Pandemic Complicates New Hampshire Cities’ Plans For Dealing With Climate Change-Driven Heat Waves

Pablo Rodriguez plays in the sprinklers on an athletic field in Manchester. The city has limited ways to help residents keep cool this summer because of the pandemic. (Annie Ropeik/NHPR)

New Hampshire is seeing more heat waves due to climate change. And staying cool is even harder this year because of COVID-19. Our new climate change reporting project, By Degrees, has this look at how New Hampshire’s cities are coping.

On one of the hottest days of the summer so far, the sprinklers built into a high school sports field in downtown Manchester are on full blast. Several families have showed up to cool off — kids are chasing their parents through the sprinklers, and everyone is soaked.

“I wasn’t planning on getting wet,” says Pablo Rodriguez, fending off squirt gun attacks from his children. “But after feeling the water, I was like wow, that water actually feel kinda good.”

He says there’s nowhere else for his kids to go on a day like this one – they can’t play outside at home.

“That driveway – they don’t really take care of that apartment that well,” Rodriguez says. “So we don’t let the kids play outside, because there’s too many, like, broken glass, nails all over the driveway.”

Turning on these sprinklers on the hottest afternoons instead of early in the morning is one of the few ways Manchester can help its residents during heat waves right now. The city pools are closed, and so are typical cooling stations like the public library.

Watching her daughter and grandkids run through the sprinklers, Deborah Hurd says it reminds her of growing up in New York, playing in open fire hydrants. Now, her family is cooped up at home in the pandemic, and she says they’re trying to use less air conditioning.

“It’s really hot and you’re in there all the time, so you want the air to circulate,” she says. “It’s already reflecting on the bills.”

Read the rest of this story at NHPR’s website.