SALT LAKE CITY — As May begins, one thing is set to come clear around the entire state of Utah.
It's about to get hot. Real hot.
As we Utahns head into the warm season, the risk for extreme heat increases in the state. Already this month, Salt Lake City has seen temperatures soar into the 80s, with St. George already recording its first 90 degree temperature of the year.
While we're no stranger to heat, it's often an invisible, silent killer.
"Heat is the number one killer of folks in the U.S.," said Jared Rennie, a research meteorologist with NOAA. "It's more than floods, it's more than severe weather. It's heat"
Nearly 1,300 people die every year from heat, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That number will continue to climb due to climate change increasing the frequency, duration and intensity of heat waves across the country.
In an effort to combat and mitigate the dangers of heat, NOAA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a new tool called HeatRisk.
First developed as a prototype in California a decade ago, HeatRisk expanded across the western United States, including here in Utah, and is now utilized nationwide.
"It's a way to translate, and that's what makes it a real powerful tool,
explained warning coordination meteorologist Alex Lamers.
HeatRisk is unique in that an easy-to-understand number and an associated color-coded scale that ranges from green — a low heat risk, to magenta — an extreme heat risk, is assigned to heat to identify how much risk high temperatures pose to the public and the most vulnerable populations.
It's similar to how risks and intensities of hurricanes and tornadoes are classified.
The tool is different from traditional heat alerts, such as excessive heat warnings and heat advisories, because the formula HeatRisk uses combines historical weather numbers along with detailed health data, such as how many times people might call 911 for heat, or how many emergency rooms are filled with patients that are adversely-impacted by the heat to create a seven-day risk-based forecast.
"It's a collaboration," explained Rennie, "that are specifically related to heat."
The hope is HeatRisk will help alerts become easily accessible and aid in decision-making, such as when to open cooling centers and when it's dangerous for employers to send workers outside for prolonged periods of time.
Still experimental, HeatRisk is evolving over time with feedback from researchers and meteorologists.
