lucky.

Strunk ran his sump pump and refrigerator off a generator as well as power to two of his neighbors.

“It could have been worse. We could have gotten water,” Strunk said. “It’s an inconvenience. I mean if it had been winter I would have said something different.”

August temps in June

Despite the heat, kids will still be playing outside — under the watchful eyes of adults making sure everybody is OK. High temperatures stop neither sporting events with the Valparaiso Department of Parks and Recreation, nor outdoor recess and gym activities in the Portage Township Schools.

Valparaiso parks staff will keep an eye on individual players, fans and coaches in this weather, said Dan Lukes, the department’s sports recreation director, adding severe heat — unlike stormy weather — isn’t usually an issue.

“Typically we’re hustle, hustle, hustle, keep the game moving, but we try to keep in mind that they’re kids and it’s hot,” he said, adding parents have the option to keep their children home. Parents also usually bring extra coolers of drinks, and provide them for the umpire, too.

If school were out, the students would probably be playing outside anyway, said Tom Taylor, assistant superintendent with the Portage Township Schools, so there’s no reason to keep them indoors because of the heat.

“We believe it’s healthy for kids to go outdoors, even in this weather. Our expectation is that kids would go outside and be engaged in some sort of activity,” he said.

That wasn’t the case in Lake County, as Lake Station Community Schools sent students home from Hamilton, Polk and Bailey elementary schools at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. Early release was planned again for Wednesday because the buildings aren’t fully air-conditioned. The district’s administrators decided to close the schools early because the heat index was expected to soar above 100 degrees, Lake Station Superintendent Dan DeHaven said.

“It’s not supposed to be this hot this early in the summer,” DeHaven said.

Sengenberger agreed. “These are unseasonably warm temperatures. It’s usually not this hot this early in the season. These are August temperatures,” she said.