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Heat in the Northeast has taken at least six lives, health officials say. Five have died in Maryland over the course of the summer of heat-related causes; one man died last week in New York.

A heat wave has been hanging over the northeast and the Midwest since early this week, driving up the heat index over 100 degrees in many places.Extreme heat can be a major cause of death, and health officials warn that the elderly, children and people with cardiovascular conditions stay cool and drink plenty of water.

Like many things in life, it's going to get worse before it gets better.That lardy layer of humid, sticky heat oozing over the Northeast and Midwest is getting hotter and spreading out Thursday. But cooling rain will wash it away in some places in the evening.The worst of it started out on the National Weather Service map as bright orange spots over parts of New England and Michigan earlier this week. The spots have grown nearly together like a bad rash, forming a seething blotch from Massachusetts to South Dakota.Heat above 90 degrees will combine with roughly 100% humidity to make it feel like it's in the 100s.How miserable does that feel? The "Daily Show" reporter John Oliver summed it up with a joke in a segment that aired Wednesday:

"On my way to work this morning, I saw a squirrel stab a pigeon over a piece of ice."It was a bad day to get stuck in a commuter train, packed to the hilt with sweaty rush-hour passengers. That happened to thousands heading out of Manhattan to Long Island Wednesday.In Chicago, commuters got the heat poured over them on their morning ride, CNN affiliate WLS reported.A train struck a power line, causing a fire that shut down a subway line in a suburb. Hundreds of people gathered at the tracks sweating up their work clothes in the sun before scrambling to find another way to their jobs.On the South Side, 800 customers lost power,silencing the whirr of their air conditioners. Some of them went outside, where it felt cooler.The oppressive swelter closed three schools Wednesday in Detroit, including the Burger School-West, after the heat index made the Motor City feel like a griddle.In Minneapolis, road crews proved their toughness, spreading hot asphalt in the sun, while dressed in long pants, safety vests and hard hats.

Health dangers

Extreme heat causes more deaths than all other extreme weather conditions, the Centers for Disease Control say.It killed over 8,000 people between 1979 and 2003, more than "hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes combined."At least six people have died this summer in the Northeast, health officials in Maryland and New York state reported.The hot weather is a challenge to children, the elderly and people with heart and lung conditions, and air quality plummets, while ozone levels soar. The Red Cross advises everyone to stay cool and drink plenty of water. 

Relief

Some people could find no relief from the heat and took their complaints to social media.

"Melting. Way too hot in this place to sleep," tweeted Morgan Sable from Ontario. You know it's hot, when it's too hot to sleep at night in Canada.Twitter user @annielaa2 in Pennsylvania didn't have air conditioning Wednesday and turned a fan on herself and her cat."Getting hot air blown in your face really doesn't help," she tweeted.From Toronto to Indianapolis, many people chose not to hide indoors in front of the air conditioner and opted for water instead, flocking to beaches, pools and fountains.Kids in North Dakota doused each other in splash parks.It was shades of things to come over the weekend in the northeast, the National Weather Service said.The extreme heat is supposed to yield to severe thunderstorms.