The heat is everywhere in McElderry Park – oozing out of the concrete sidewalk, the brick and Formstone rowhouses and the asphalt streets.

“It’s messing with my breathing,” gasped Connie Campbell, who was dropping off a friend in this East Baltimore neighborhood in the midst of a triple-digit heat wave that has been smothering the city and region.

As Campbell spoke from her car, its air conditioning blasting, she said she’d be dashing back inside, away from shade-scarce Kenwood Avenue as soon as possible.

“I can’t do this. Something’s not right. Every year it’s getting hotter and hotter.”

On the other side of town, in the historic Dickeyville community, it was also stifling. But large trees spread shade, the vegetation soaked up the heat and the gurgling Gwynns Falls promised relief.

“I’m really grateful to have all of our trees and shade here,” said Babetta Moore, who was taking a walk on a streamside path in the neighborhood, where she has lived for the past three years.

At midday, Moore was one of the few people yesterday who could be found outside the village’s old stone houses, which generally appeared to have central air conditioning and, in a few cases, backyard pools.

“The trail is shaded with big trees, and the water going by makes it tolerable,” she said. “I can’t even imagine what it would be like without air conditioning, especially in the city.”

Baltimore is in the midst of yet another record breaking heatwave. Temperatures on Tuesday topped out at 104 degrees, matching a record last set in 1988.

It was the final day of the hottest three-day stretch in Baltimore in 75 years. For three days in a row, the temperature has reached/exceeded 101 degrees, a feat not matched since August 1948.

Tale of Two Cities

But as conversations with residents in the two parts of town show, the heat doesn’t impact neighborhoods across Baltimore equally. And research confirms it.

According to a federally funded study, parts of the McElderry Park neighborhood experienced temperatures as high as 98.3 degrees on a hot summer day in 2018.

During the same day, the Dickeyville neighborhood’s temperatures were only 90.5.

• Student journalists show who in Baltimore is hit hardest by climate change and why (9/7/19)

That disparity was confirmed and explored the next year by student journalists from the University of Maryland for a reporting project they titled Code Red: Baltimore’s Climate Divide. Using temperature sensors, the students found that heat and humidity reached shocking levels in rowhouse living rooms and bedrooms.

The heat sensor in one couple’s second-floor bedroom registered 96 degrees Fahrenheit.

In another rowhouse, the heat index (a combination of heat and humidity) was 116 degrees – fully 22 degrees higher than the heat index just outside the house.

Baltimore’s experience with extreme heat, the Code Red project concluded, is a tale of two cities.

With the effects of climate change accelerating, the experts told them, neighborhood-to-neighborhood differences in urban heat islands — where heat is concentrated in dense urban environments with less natural vegetation — will become more extreme, tracking along income and racial differences.

Wet Washcloths, Icy Snowballs

Campbell may be no expert, but she’s acutely aware of  her hometown’s deteriorating climate.

“The heat and humidity have changed tremendously since I was growing up here,” Campbell said, discussing the weather with a friend. “The climate is changing, and these conditions are getting worse and worse.”

Since contracting Covid-19 a few years ago, it’s been more difficult for Campbell to breathe.

The heat always brings out the worst of her symptoms.

What should be done? She says the city should keep opening up pools and recreation centers for people to get out of the heat.

A few blocks away, on Pulaski Highway near the Patterson Park Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Robin Miller and Bobby Laffoon use wet rags and a bit of shade under a tree to stay cool.

“I never remember it being this bad,” Miller said, noting that her favorite strategy for keeping cool was to seek out plenty of snowballs.

(Miller’s favorite flavor is egg custard, while Laffoon prefers grape.)

The two don’t have access to air conditioning, so the little sliver of shade and trees outside the library was reassuring. If it gets too hot, they go into the air conditioning inside.

Trouble for a Taco Truck

But perhaps the hottest spot in the neighborhood was inside the red Antojitos Tropical Food Truck sitting on East Fayette Street.

There, Ricey Hernandez and members of her family served up tacos and other snacks as a generator hummed in the background.

Their main complaint about the heat?

Business was down. No one was walking around the neighborhood.

“Everyone in our family has AC, but it’s still tough for us here in the truck,” said Hernandez.

Jacob Lattimore and his one-year-old daughter, Kenya, sat outside on a stoop in the shade on Lakewood Avenue.

Lattimore and his young family don’t have a stable place to live right now, and are without any sort of air conditioning at all.

Instead, he said they keep to the shade and, like Miller and Laffoon, slurp a snowball whenever they can to try and keep cool.

Asked if he and Kenya had a favorite flavor, Lattimore said “we try them all.”

Asked what city leaders could do to help people like him and his family survive the climate crisis, Lattimore had some feedback for recreation and transportation officials.

“The city could have put a water park in the neighborhood here for the children,” he said, adding that existing water amenities are not easily reached by many.

“They need to put more ways to stay cool on the bus lines, where people without cars could access them,” head added.

“Instead, so many of the cooler places are out in the suburbs.”