Wednesday, July 7, 1999 | 11:26 a.m.
SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
While most of the rest of the nation today got a respite from an oppressive and deadly heat wave, Las Vegas got relief from 110-degree highs with the early arrival of the monsoon season.
However, rain that caused high temperatures to dip a couple of degrees nearer the century mark also resulted in muggy conditions, with humidity up to 64 percent at 8 this morning and temperatures of 80.
As of early today a trace of rain fell at the National Weather Service office at McCarran International Airport, bringing the year-to-date rainfall to 0.95 of an inch -- 1.10 inches below normal.
More moisture is on the way -- possibly through the weekend.
"The monsoon season started a couple of days earlier than expected because of a surge of moist air from the southeast from thunderstorms in Arizona," local National Weather Service spokesman Brian Fuis said today.
"The rain is expected to continue tonight and tomorrow with a 30 to 50 percent chance of afternoon thundershowers Saturday and Sunday."
As a result of the rain, the weather service considered lowering by a couple degrees its previously announced forecast of highs of 104 degrees today and 103 Thursday and Friday for Las Vegas.
"It certainly will be warm and muggy, but the high temperatures will depend on the cloud cover," Fuis said, noting that rain or not, Laughlin could hit a high of 112 degrees, which is still a few degrees cooler than it has been.
Sonya Headren, spokeswoman for Nevada Power Co., said the rain should cool things enough so that customers won't be generating the peak usage of the past several days. A record systems peak of 3,993 megawatts was recorded at 5 p.m. last Thursday. On Tuesday a 3,701-megawatt peak was recorded, she said.
Unofficially, 0.04 of an inch or rain fell at the Laughlin cutoff this morning, with the same amounts measured in Sloan, Mesquite and Moapa, Clark County Regional Flood Control officials said.
Meanwhile, excessive heat in other parts of the country that caused sweaty misery and even death eased somewhat today as a cool front moved through the East. For today highs only in the 70s and 80s were forecast in much of New England and in the 90s farther south.
But the intense heat of previous days contributed to at least 17 deaths: seven in Pennsylvania, three in New York City, three in New Jersey, two in Massachusetts and two in Chicago.
The emergency room of South Ocean County Hospital in Manahawkin, N.J., treated more than 400 victims of heat stroke and heat exhaustion in three days.
The welcome cold front Tuesday brought slightly cooler and markedly drier air from the Midwest. Still it arrived in deadly fashion, triggering violent storms in upstate New York and New England. Falling trees killed three people in upstate New York, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
The temperature dropped from 91 to 70 in just four minutes Tuesday afternoon in Concord, N.H. Earlier Tuesday high temperature records fell before the sun even reached its peak.
Atlantic City, N.J., hit 98 before noon, with humidity of about 40 percent. The mercury hit record highs of 102 at Newark, N.J.; 101 in New York; 102 in Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and 103 at Washington's Reagan National Airport.
Utilities scrambled to keep electricity flowing around flaming transformers and melting power lines. But power outages, including a big blackout in Manhattan, left hundreds of thousands of people sweating in the dark through the night.
"It feels like somebody's thrown buckets of hot water in your face," said Pat Renaghan, an elevator operator in a subway station at 168th Street in New York City. "Sometimes when you take the elevator down, the air feels so thick you feel like you could chew it."
People slept outside in the streets in parts of upper Manhattan because a widespread blackout left them with no way to ventilate their apartments.
"People stayed outside until dawn," resident Winton Nunez, 35, said. "It was impossible to stay indoors."
That blackout affected about 68,000 business and residential customers above 155th Street in Manhattan -- an area of about 250 blocks with more than 100,000 residents, Con Edison spokesman Joe Petta said.
Other outages affected hundreds of thousands of customers across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions. A generator failure at a Dagsboro, Del., power plant belonging to Conectiv forced that utility to impose rolling blackouts -- shifting, 20-minute shutdowns -- on 400,000 of the utility's 1 million customers in New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.
In Manhattan, a line of mattresses and sofa cushions lined the sidewalk along 188th Street where Juan Lora, his wife, another couple and six children had slept outside.
"There were 30 or 35 people sleeping out on the street" at one point, Lora said. "There was no other option."
"I couldn't stay inside. I had sweat dripping down my face," said Berki Cepeda, who also slept outside.
Subway service in the area also was affected by the blackout but was restored to most stations this morning, transit spokesman Al O'Leary said.
The police department sent 500 officers to patrol the neighborhoods and direct traffic off streets where signal lights didn't work. Police reported a handful of attempted store break-ins and nine arrests, a sharp difference from the 1977 blackout that affected the whole city and led to widespread looting.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani accused Con Ed of not being prepared.
"We're in an age of high technology. We're a city that has predictably high usage of electricity in warm weather. I mean everybody can figure that out, right?" the frustrated mayor said.
There was no immediate comment from the utility, which reported an all-time record demand for power on Tuesday at 11,850 megawatts.
Sun reporter Ed Koch contributed to this report.
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