DAYTON, OH - Heat is going to extremes again in southwest Ohio, a week after the region saw one of its warmest and longest hot spells in years.

The National Weather has issued an excessive heat watch for the counties that include Cincinnati and Dayton, and has posted a heat advisory for surrounding counties. Humidity will also be a big factor today. 

The weather service office in Wilmington said earlier this week that the eight days that ended Sunday were Dayton's warmest, on average, since 1940. It was Cincinnati's hottest eight-day stretch since 2007.

All across the country, summer's second-last wave of wildflowers – the biennial gaura, Joe Pye weed, monkey flower, tall coneflower, white snakeroot, jumpseed, virgin's bower, field thistle and Japanese knotweed – are blooming in the open fields and along the fence rows.

An Ohio storm knocked down a 10,000-pound granite replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

The Blade of Toledo reports winds approaching 70 mph on Friday knocked over most sections of the 288-foot-long memorial. No one was hurt.

Wall manager Greg Welsh says it was the first time the replica, on display for a weekend festival, has ever gone down.

Volunteers worked for four hours to get the structure back up.

Organizers of the annual Vectren Dayton Air Show say attendance was down 15 percent amid the weekend's extreme heat and humidity.

A news release says an estimated 65,000 attended the show.

Officials with the air show said Monday that no other major problems were reported, though on Saturday, the show's general manager said that about a dozen people were treated for dehydration or heat exhaustion.

The Dayton Daily News reports lightning on Sunday forced one of show's headline performances to be cut short. The Air Force Thunderbirds ended their high-speed demonstration flights after a few initial fly-overs in F-16 fighters.

Ohio is drying out and powering back up following storms with high winds that also dumped large amounts of rain.

More than 14,000 American Electric Power customers lost service. AEP still had nearly 4,000 out this morning (Monday), out of more than 5,000 utility customers without power statewide.

The Dayton Daily News reports lightning brought an early end to a major air show in Dayton, while the area's winds blew over a large tent at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, sending two people to the hospital with minor injuries.

The Ohio attorney general's office says its units that deal with Medicaid and workers' compensation fraud recovered a record-setting amount in the last fiscal year.

Attorney General Mike DeWine says more than $101 million was recovered by the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, which secured 135 indictments and 121 convictions.

DeWine's office says the workers' compensation unit recovered nearly $1.9 million and had 99 indictments and 100 convictions.

He says it's important that funds meant to help the injured and the sick are used as they're intended - and added that more agents have been hired this year to help with the task.