Welcome to Summer Camp! You Can Play Outside for 15 Minutes.

Children who attend the Best Kids After School & Summer Camp in the Austin, Texas, suburb of Round Rock usually play outside for two hours a day. This summer, with high temperatures regularly exceeding 100 degrees, they get 15 minutes each morning.

Co-founder Hannah Chapman said it is the most campers or counselors can bear.

“It’s like walking into a convection oven,” she said of the outdoors this summer.

Summer camp is becoming an increasingly indoor experience throughout the Southern and Southwestern U.S., as average temperatures are rising and heat waves are becoming more common due to climate change. 

San Angelo, Texas, reached 114 degrees on June 20, breaking a record high temperature for the month. Lancaster, Calif., set a new daily record on July 16 with 110 degrees, while the same day Page, Ariz., broke its record for the date with 109 degrees. 

One of the striking features of the recent U.S. heat wave is its duration. Tuesday was the 19th day in a row with temperatures above 110 degrees in Phoenix, breaking a record set in 1974. 

That is about double the normal number for this time of year, said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Salerno.

Harrison Whalen, one of 165 boys and girls who attend Best Kids, said he misses playing basketball and soccer outdoors. “But it’s fun inside,” said the 8-year-old. “There’s eating, playing, and sometimes we go bowling.”

Summer camps serve about 26 million school-age children annually, according to the American Camp Association. Many are dealing not just with rising heat, but more frequent severe windstorms, flooding and other extreme weather events, said Tom Rosenberg, the trade group’s president.

“It’s all about being flexible in the programming, which in the case of extreme heat means more water breaks, having enough shade and limiting strenuous outdoor activities,” said Rosenberg.

In Mesa, Ariz., field trips to downtown Phoenix and other places have been canceled or modified in July because of the extreme heat, said Ella Wallace, director of community education and outreach at Mesa Public Schools, which operates summer day and athletic camps. “Just getting kids onto a bus can take 10 to 15 minutes, and they can get sick before they even get on,” she said.

Most activities have also been moved indoors, which Wallace said necessitates more staffing and space to conduct activities. She said one or two staff members can safely supervise about 30 students outside, compared with one per 10 or so inside. Partly as a result, she said the district’s summer budget is 20% to 30% higher than it would be normally.

Between 2013 and 2022, the number of annual heat-associated deaths in Maricopa County, which includes Mesa and Phoenix, rose to 425 from 76, local health officials have reported. Children are among the most vulnerable. 

“I think it’s the new normal and now we’re recognizing it,” said Allison Poulos, a behavioral scientist at Arizona State University.

In inland San Diego, where daytime temperatures last week rose more than 10 degrees above average into the 90s, the Toby Wells YMCA camp has moved many activities inside at its 6-acre facility, said program director Michael Nicoloff. Cold water is in such high demand, he said, that the 5-gallon jugs at each outdoor kiosk are being refilled three times a day compared with the normal rate of one. 

The Ferncliff summer camp in Little Rock, Ark., bought two misting fans and 3,000 Popsicles to help cope with a heat wave that began in late June with temperatures approaching 100 for days on end—almost 10 degrees above average.

Outdoor activities such as hikes on the 1,200-acre, wooded property have been curtailed in favor of more indoor ones, such as arts and crafts and a climbing wall.  

“Being in the South, we’re used to hot summers,” said associate director Emily Hooker. “But as we face the fact that global temperatures are getting warmer, we have to adapt as well.”

Traci Hardy’s 13- and 16-year-old sons used to attend Best Kids camp in Round Rock and are now counselors at other nearby camps that keep children indoors most of the day because of the heat. She said she’s sad children can’t get as much time outdoors as she did in the summers growing up in the 1970s.

“Being outside is a beautiful thing,” said Hardy. “I hate for kids not being able to experience that.”

Write to Jim Carlton at [email protected]