CDC tells readers to check local HeatRisk and air quality, stay cool, stay hydrated, know overheating symptoms, and make a heat action plan before hot days turn medical, which makes heat preparedness a daily household practice rather than a sidebar to storm season. [1]

The paper's May 18 feature on why NOAA's hurricane outlook was already a service story argued that preparedness begins before the seasonal number prints, and HeatRisk is the daily version of that argument because it asks families to make decisions before a named system forces attention.

CDC's guidance is concrete: use air conditioning or find a cooling location, call 2-1-1 where appropriate, check on people with chronic medical problems or who live alone, and watch for cramping, heavy sweating, shortness of breath, dizziness, headaches, weakness, and nausea. [1]

The named storm still owns the American weather imagination, but heat is less theatrical and more intimate, changing when a shift worker can commute, whether a neighbor answers the door, whether a child with asthma plays outside, whether a fan helps or hurts when indoor temperatures rise above 90 degrees, and whether a caregiver has a ride to a cooling center.

A hurricane kit without a heat plan is an incomplete summer plan, because the first emergency may not have a name, a cone, or a dramatic satellite image before it injures someone.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago