Family Fun & Safety During Record-Setting Heat

16 Jun 2021, 7:10 pm

We’ve been talking about record heat all this week on WeatherNation with temperatures climbing to very dangerous levels across the southwest. As many kids are either kicking off summer break or into the last days of the school year, the desire for them to get outside and try to enjoy the warmer weather will be there just as much as the hazards that come with it being too hot.

“It’s just so important for these kids to get outside and get exercise, get away from that screen time” said Nicole Williams, a second grade teacher in the Cherry Creek School District in Colorado. “With the heat, as long as my kiddos are hydrated drinking lots of water and getting Gatorade and definitely wearing sunscreen and hats, I think that kids need it. They need to be outside!”

Williams is not alone with her thoughts and concerns. The recent pandemic forced many kids into remote learning and as a result, less time spent outside or getting the opportunity to partake in daily activities that allowed them to be in the sun such as recess or sports practice. According to HealthyChildren.Org from the American Academy of Pediatrics, while getting a certain amount of sunlight will help to create vitamin D in the skin, preventative measures still need to be taken to avert skin cancer or heat-related illnesses.

According to Ready.Gov, extreme heat is responsible for the largest number of annual deaths among all weather-related hazards, and children are at a greater risk from extreme heat. So when you add extreme heat also into the mix, it can provide many challenges for families that want to schedule outdoor time in places such as the park or in a pool.

There are ways that you can beat the heat and stay safe during the warmer months and times of the year so your family can still have fun in the sun. Save The Children, a 501(c)(3) organization based in Fairfield, CT, put out a checklist of some important heat safety tips you can follow with your family all season long.

About the author

Meredith Garofalo

Meredith is a Certified Broadcast Meteorologist as designated by the American Meteorological Society. She was born and raised in Cleveland but has worked from coast to coast covering almost every type of weather. Meredith is a weather, space, and STEM journalist and has been live out in the field during destructive tropical storms on the Gulf Coast of Florida, raging wildfires in Southern Cali... Load Morefornia, and covered the wreckage from tornadoes in the Great Plains. In 2009, she reported on the damaging hail storm during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and in 2017, the historic California winter storms that produced record rain totals and devastating flash flooding. Prior to joining WeatherNation, Meredith worked at KEYT/KKFX in Santa Barbara, CA, KOTA-TV in Rapid City, SD, WWSB-TV in Sarasota, FL, and began her career as an intern at WGN-TV in Chicago. She was Santa Barbara's "Favorite Weathercaster of the Year" in 2016 and the Community Partner of the Year in 2017 for her volunteer work with Make-A-Wish Tri-Counties and awarded with the 2018 Valparaiso University Alumni Association First Decade Achievement Award. Meredith is the current chair of the American Meteorological Society's Station Scientist Committee, which focuses on raising greater awareness & outreach when it comes to science education for viewers. She's also an accomplished journalist, producing weather and science stories including rocket launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base and the new GOES-16 satellite and it's impacts on weather forecasting. Meredith was personally invited by NASA's Johnson Space Center to interview astronauts on the International Space Station and was the only meteorologist in the nation to do an exclusive report accompanying the GOES-West satellite from Colorado to Florida, reporting on and covering it's launch in 2018. Meredith's also worked on features that took her paragliding along the coast, white water rafting in Northern California, learning to surf in the Pacific Ocean, and how to be an aerial photographer while flying a single engine plane! Say hi on Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn!