Active Weather
Heat is the region's item today, on the eastern edge of a much larger event centered over Oklahoma and Arkansas.
The National Weather Service has heat advisories in effect until 8 PM local time for middle Tennessee including Nashville, Davidson, Montgomery, Robertson, Cheatham, Dickson, Houston, Humphreys, and Stewart counties; for west Tennessee and north Mississippi including Shelby, Fayette, Tipton, Haywood, Madison, Crockett, and Hardeman counties in Tennessee and DeSoto, Marshall, Tunica, Tate, Coahoma, Quitman, Panola, Lafayette, Tallahatchie, and Yalobusha counties in Mississippi; and for the Louisville area of Kentucky including Jefferson, Bullitt, Oldham, Hardin, Meade, Breckinridge, Grayson, Ohio, Butler, Edmonson, Logan, Warren, and Simpson counties. Southern Illinois and southwest Indiana counties in the same advisory are covered in the Great Lakes brief.
A heat advisory means the combination of heat and humidity is expected to reach a level that causes heat illness in people who are exposed to it for long enough. It is one step below an extreme heat warning, which is not in effect anywhere in this region today.
The National Weather Service instruction text on these products is the same everywhere: drink fluids, spend the hottest part of the day in an air conditioned room, stay out of the sun, wear light and loose clothing, and move strenuous work to early morning or evening. Check on relatives and neighbors, particularly anyone living alone without air conditioning. Never leave a child or a pet in a parked vehicle, even briefly. The Weather Service also passes along the Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidance to schedule frequent rest breaks in shade or air conditioning for outdoor work. Anyone overcome by heat should be moved somewhere cool and shaded, and the Weather Service treats heat stroke as an emergency call to 911.
Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia away from the coast have no heat products in effect.
On the coasts, the Weather Service office in Melbourne has a rip current statement until 8 PM Eastern time for coastal Volusia County, mainland northern Brevard County, and the northern Brevard barrier islands in Florida. The Jacksonville office has one for coastal Glynn and Camden counties in Georgia through early morning. The official guidance on these products is worth reading in full because it is counterintuitive: rip currents are channels of water flowing quickly away from shore, most often at low spots in the sandbar and near jetties and piers. If you are caught in one, relax and float rather than swimming against it. If you can, swim along the shoreline rather than toward the beach. If you cannot get out, face the shore and call or wave for help. The Weather Service strongly discourages entering the surf while the statement is up, and says to heed lifeguards and beach flags.
Infrastructure
The National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates wildfire response across federal and state agencies, reported 64 uncontained large fires nationally in its September 8 situation report, with the national preparedness level at 4 on a 5 point scale. Year to date the country has recorded 53,665 fires and about 8.4 million acres burned, which the center puts at 125 percent of the ten year average for fire counts and 157 percent for acreage.
Two of those fires are in this region, and both are nearly wrapped. The Streamsong fire in Florida is at 300 acres and 75 percent contained. The Main Trail fire in Georgia is at 820 acres and 87 percent contained. Neither has structures listed as threatened.
No power outage events, water system notices, or transportation disruptions are reported across the eight states.
Mississippi has an open Federal Emergency Management Agency major disaster declaration, DR-4930, issued August 3 for a tropical storm, carrying both Individual Assistance and Public Assistance. Individual Assistance is the part that pays households directly. If you had storm damage in a designated Mississippi county and have not applied, check whether your county is listed and whether the window is open at disasterassistance.gov.
Public Health
The National Weather Service office in Memphis has an air quality alert in effect until 5:30 PM Central time covering Shelby County in Tennessee, Crittenden County in Arkansas, and DeSoto County in Mississippi. That is the Memphis metropolitan area across all three state lines. Air quality alerts in early September in this part of the country are usually ground level ozone rather than smoke. Ozone builds on hot, sunny, stagnant afternoons, which is exactly what the heat advisory describes.
The practical version: ozone bothers people who are already breathing with difficulty, and it bothers healthy people who exercise hard outdoors in the afternoon. If you run or cycle, move it to early morning today. If someone in your household uses a rescue inhaler, today is a good day to know where it is and whether it is expired.
No other air quality alerts are active in the region.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Health Alert Network archive index could not be read again this morning, so we are not able to confirm either way whether a new national health advisory has posted. The most recent notice we could open directly was issued August 11 and is written for clinicians rather than households. If you want to check for yourself, the archive lives at emergency.cdc.gov/han.
The Food and Drug Administration posted several nationwide recalls in the past week, including ready to eat deli salads and cream cheese from Made Fresh Salads Inc. for possible Listeria monocytogenes on September 8, and an organic triple berry blend from Frutas y Hortalizas del Sur for possible E. coli on September 3. Both are refrigerator and freezer items that tend to sit for a while. The current list is at fda.gov.
Watch Item
The National Hurricane Center's Atlantic tropical weather outlook, issued at 2 AM Eastern time this morning, says tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next seven days. This is the climatological peak of the Atlantic season, so an empty basin is worth noticing rather than assuming.
For the Southeast that is the headline of the week, even though nothing is happening. September 10 sits within days of the climatological peak of the Atlantic season, and this coastline from the Carolinas around to the Florida panhandle carries more of that risk than anywhere else in the country. Seven days of confirmed nothing is a real window, and the way to use it is to do the slow parts of hurricane preparation now rather than the fast parts later. Photographing rooms for an insurance claim, reading your policy's flood exclusion, and refilling prescriptions early are all things that are easy this week and impossible during a warning.
On heat, the Weather Prediction Center's extended guidance has this late season warmth holding across the mid South into the weekend. Heat advisories in the second week of September catch people out because the calendar says the season is over. The body's tolerance for heat also drops after a cooler stretch, which is part of why late season heat events produce illness at temperatures that would have been unremarkable in July.
The U.S. Drought Monitor map valid September 1 shows drought expanding and intensifying through Mississippi and the lower Mississippi Valley. Dry soil and heat reinforce each other. It also raises fire risk in a region that does not usually think about it in September, and it is worth checking your county's burn ban status before any yard burning.
Explore Today
How heat illness builds, who is most exposed, and what actually helps.
Seven confirmed clear days at the peak of the season is the week to work the list.
What to do when the heat stays and the power does not.