The future of the Midwest includes hazardous heat, and most of our homes are not ready

Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska are part of an emerging “extreme heat belt” that could deliver more scorching days within 30 years. So far, there’s no unified plan to make our dwellings safe in the dangerously high temperatures to come.
As temperatures start to cool in September, it might be easy to forget the scorching heat of just a month before. In middle to late August, parts of the Midwest experienced a streak of “feels like” temperatures of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

In one 48-hour period, the Centers Disease Control and Prevention reported record numbers of people suffering from heat stroke, heat exhaustion, fainting and other heat-related illnesses at emergency rooms in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.

Such heat can be deadly, said Peter Thorne, an expert on the impact of climate change on health at the University of Iowa.