The Nation - News from July 22, 1987

The eastern half of the nation sizzled in a heat wave for the second straight day, straining power systems, sparking shopping sprees on ice and air conditioners and keeping the National Zoo’s popular pandas confined in the cool of their hut. Hot air from the Gulf of Mexico pushed northward and sent temperatures soaring into the 90s to around 100 degrees from the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic coastal states, forecasters said. Three record highs were set--88 degrees in Beckley, W.Va.; 90 in Alpina, Mich., and 94 in Flint, Mich. In the West, a thunderstorm hit Utah with torrents of rain and golf-ball size hail, forcing the evacuation of a Salt Lake City office building where a wall and a ceiling collapsed.