OLATHE, Kan. — Hate it, love it or tolerate it, the Kansas City-area’s excessive heat warning could soon be out of the picture, but not before wrapping up the work week and causing some cancellations.
Those cancellations, logically, are hitting outdoor events the hardest and derailing the start of the weekend.
Organizers of Olathe’s Fourth Friday concert series canceled the event earlier in the week because of the forecast.
Earlier this week, Merriam canceled its Pop with a Cop event, and Raytown police postponed a safety fair.
During the day Friday, construction carried on around the pavilion in Olathe that’s coming up across from the Johnson County Courthouse. Otherwise, there weren’t many people around — except for a nearby rummage sale worked by 8-year-old Isabella Monnott.
“We’re like selling ice cream. Me and my mom made it,” Isabella said. “We did them yesterday all day. We have cane sugar lemonade. We got coconut, strawberry, passionfruit.”
“It’s like you stay here for a really long time, and it’s really hot and you’re tempted to go inside. But my dad’s like, ‘You have to stay out here,’” she said.
“She’s a lot,” Isabella’s older sister Anabella Monnott said. “She’s a lot, yeah. She likes to do everything herself.”
Anabella said her family does this rummage sale every year around this time of summer.
“An item like this [winter jacket] is this hard to sell on a day like today do you think?” FOX4’s Jacob Kittilstad asked.
“What my parents have taught me is like coats like this — people will by them now because it’s cheaper than buying them in the cold,” Anabella said.
Across town, retired service member Lawrence Leach was doing some gardening and heavy yard work.
“Cause my truck just got back from vacation with my kids,” Leach said with a laugh when asked why he chose Friday to work.
“I was a drill sergeant, so I trained soldiers every day through the summer. It didn’t matter what the temperature was,” Leach said.
But he knows the importance of taking precautions in heat like this.
“When you’re out in the weather like this — and they’ll tell you flat out — you need to stop, you need to water ’em, cool ’em down, and then you could continue. We’d never go, in this kind of heat, 30 minutes maybe,” Leach said.
He said on a day like Friday, it’s about balance between the sun and his mantra: stay busy.
“You kind of stop doing things and then you pass. I don’t want to pass yet. I’m not ready. God’s not done with me yet. I hope,” Leach said.