ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Many kids and athletes at schools all around the St. Louis region has seen practices being moved from the afternoon to early mornings.
With temperatures throughout the week in St. Louis reaching to the upper 90s degrees and sometime into 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it puts bigger emphasis on how schools are making sure their students and their athletes try to stay safe during this extreme heat.
Stacey Morgan, the head athletic trainer at MICDS says like all athletic trainers in the state, they have to follow some very layered plan when it comes to extreme weather from the Missouri State High School Activities Association (MSHSAA).
Among the measurements the trainers use includes a wet bulb test, which measures the temperature read by a thermometer covered in a wet cloth. Morgan says the test has become "standard of care at this point."
"This week we've been setting it out at 11 o'clock in the morning and we take readings about every 20 to 30 minutes just to track what's going on," said Morgan on Total Information A.M.
"The web bulb is kind of that standard of care at this point because it measures more than, just heat and humidity. So it'll take into account wind speed, cloud cover, sun angle and those types of things."
The web bulb is valuable to athletes because according to Morgan, as part of it's criteria, there are certain levels that athletes can't do conditioning, football players cannot put their pads on that day, or there a limited amount of time they can be outside.
Morgan says trainers during the preseason will have a meeting with coaches and players to discuss how they can dress for the heat, how they can hydrate properly and so on.
"We tell the kids obviously that the hydrating they're doing the night before is probably the most important for the next day," said Morgan. "But we tell them to keep a water bottle with them throughout the day."
"A basic rule of thumb that we will tell them is even without exercise, we should be drinking at least half our body weight and ounces of water a day and then for those going out to exercise, we say you should at least be close to doubling that number."