Original article published in The Weekend Magazine on July 19, 2025: “Remember When: The deadly month of July 1911”

Torrid. Sweltering. Unparalleled. Intense. Deadly.

These are just some of the words used to describe the eleven-day heatwave that hit the Northeast in July 1911.

It started on Sunday, July 2, when a blanket of heat and humidity settled in over New England. While only the most devout and devoted Vermonters were in church that morning, redundantly fanning themselves with stifling air, outside the temperatures were soaring. By that afternoon, it had reached 100 degrees in Rutland. Forecast to be a “hot wave of two or three days’ duration,” according to the Montpelier Morning Journal, Vermonters who had been looking forward to a fun-filled July 4th holiday, planned instead a quiet day and the “patronage of a rest cure under the apple trees.”

The next day, papers around the state and New England began to report the tragedy that was unfolding….

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