Here's How Hot Your Subway Platform Is As Summer Turns Stations Into A Sweaty Hell

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NEW YORK CITY — The "Summer of Hell" just got more hellish. Furnace like heat is turning subway stations into infernos of steaming misery as the nearly 100 degree temperatures outside are trapped underground, mixing with the exhaust of train engines and the sweltering heat of thousands of commuter's bodies.

Just how hot is it? We went into the belly of the sweaty beast to find out.

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Armed with thermometers, Patch's reporters headed to the city’s biggest subway hubs mid-afternoon on Thursday, one of the hottest days of the summer, to discover just how hot, muggy and downright awful the situation really is.

Here’s what we found out:

Atlantic Terminal

• 4 and 5 Train Platform Temperature: 95.9 degrees
• 2 and 3 Train Platform Temperature: 95.3 degrees
• B and Q Train Platform Temperature: 94.2 degrees
• LIRR Train Platform Temperature: 93.5 degrees

“It’s like I’m in a trash (can),” said Chloe Bowman, 23, as she waited for the 2 train to take her to Manhattan. “It’s pretty miserable.”

“It’s brutal, it’s miserable until you get on the train,” said Josh G., 33, before he jumped on a B train. “I just got here from Florida and even I think it’s hot.”

Borough Hall Station

• 4 and 5 Train Platform Temperature: 90 degrees
• 2 and 3 Train Platform Temperature: 94. 8 degrees

Canal Street Station

• Temperature: 93 degrees.
• Feels like: 95 degrees.

Megan Tisch, 26, felt gross as she waited on the platform but was coping by staying hydrated and lowering her standards. “[I] just kind of give up hope that I’ll look cute at my destination,” she said.

Shekniqua Mazycka, 45, who was waiting for a train to take her to the 110th Street station, added, “It’s terrible, it’s mortifying — We need oxygen, clean air down here.”

Court Street R Train Station

• Temperature: 89. 7 degrees

"Right now it feels like I'm in the middle of the desert,” said Paul Pope, 40, an electrician lugging about 40 pounds of equipment with him. The sensation, he said, was not pleasant. "Do I look too pleasant? Look at me, I am drenched right now. I am so drenched."

Jay Street - MetroTech Station

• Temperature: 89.7 degrees

“It’s like a wet sauna,” said Todd Ronin, 36, as he waited for the R train, “like a dirty wet sauna with all the germs and the lovely things you find here.”

Union Square Station

• Temperature: 88 degrees

“If it’s humid, that’s the worst part, 'cause New York turns into a swamp,” said Diego Medina, 33, who was heading home toward Ditmas Park. “There’s something about the humidity in the city and the crowding, I think, just gets people, makes people a little more crazy.”

Theresa DaCosta, 70, worried about what waiting on the platform would do to her health. “It was bad because I feel like I would pass away,” she said.

Watch: New York City's Subway System Is In A State Of Emergency

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Patch reporter Shant Shahrigian contributed reporting.

Photos by Kathleen Culliton