More than 70 million are subject to heat warnings and advice from Saturday to early next week, as a powerful heat dome sends temperatures to levels the National Meteorological Service calls “potentially deadly.”
Overall picture: The heat wave, exacerbated by a long-term drought affected by climate change, shows signs of possible swelling in the middle of the country and then in the east next week.
Why it matters: Extreme heat is the deadliest weather threat in the United States each year, and climate change is making these events more likely, severe and long-lasting.
- The threat to public health from this particular heat wave is particularly high due to the high minimum temperatures at night, which in many places break records. For example, at 1 a.m. local time on Saturday morning, Phoenix was still at 100 ° F.
- “Extreme and deadly heat will continue this weekend,” said the NWS forecast office in Phoenix, noting the “minimum recovery overnight.” Weather forecasters noted that Phoenix could see its earliest low temperature of 90 ° F at night.
Note: The city has opened many cooling centers for those without access to air conditioning.
In numbers: The heat recommendations cover almost the entire state of Texas and Oklahoma and extend all the way east to Tennessee.
- These tips and a more serious warning, known as the Heat Warning, are also in effect all the way to the West Coast, with three-digit heat scorching California’s central valley.
- Daily temperature records have already been set since Friday, and are likely to fall more on Saturday and beyond. In general, temperature deviations from the average during this heat wave are about 10 to 20 ° F or more above normal for this time of year.
Friday’s records include:
- 109 ° F: Las Vegas.
- 123 ° F: Death Valley, California, with the world’s hottest temperatures. This is one of the earliest 123-degree readings ever recorded in the United States, tweets time historian Maximiliano Herrera.
- 113 ° F: Phoenix.
- 103 ° F: Austin.
- 100 ° F: Albuquerque
- 98 ° F: Houston
What’s next: High temperatures in the southwest are likely to peak on Saturday and Sunday, before the core of the high-pressure zone or thermal dome shifts east and parks over the Tennessee River Valley.
- Clockwise air circulation around this altitude will pump hot and humid air to the north. The National Weather Service predicts high temperatures Tuesday to the early 1990s north of Chicago and Minneapolis, with three-digit heat potentially reaching Iowa.
- The computer model predicts that the heat may not weaken for parts of the central United States, south and southeast until next week, before the heat potentially returns to the west.
Context: More frequent and severe heat waves are one of the most striking manifestations of man-made global warming, studies show.
- In many cases, including last year’s deadly heat wave in the Northwest Pacific, researchers have found that extreme heat events are occurring today that would be virtually impossible without man-made global warming.
Go deeper: hot flashes may soon have names
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