Stay out of this.

There were heat advisories or warnings in 20 states on Sunday, with temperatures reaching over 100 degrees across most of the South. Adding to the misery were power outages caused by the huge storm that rampaged from Ohio through parts of the Northeast on Friday, killing 12 and leaving some metropolitan areas with long-standing power outages caused by high wind and lightning.

Larger cities are opening cooling centers for residents without air conditioning or power. New York City is under a heat advisory, with an expected high of 94. The heat wave may come at a particularly bad time for New York as Con Edison is negotiating contracts with its employees--the power grid may see unusually heavy demand but fewer workers available to answer the call if an outage occurs.

The general advice for anyone coping directly with the heat is to avoid heavy activity and take frequent breaks in a cooler environment if you have to be out in the heat.

CNN  and the National Climactic Data Center report records for "nearly 1600 high temperatures" have been broken in the last week alone.