Houstonians dealing with extreme heat

HOUSTON

When the day starts, depending on what you do for a living, you might have changed up your schedule about trying to maneuver around the heat. Some are getting an earlier start others a much later one.

If your mail has been hitting your box a bit earlier this summer, thank the triple digits. Mailman Vic Savage is out the door ahead of schedule to get a jump on the heat.

"I get up early in the morning and you gotta start to hydrate early in the morning," Savage said.

You also won't find him without his hat as he makes his rounds.

And just after lunch, framers are still nailing away. The crew is undecided what works the best -- long sleeves or no shirt at all. But a sports drink is never far away.

Even when we commute home, the heat is on our minds.

"It is so hot now the thermostat on my car registered 102," Houstonian Vicki Tilley said.

And once Tilley prepares for a little yard work, the heat says hello again via her browning landscaping.

"It's really to hot to be watering this time of day, but as you can see everything is parched and needing it," Tilley said.

July was the third hottest on record in the Houston area and August is out of the gates with a couple of triple-digit days as the heat actually feeds itself.

"What happens is, the ground is very dry, which allows the atmosphere to heat up more than normal, which allows it to evaporate even more moisture out of the ground. And the cycle continues and perpetuates," KTRK Meteorologist Travis Herzog said.

And then there's 64-year-old Brian Slaymaker. He starts his lawn route in the evening to avoid peak temperatures and never without his trusty bandana.

"You just get a face full of water if you don't wear it. It just runs down like a faucet," he said.

And slaymaker says he can tell when he is over exerting himself in the heat. He says he starts make a lot of little mistakes and forgets routine things, and if he doesn't take a break right then and there, he gets a little disoriented, which he says happened, just on Monday.