Lexington reaches 103 degrees Saturday, capping second-hottest three-day stretch on record

The heat wave that has settled upon the region continued Saturday, with a high of 103 in Lexington.

That broke a record for June 30 set in 1936, when Lexington hit 100, WKYT-TV chief meteorologist Chris Bailey said.

Thursday's and Friday's highs of 102, combined with Saturday's high temperature, made it the second-hottest three-day stretch on record for the city, second only to a stretch in July 1936.

The hottest temperature ever recorded for Lexington is 108 degrees, and the hottest ever in Kentucky is 114.

On Friday, when it reached 110 in Bowling Green, the state broke a record for the hottest June temperature.

"It really and truly is a historic heat wave," Bailey said.

However, he said, it could be worse. Drought conditions have meant that humidity has stayed low.

And while highs could reach 100 on Sunday, some relief might be in sight. Bailey said several rounds of storms are likely to roll through before Friday.

Some parts of the area did get rain Friday night, but the storms brought a new problem: thousands of Central and Eastern Kentuckians were left without power because of high winds.

In Lexington, 250 to 300 customers were affected by outages Friday after high winds between 6 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. blew tree limbs into power lines, Kentucky Utilities spokesman Cliff Feltham said. Power was restored around midnight.

Thousands of KU customers in Montgomery, Clark and Fleming counties also were left without power. Their electricity was restored overnight, although some secondary outages occurred Saturday in Montgomery County, Feltham said.

And on Saturday afternoon, an outage was reported in Scott County that was thought to have been caused by a downed tree. KU was working to restore power to about 1,200 customers there.

A Montgomery County man was killed in Clark County on Friday night.

Clark County Coroner Robert Gayheart said Michael Martin, 30, "had gotten out of a car to try to lend a hand to get some limbs out of the road and the tree fell on him."

"He was just trying to be a good citizen," Gayheart said.

This story was originally published June 30, 2012 at 9:19 PM with the headline "Lexington reaches 103 degrees Saturday, capping second-hottest three-day stretch on record."