Extreme heat forecast: What to expect as heat wave hits Midwest, Northeast
Weather map. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) –A dangerous heat wave is bringing prolonged extreme heat to the Midwest, the South and the East Coast this week.
The extreme heat hit the Midwest first. On Monday, the heat index — what temperature it feels like with humidity– soared to the triple digits in Minneapolis and Chicago.
On Tuesday, the worst of the heat will stretch from the Great Lakes to the South to the central Gulf Coast.
The heat index is forecast to hit 105 degrees in Chicago, 111 in Detroit, 110 in Louisville, Kentucky, 106 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and 105 in Houston.
Chicago has activated cooling centers throughout the city, including at community service centers, senior centers, libraries, city colleges and police districts. Chicago Public Schools said all summer programming will be inside Monday through Wednesday.
On Wednesday, the heat will continue in the Midwest and the South and also spread into the Northeast.
The heat index is forecast to reach a scorching 108 degrees in Detroit, 105 degrees in Houston, 102 in New York City, and 104 in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
The heat will stay in place in the Great Lakes and the South Thursday, with temperatures climbing even higher in the Northeast. The heat index could hit 107 degrees in New York City, 111 in Philadelphia and 110 in Washington, D.C.
There will be minimal relief overnight, which makes the heat even more dangerous.
The unrelenting heat continues Friday with the heat index forecast to reach 102 in Detroit, 106 in Memphis, Tennessee, 102 in Tampa, Florida, and 109 in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Extreme heat is considered the deadliest weather-related hazard in the U.S. At least 13,000 Americans have died from heat since 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On the Fourth of July on Saturday, the heat index will remain dangerously high, forecast to hit 104 in New York, 109 in Washington, D.C., and 108 in Philadelphia.
The fraternity house at the center of a rape allegation stands on the campus of Cornell University on Sept. 30, 2026, in Ithaca, New York. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
One day after a campuswide alert notified students about a reported rape at a Cornell University fraternity in 2024, the school’s police department received a tip from an anonymous caller saying that the Chi Phi fraternity’s leadership asked a potential witness to stay quiet because “the reputation of all involved and the frat would be ruined” if details of the incident spread across campus, according to the school records reviewed by ABC News.
Videos first obtained by ABC News showed that Cornell investigators in the following days began questioning witnesses about a potential coverup by the fraternity brothers.
“Chi Phi held a meeting essentially to get all of the men on the same page about what happened. I know for a fact there are [GroupMe] messages about the situation,” one female student told investigators.
That student told investigators that the fraternity brothers described the incident as a “consensual orgy” but expressed concern that it “would be bad for [their] image.”
The woman at the center of the case, an undergraduate student identified only as Jane Doe, originally made a complaint to campus police in November 2024, three weeks after the incident occurred, alleging that she had been raped by eight to 10 men at the Chi Phi fraternity house.
The case has now rocked the university and started conversations about treatment of alleged sexual assault on college campuses across the country.
On Tuesday, Cornell’s board of trustees announced it had tapped the law firm King and Spaulding to conduct an investigation, led by former acting U.S. attorney general Sally Yates, into the school’s handling of Jane Doe’s allegations.
In 2024, Cornell police officers interviewed at least two fraternity members about the incident and what communication took place within the organization, according to materials reviewed by ABC News. One of the brothers said the incident only came up informally during a meeting when the fraternity discussed their “brother of the week and idiots of the week.”
“We didn’t have a meeting about it specifically,” he said. “It was our weekly chapter meeting. We got through a bunch of stuff.”
ABC News also reviewed text messages from some of the fraternity brothers that appear to show a scramble to contain the fallout after Cornell suspended the chapter.
“When was the last time you spoke to [Jane Doe]?” the fraternity’s president wrote in the messages to fraternity member Matthew Ingalls, who invited Jane Doe to the house before participating in the alleged assault.
“Yesterday … what’s the plan of action?” Ingalls replied. “Should I call [her]? I don’t think she would have reported this.”
All seven of the accused fraternity members have denied all wrongdoing. Ingalls, who has not been charged with a crime, has not responded to requests for comment about the incident. According to records reviewed by ABC News, he later told investigators that he was too intoxicated to consent that night and portrayed himself as the victim in the incident.
In an email to Cornell’s Title IX investigator in February 2025, Ingalls accused the school of “entrapment” and suggested he might file his own complaint against Jane Doe.
“After all, you received information that I was sodomized by her while I was incapacitated back in November, and you never once thought to alert me of my rights under these procedures as a survivor of this assault?” Ingalls wrote in an email reviewed by ABC News. “The very fact that I had to bring this to your attention now in February confirms my worst fears: that this process is rolled [sic] with gender discrimination.”
Jane Doe has filed a civil suit in the case, and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, is conducting an investigation into the incident.
Colin Gray, 54, the father of Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray, 14, enters the Barrow County courthouse for his first appearance, on September 6, 2024, in Winder, Georgia. (Photo by Brynn Anderson-Pool/Getty Images)
(ATLANTA) — The father of a Georgia teenager who carried out a deadly mass shooting at his high school is set to be sentenced on more than two dozen charges, including second-degree murder, after a jury found him criminally culpable for the attack.
Colin Gray, 56, admitted to providing the assault rifle used by his then-14-year-old son in the September 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School, which killed two students and two teachers.
His son, 16-year-old Colt Gray, pleaded guilty to all 55 counts against him, including murder and aggravated assault. Judge Nicholas Primm sentenced him to life in prison without parole on Tuesday.
The teen’s father will appear in the Barrow County Courthouse before the same judge on Thursday to learn his fate. He faces more than 100 years in prison after being found guilty of 27 counts, including second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter, cruelty to children in the second degree, and reckless conduct. The jury deliberated for fewer than two hours before returning the guilty verdicts in March.
Colin Gray marks the latest parent charged and convicted in the U.S. in connection with a mass shooting carried out by his child.
During the two-week trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Colin Gray had been warned that his son had an affinity for mass shooters and was aware that the teen kept a shrine in his bedroom dedicated to the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Instead of getting his son psychological help, Colin Gray gave the boy an AR-15-style weapon as a Christmas present that the teen ultimately used to carry out the mass shooting at Apalachee High School, prosecutors said.
Colin Gray testified in his own defense during the trial, breaking down while being questioned about whether he noticed any “red flags” that would have led him to believe the boy was capable of committing a mass shooting.
“I struggle with it every day,” Colin Gray testified. “He’s a good kid, you know? He wasn’t perfect, but to do something, uh, that heinous, like I don’t, I don’t know if anybody would see that type of evil.”
During his testimony, Colin Gray confirmed that he gave his son the AR-15-style rifle as a Christmas present, telling jurors the gift came with rules.
“This is a weapon that I want you to shoot when we go to the range, and if you keep doing really good in school, going to school and doing all the things you should, you graduate and you’re 18, this will be your gun,” Colin Gray said he told his son.
Following the verdict, Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said that evidence showed that there were “multiple warnings over a lengthy period of time.”
“You just had to do one thing — take that rifle away — and this would have been prevented,” Smith told reporters.
Several other parents have been convicted in the U.S. in connection with a mass shooting carried out by their children.
In 2024, Jennifer and James Crumbley were convicted of charges stemming from a deadly mass shooting at a Michigan high school committed by their then-15-year-old son, Ethan Crumbley. The parents were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in separate trials after prosecutors presented evidence of an unsecured gun at their home and their indifference toward their son’s mental health. They were each sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison.
Their son pleaded guilty in October 2022 to murdering four students and injuring several others in the November 2021 shooting at Oxford High School and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In 2023, Robert Crimo Jr. pleaded guilty to seven counts of misdemeanor reckless conduct — one count for each person killed by his son, Robert Crimo III, during a mass shooting at a 2022 Fourth of July Parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. As part of a plea deal, Crimo Jr. was sentenced to 60 days in jail and two years of probation.
His son, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of murder and attempted murder last year and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In an ongoing case, the father of a 15-year-old girl who shot and killed a student and teacher at a Wisconsin school in 2024 faces charges alleging he allowed his daughter access to guns used in the deadly shooting.
The father, Jeffrey Rupnow, was charged with two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a minor and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in connection with the shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison. His case is set to go to trial next year.
