BALLWIN, Mo. – On Sunday, a heat wave moving through the region brought dangerously high temperatures. People in Ballwin were hoping to cool off at the city’s pool, but a power outage forced the city to shut down the pool and public golf course.
The outage began around 2 p.m. Sunday, according to Ameren Missouri, amid a dangerous heatwave arriving in the region.
One couple spent the afternoon at North Pointe Park on the empty pickleball courts.
“It’s nice because this place is usually packed, like people are always lined up outside the fence waiting,” Ellie Lewis said.
Just up the road from the park, Ameren crews spent the afternoon working to restore power to 2,500 customers who lost power during the hottest part of the day.
Lewis said she and Jonah Ulane wanted to take advantage of the high temperatures.
“We’ve got about six water bottles, a couple of towels, Gatorade. We set up a chair over there in the shade to try to refresh in between games,” Ulane said.
They said spending about an hour outside in these temperatures is long enough.
“Heat doesn’t really get to us too much. Just wanted to get outside and get our exercise in,” Ulane said. “We’re like, if it’s really hot, we’ll probably burn calories superfast. We only planned on playing a couple of games. Probably wrapping up here shortly.”
He said afterward they planned on spending time in the air conditioning to cool off.
“Hot sauna workout mix. Instead of hot yoga, it’s hot pickleball,” Lewis said.
