Temps hit century mark; LIPA sets record

Long Islanders are in for another sweltering day Saturday, with highs expected to hit the upper 90s and heat index values up to 104, according to the National Weather Service.

Nassau and the western part of Suffolk are under a heat advisory until 8 p.m., with the brunt of the brutal weather expected this afternoon.

Yesterday, on one of Long Island's hottest days ever, as temperatures crossed the 100-degree mark keeping cool was a struggle.

Those with air conditioners ran them high, helping the Long Island Power Authority set a usage record Friday. The increased demand for electricity caused a spike in outages as more than 11,000 customers lost power.

Those without air conditioners had to improvise.

"I'm staying at my grandma's house, and she doesn't have an AC unit anywhere in the house. So it's pretty tough right now," said Luke Oliver, 21, who is from Wantagh but lives in North Carolina. "This is the hottest it's been so far that I remember. I sleep with about five fans and go in the pool hourly."

The number of heat-related visits to the emergency room at the Nassau University Medical Center increased slightly. No heat-related deaths were reported by area hospitals.

Towns opened cooling centers, and the hours of town swimming pools and beaches were extended.

Friday's high of 100 at Islip was a record for the date. It was 2 degrees shy of the all-time record, and one of only five 100-degree days recorded there since 1984, when the Weather Service started keeping records there. The previous record for July 22 at Islip was 96, set in 1988.

In Farmingdale, the mercury hit 102. At Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, where records have been kept since 1947, the temperature reached 99.1, below the all-time mark of 100.5. Even higher temperatures were recorded around the region, including 104 in Central Park and 108 in Newark.

Some people refused to be beaten down by the heat.

Don Pepio, 54, jogged around the track at Bay Shore High School.

"There's no one here," said Pepio, 54, who lives in Virginia but is from West Islip and was in town visiting friends. "It's good to get out and, you know, exercise every once and a while.

"My wife said, 'You're crazy, you're gonna kill yourself. Bring your phone.' And I said, 'I'm OK, don't worry about it. This is what I do.' "

Power usage hit an all-time high of 5,933 megawatts at 3:43 p.m., LIPA spokeswoman Vanessa Baird-Streeter said. The former record of 5,825 megawatts was set during last year's July heat wave.

"We have more than enough capacity to meet the forecasted peak load," Baird-Streeter said.

The biggest outages hit the towns of Islip, Hempstead and Brookhaven. "They come from too much stress on the system. The causes are usually blown fuses or transformers," Baird-Streeter said. Most customers got power back in two or three hours, she said.

For some cyclists in the Long Island segment of the Wounded Warrior Project's national Soldier Ride, the heat was unbearable. They began succumbing to the midday heat within a few miles of its start at Babylon Town Hall in Lindenhurst. By the time riders reached Ocean Parkway, they were dropping out in twos and threes every few hundred yards.

Scott Seales of Amity Harbor pulled over about four miles from the beach, loaded his bicycle onto a truck and was ferried the rest of the way.

"I'm cramping a little," said Seales, 32, who made the ride last year. "My left knee tightened up."

Huntington Town closed its two skate parks yesterday. "The parks are brutally hot because they are totally open and retain heat," Town Supervisor Frank Petrone said. "And it's dangerous for the kids to be out there."

With Martin C. Evans, Deborah S. Morris, John Valenti

and Delthia Ricks