After a week of sweltering heat, many Harford County residents are hoping for a break that forecasters say they won't get. Temperatures are expected to reach triple digits again by the end of the week.
In Aberdeen, temperatures reached 97 degrees Friday, 103 on Saturday 103 and 102 on Sunday, according to Kevin Witt, forecaster with the National Weather Service.
The high temperatures over the weekend were paired with relatively high levels of humidity and on Friday and Saturday the weather service issued excessive heat warnings.
"It was feeling uncomfortable," Witt said.
The warnings were in effect from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and a heat advisory was in effect Sunday between 10 a.m. until 8 p.m.
Harford County opened cooling stations Thursday, Friday and Saturday and more than 20 people took advantage.
While just one person visited the Aberdeen Senior Center on Thursday, 24 stopped at the Havre de Grace Activity Center between Thursday and Saturday. No one visited the other three stations.
"I do know that the cooling centers, especially the one in Havre de Grace, had 20-some people show up," Rick Ayers, emergency manager for the Harford County Emergency Operations Center, said Tuesday.
"Usually when we open up the cooling centers we don't have a lot of people show up," Ayers said.
Ayers said the weekend cooling station numbers were higher than he has seen in the past.
"I do think it was because maybe we had such high heat for several days," Ayers said.
Ayers said there were two or three ambulance calls for heat-related illness on Friday, but public safety services and members of law enforcement were not overwhelmed by demand related to the heat throughout the weekend.
"I wouldn't call it anything out of the extreme or out of the ordinary," Ayers said.
One major concern for the county was that of power.
"We were worried about if we would have had power outages in the area," Ayers said. "The electric used last week was I think at historic levels and we were concerned that the power grids would lose power."
If that had happened, the county would have opened shelters and Ayers said there likely would have been more problems relating to the heat.
"I think because we didn't have power outages most people either had air conditioning or way to get to it," Ayers said.
While many people may have had access to air conditioning, some were surprised when BGE cycled off their air conditioners as part of its PeakRewards program.
On Friday, the utility announced it had activated the program which was designed to help keep the electric system balanced at times of extremely high energy use. Nearly 450,000 customers participated in the voluntary programs which affect air conditioning and water heaters.
During peak times, those in the air conditioning program have compressors cycled off at either 50, 75 or 100 percent. The percentage is one that the customer signed up for when they began the program and participation in the program earns bill credits.
The utility experienced emergency levels between 11:30 a.m. and 5:40 p.m. Friday and activated the program. For some, this meant going entirely without air conditioning for that entire period.
Those participating in the program get an annual bill credit of up to $200 the first year and up to $100 each following year. Participants get credits whether the program is activated or not.
The program was activated Friday to reduce the possibility of brownouts and blackouts that could have affected BGE's central Maryland service area.
BGE issued a press release stating the company does not expect to activate the program system-wide during the week ending July 30.
Even so, the heat continued early this week with temperatures reaching 98 degrees Monday and in the 90s Tuesday.
The average temperature in the area this time of year is about 88 or 89 degrees, according to Witt.
"We were 10 to almost 15 degrees above normal," Witt said.
While the weather may dip to the high 80s today (Wednesday), humidity and temperatures were expected to rise as the week continued.
Temperatures were expected to reach into the 100s Friday.
"Friday is probably going to be the most uncomfortable of the upcoming days," Witt said.