Drought Watch: Staying Cool in the Excessive Heat

It's expected to be a hot few days in the Antelope Valley. Extreme heat and triple digit temperatures could drive up water use. Not a good thing, water company officials say, during a drought.

But, there are examples of people conserving and still staying cool. Take the kids and parents from the Desert Christian Gymnastics Center. At camp they usual play water games and hose each other down to stay cool, but to conserve they had a field trip instead to the Drytown Water Park.

Eric Dombrowski is the park's manager. For anyone wondering, the park's entire water system is recycled. He told us, "We recirculate and filter all of our water so, we're trying to save the water and be conscious of the conservation efforts."

With the excessive heat, and more expected, some water companies are concerned excessive heat could have a negative impact on the drought. They say people could use a lot more water to cool down. They also worry about brush fires and the potential impact on reservoirs as they are used as fill up locations for firefighting helicopters.

Linda Bistline, with Desert Christian Gymnastic Center says, "on our camp we usually do a lot of water play, but we're trying to conserve water too as a school so, that's why we brought them to Drytown."

Other ways we've found to keep cool and conserve water according to sites like WikiHow:

*You can use a washcloth of cold water and dab your face, legs... arms *Wet your hair periodically through the day with cold water *Run cold water on the insides of your wrists *You can chew on crushed ice *Spray yourself with cold water from a spray bottle

Some swimmers at the park told us other ways to cool down including...

*Using an "ice pack on your neck"

*Taking brief cool showers

*Using misters

*pouring a bucket of water on your head *putting your feet in a bucket of water *sitting in a small inflatable pool

Dombrowski says, "Anything you can do to cool your body down. That's the whole issue. It's your core temperature."

And, most importantly he adds, drink lots of water! Even if in a pool!