Extreme heat threatens start of Illinois high school football season

ARGENTA, Ill. (WAND) - Extreme heat is rolling through Central Illinois for the better part of the entire week, putting the start to high school football season in jeopardy.

"Looks like the weather is going to cool down a little bit on Friday, so we're hoping that Friday night 7 o'clock kickoff goes off without a hitch," Mike Williams, Athletic Director at Argenta-Oreana said.

Schools across the state are keeping a close look at outside conditions, using guidelines and a weather reading instrument from the IHSA.

"There's an instrument we use called the Wet Globe Thermometer. It takes a lot of things into consideration including air pressure, humidity, temperature, wind speed and gives you a reading," Williams said. "There's a chart from IHSA that we've got to follow that gives us an idea of what we can and can't do at certain levels."

The higher the reading on the Wet Bulb Globe Thermometer, the hotter the conditions, and the less likely sports are to be played outside.

"There's about five different levels on that ranging from full go on all athletics to once you hit a 90 reading on that wet globe, then everything has to stop." Williams added, "We probably took a half a dozen readings today starting at 8:00 this morning just to see where we were at and then at lunch time and then checked it again at 1:00 and it was going through the roof."