JUST IN: Trump’s Great American State Fair Closes Due to Extreme Heat

Freedom 250 organizers announced over the loudspeakers Friday that D.C.’s Great American State Fair was being postponed due to the extreme heat, and asked people to leave the Mall until about 5 p.m.

CNN’s Derek Van Dam reported live from the National Mall, where temperatures hovered around 99 degrees and felt more like 111.

“Dana, it’s so hot that it’s difficult to keep our technology operating right now, keeping it cool enough where the batteries are,” Van Dam said to host Dana Bash. “This is the kind of heat that people are getting pulled away by emergency personnel in the back of some of the fire departments’ vehicles here, in sirens, going to cooler shade, trying their best to keep them and get down their internal lower temperature.”

“So, how hot is it?” Van Dam continued. “Well, it’s record-breaking hot. Red, hot and blue, blistering under the sun. I’ve got the CNN weather app pulled up on my phone, so we’re getting updates every minute here, basically. And the ‘feels like’ temperature is right now 111 degrees.”

Van Dam said, “It’s very likely that this will go down as the hottest Fourth of July celebration that this country has ever experienced here in D.C.”

Visitors were seeking shade wherever they could find it, including under the mock-up of President Donald Trump’s Triumphal Arch, Van Dam said.

“The temperature difference between the shade from the arch and here on the open avenue here of Seventh Avenue is astounding. We’re talking maybe a 20-degree temperature difference.” He added, “There’s water refill stations that have run out of water, hopefully just temporarily, and they’re going to get some, but we’ll find out.”

Van Dam used his digital thermometer to take a reading of the temperature on the ground, “and it says 135 degrees Fahrenheit. That is, if you’ve got animals, that will blister their paws of their feet. If you’re walking around without shoes, yeah, that’s going to be a problem,” he warned.

“But again, this is the spectacle that’s drawing the thousands of people here, Dana. And they’re enduring the heat using whatever shade they can find, including umbrellas. But, you know, very, very little opportunity to cool yourself off here in what could be a record-breaking heat wave.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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