It’s T-minus four days to the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference in New Orleans, and all I can think about is how brutally hot it’s going to be down on the bayou when things kick off Sunday.

How hot, you may ask? Here’s what the New Orleans Times-Picayune says: It will be street-melting hot.

According to the newspaper, “The list of local thoroughfares erupting under the searing heat continues to grow, [and] a busy section of Interstate 10 in eastern New Orleans between Read Boulevard and Bullard Avenue buckled Tuesday afternoon. In Algiers, much-traveled Gen. DeGaulle Drive near Carlisle Court popped apart, damaging cars and detouring traffic after expansion joints could no longer contain the expanding panels of concrete.”

It’s got to be pretty hot to buckle roads, and worst of all, it doesn’t look to improve anytime soon.

“A ridge of upper level high pressure has become centered farther west over the southern plains, but the extended period of very hot weather will continue today [Wednesday], with a highs that could climb above 100, the weather service said,” according to another Times-Picayune story.

“Temperatures [in New Orleans] will be in the mid-90s Thursday and through the weekend, but high heat indices may reach dangerous levels each day.”

There are a lot of great things to do in New Orleans, as I noted in my Last Word column from this week’s Workforce Management SHRM 2009 Conference Planning Guide, but it’s possible that the heat and humidity may actually prompt HR professionals to sit through a lot more sessions and conference activities inside the air-conditioned Morial Convention Center.

Regardless of what the attendees do, Workforce Management will be covering the 61st annual SHRM Conference & Exposition at http://www.workforce.com/, with daily e-mail news blasts and with a big conference wrap-up next week in Workforce Week.

As for me, I’ll be sweating away in New Orleans and writing a daily Last Word column, blogging and even tweeting on Twitter (I’m at http://twitter.com/johnhollon).

If you can’t make it to SHRM, or perhaps have just decided to stay home and stay cool instead, check our site for the latest conference developments from the Big Easy. And don’t hesitate to drop me a note, if you have questions or comments, at jhollon@workforce.com.

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