No Relief From Heat in the South

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) â€” Carolyn Sistrunk sees the mercury rise across sun-baked Mississippi with growing concern about her teen-age son, who lives without an air conditioner. <br><br>His address is at

Tuesday, July 18th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) â€” Carolyn Sistrunk sees the mercury rise across sun-baked Mississippi with growing concern about her teen-age son, who lives without an air conditioner.

His address is at the State Penitentiary at Parchman, where inmates have only electric fans to keep cool. Many of the state's other prisons also are without air conditioning.

``I wouldn't put my dog outside today,'' Sistrunk said Monday as triple-digit temperatures moved in to smother Mississippi and the southern United States. The nation's highest heat index â€” a measure of heat and humidity â€” was the miserable 125 recorded in Biloxi.

No relief was expected anytime soon from the heat wave also baking Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Kansas. In drought-withered Alabama, forestry officials took the rare step of banning outdoor burning.