Urban heat islands in the Kansas City metro

When extreme heat descends on the Kansas City metro, you can feel it radiate off of buildings and dark pavement. Built-up areas, like downtown, become nearly unbearable — superheating well beyond the outlying areas. It’s called the urban heat island effect, and Kansas City, dominated by highways and parking lots, gets hit hard. On this week’s Kansas Reflector podcast, reporter Allison Kite dives into extreme heat in Kansas City, which can be devastating for the city’s most vulnerable residents and is expected to become more frequent over the coming decades.