As temperatures near the 100-degree mark over the next few days, a special alert for those who don't have air conditioning and will rely on fans.
Fans should only be used when the outdoor air temperatures are cooler than they are indoors. Fans in windows can blow cooler air into a room from outside.
Since fans don't actually cool the air, the air currents flowing over the body must be cooler than your skin to control core body temperature.
When air temperatures reach 95 degrees, fans can actually make you hotter! In situations like this when there is more humidity, the evaporation off your skin is slower than normal. Fans make it even more difficult for the body to lose heat by sweating.
In order to make fans effective, it's important to wet the skin. Blowing the air over the damp skin will encourage evaporation which will cool the surface of the skin.
It's also important to stay hydrated. If the body doesn't have enough moisture, it won't produce enough sweat. That will put the body at more risk of heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Heat kills more Americans each year than tornadoes and hurricanes combined.
