Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan on Monday is set to announce plans to help keep city residents cool during the heat wave that is expected throughout the week.
Deegan will be joined by Chief Health Officer Dr. Sunil Joshi and Emergency Preparedness Director Andre Ayoub to announce the plan to respond to excessive heat during a 1 p.m. news conference.
(Watch the news conference live by clicking the video player above at 1 p.m.)
News4JAX has learned the plans include using JTA busses as cooling centers and also using the busses to take residents to air-conditioned public libraries to escape the heat.
Temperatures are expected to be in the lower-to-mid 90s all week and the heat index will be over 100 degrees.
The heat this summer has been intense without any significant breaks. Hotter-than-average conditions have dominated. Jacksonville reached 98° for 8 days in July.
This steak of heat catapulted the city to its hottest 30 days on record to date. Jacksonville could set a new hottest monthly record for the city.
MORE: Jacksonville is on track to its hottest July on record
But this heat is not specific to Jacksonville. Every major city in Florida is seeing its hottest 30-day average temperatures.
The Deegan administration has also created a new task force to address the issue of extreme heat.
The concern is not only what’s happening now with the heat but what could be coming down the line.
“We have to be thinking about summers in the future, too. Just like we have a hurricane preparedness plan every year, we’re going to now need to have an excessive heat plan as well so we are all prepared,” Joshi said last week.