New government heat risk tool sets magenta as most dangerous level [Video]

WASHINGTON — Forget about red hot. A new color-coded heat warning system relies on magenta to alert Americans to the most dangerous conditions they may see this summer.

The National Weather Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday – Earth Day – presented a new online heat risk system that combines meteorological and medical risk factors with a seven-day forecast that’s simplified and color-coded for a warming world of worsening heat waves.

“For the first time we’ll be able to know how hot is too hot for health and not just for today but for coming weeks,” Dr. Ari Bernstein, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, said at a joint news conference by government health and weather agencies.

Magenta is the worst and deadliest of five heat threat categories, hitting everybody with what the agencies are calling “rare and/or long-duration extreme heat with little …