Think Kansas City is hot now? 1936 ‘Summer of Death’ was even worse — by far
So, you think it’s been hot lately, with these temperatures in the low 90s and the constant talk of a heat index of more than 100 degrees?
Sorry, in the grand scheme of things, this has been a mild summer.
And maybe you remember 1980 or 1983 or 2012 as so unbearably awful that one of them must have been the worst summer ever in Kansas City.
They were not even close. Based on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration records, none is among the Top 5 summers for the most 100-degree-plus days in Kansas City, ranking No. 10 (17 days), No. 9 (18) and No. 6 (20), respectively.
They all pale compared with the undisputed king of discomfort: 1936.
How hot was it?
That year produced a record 53 days with high temperatures of at least 100 degrees in Kansas City. By the end of June, there already had been eight days at 100 or higher. Then the high reached 100 every day from Aug. 12 to Aug. 27, a record span of 16 straight days.
And Aug. 14 established Kansas City’s still-standing mark for hottest day ever at 113 degrees.
Remember, air conditioning was a rarity 90 years ago.
KC ‘really got walloped’
Of course, we weren’t alone in the frying pan that was the summer of 1936. Nearly the entire nation suffered through it, as author Geoff Williams details in his recently released “The Summer of Death: The Great Heat Wave of 1936 and the Making of Modern-Day America.”
The book is structured chronologically, with a nearly daily breakdown of the summer suffering. Kansas City is the epicenter for much of it.
“In terms of writing the book, I went where the stories were, and Kansas City really got walloped,” Williams said.
“Some cities probably had more deaths. St. Louis, they had a lot. Detroit and Minneapolis suffered a lot. They were not used to this weather at all. Not that Kansas City is like, ‘Oh, yeah, we love 100-degree weather.’ But I think you guys are a little more acclimated to hot weather.”
Also worth noting is that Kansas City had appointed pediatric physician Henry Schorer as its director of health in 1935, and he made heat-related health a priority. He told The Kansas City Times in 1936 that 77 deaths could be attributed to the heat that year compared with 209 in 1934, even though the heat wasn’t as severe in ’34.
“We have made heat prostration a public health matter,” Schorer said. “I believe we are the only large city that has given heat cases the same type of attention as a contagious disease.”
‘Conservative’ death toll of 12,000
Williams said 1936’s heat nationally was far worse than 1934, as was the death toll — although he indicated it is impossible to determine an exact figure. In the book, he settles on 12,000 deaths in the United States and Canada in the summer of 1936, calling that a “conservative estimate.”
He cites multiple factors that make it difficult to determine whether extreme heat should be blamed for a person’s death.
“You wouldn’t know if they had a bad heart, and the heat took them out,” he said. “This person had diabetes, so did the heat take them out? I don’t think the coroner always knew exactly what to put.
“Then you have a lot of indirect deaths. Drownings — lots of people would go to cool off. A cynic could say it wasn’t the heat that killed them, it was the water, of course. But at the same time, when you’re desperate to get cooled off, I think it’s fair to say it would be at least indirectly heat killed the person.”
The indirect category includes other accidental heat-related deaths, with falling off roofs being a significant one.
In addition to seeking out pools, ponds and streams, people would try less-obvious tactics to escape the heat. Movie theaters were among the few places with air conditioning, so they became very popular. Some folks hauled sheets and pillows to Swope Park or Penn Valley Park seeking a cool night’s sleep. Others took the more dangerous approach of clambering onto roofs to spend the night.
“The Summer of Death” tells the tale of Gladys Gregg, a 25-year-old woman from Hammond, Louisiana, who was staying at a Kansas City rooming house.
Her room had a window overlooking the roof of a vacant building that seemed like a good sleeping spot to Gregg. But she took only a few steps after climbing out the window before plunging through a skylight. Fellow boarders heard her screams as she fell 20 feet headfirst to the concrete floor. She died of a skull fracture at St. Margaret’s Hospital.
“I hate that story,” Williams said. “I love it for the book, but I hate thinking about it. … I think it’s fair to say the heat wave killed her.”
On the same night as Gregg’s death, Clarke Armstrong, 34, also wound up at St. Margaret’s. He was taking a cot onto the roof of his rear porch when he slipped and dropped 25 feet, landing on his car. He survived with compression fractures and other injuries.
Millions of grasshoppers, dust storm
Here is more about Kansas City’s summer of 1936, taken from the book and from newspaper articles:
- Grasshoppers, which thrive in hot, dry conditions, showed up by the millions. They were so bad that the hungry critters entered a downtown office through a window and decimated a potted plant — on the fifth floor.
- A man named Samuel Levitch pleaded for leniency in traffic court on a 100-degree day by claiming he drove 40 mph over the 20 mph speed limit because he was trying to cool off. The judge fined him $25.
- St. Francis Xavier Church reported that somebody had stolen six electric fans.
- Facing a high temperature of 107 degrees, construction workers at the rising 30-story City Hall walked off the job, fearing they would pass out on the steel beams and plunge 410 feet to the ground.
- A dust storm blew through town and took a revival tent with it as 400 people ran for cover. Meanwhile, a TWA passenger plane was taxiing for takeoff at Municipal Airport when the storm hit. The plane stopped, passengers scurried to the terminal and airport employees climbed up on the wings trying to keep the airliner from blowing away.
- Newspapers reported July 19 that the high temperature was 121 in Fort Scott, Kansas, and 118.5 in Lamar, Missouri, and that four people died from the heat in Kansas City.
- Rose Chaus, the social head of Kansas City’s welfare department, blamed the heat for a scourge of bad behavior by husbands. “There has been a great increase in the number of wife-deserters since this hot weather began,” she said.
- Police arrested Joseph Centimano, 24, for opening the water to a fire hydrant. “I’m a taxpayer,” Centimano said, but was told he’d have to settle up with the water department.
- On the day after the city set its all-time high, The Kansas City Times’ daily front-page weather box included a table of hour-by-hour temperatures indicating it had been 111 at 3 and 112.6 at 4 and was still 97 at 8 and 92 at midnight. The 112.6 was rounded up to establish the official record of 113. The forecast read, “Continued warm today,” as it had most days during the summer of 1936. Evidently, the government’s meteorologists avoided the word “hot” at the time.
‘An ad for air conditioning’
Williams said the heat wave of 1936 led to several changes, including improved workplace safety and, most notably, the expanded popularity of air conditioning. “The whole summer was like an ad for air conditioning,” he said.
It also led to the easing of some fashion faux pas.
“In 1936, there were all sorts of arguments about what’s appropriate to wear out in public,” he said. “Because you could be arrested for wearing shorts. You could go to the beach, depending on what city you were in, and not have a shirt on as a man and you could be arrested.
“But by the end of the summer, a lot of people did have the conversation going, ‘Maybe, we don’t need to wear gloves or hats everywhere we go. Maybe on hot days we could start wearing shorts.’”
People also were talking about the possibility of a changing climate.
After all, it was the peak of the Dust Bowl era. In Kansas City, 1936 capped a three-year stretch that featured 121 days over 100 degrees and three of the four hottest summers on record — 1934, No. 2 with 46 days over 100; 1935, No. 4 with 22 days; and 1936, No. 1 with 53.
“All the arguments we have over climate change, they were having them back then,” said Williams, who also wrote “Washed Away: How the Great Flood of 1913, America’s Most Widespread Natural Disaster, Terrorized a Nation and Changed It Forever.” “And that stunned me.
“People would have arguments about whether the weather was changing on the planet or if it was just a couple of bad summers, just merely a fluke. Just like now, you had a lot of strong opinions on both sides. It’s really fascinating how nature is changing, but human nature does not change.”
Compared with the 1930s, recent summers have been a breeze.
Since that scorching 2012 that had 20 days at 100 or higher, we have endured just six 100-degree days over 13 years, including nine years with 100-degree shutouts. In fact, there hasn’t been a 100-degree day in Kansas City since Aug. 25, 2023.
Much of the world has been baking while we’ve been cooling it in recent years, of course. But those statistics could add fuel to the fire for local climate change deniers who insist that Earth is merely going through its natural cycles and that there is no need to try to slow the planet’s warming.
“That is one way to look at it,” Williams said. “But I do think if you listen to the scientists and you look at the research, if you just look outside at what’s going on, I think it’s pretty clear the climate is changing and not for the better, and we do need to do something about it.”
