From Florida to California to Texas, a large part of the southern United States is still in the grip of a heat wave on Sunday described as “oppressive” by the weather services, which predict several records of temperatures. “An oppressive and widespread heat wave will still be present today across much of the West to the southernmost states,” the National Weather Service (NWS) warned in a bulletin this Sunday morning.
In Phoenix, a metropolis of Arizona in the southwestern United States, nearly 48°C were thus measured this Saturday evening, for the 16th consecutive day of maximum temperatures above 43°C. And in the famous Death Valley, temperatures have climbed to 51°C, while 53°C are expected on Sunday July 16. Several areas of Arizona but also California, Utah and Nevada find themselves in the “magenta” alert level, a “rare and/or long-lasting extreme heat level” which represents the level of NWS highest alert.
A drop in temperatures is not on the immediate agenda for the more than 80 million people under a high temperature alert on Sunday, as the heat dome is expected to remain stationed over those regions for the next few days, predicted the NWS.
In central and southern California, the thermometer hovered between 41°C and 45°C, according to the NWS. The village of Idyllwild, 1,650m in the San Jacinto Mountains in the south of the state, on Saturday broke its record of more than 1.5°C, at 37.8°C against 36.1° C before.
Californian firefighters have been fighting since Friday against several very violent fires in the south of the state, including the “Rabbit” fire located about a hundred kilometers from Los Angeles and which has already set fire to more than 3,000 hectares, according to the fire department. California wildfires. The latter also warn that the fire is currently contained at “0%”, raising fears of worsening conditions.
Other regions of the United States are at risk of severe weather. The NWS thus expects “strong to violent thunderstorms and heavy rains” in part of the northeastern United States, with a risk of flooding. A flash flood killed three people this Saturday in a county north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and four more people are still missing there on Sunday, local firefighters said.
In its Sunday bulletin, the NWS warns that “in addition to threats of flooding and sweltering heat, air quality alerts are in place for much of the Great Lakes region, the Midwest and of the Northern High Plains. “This is due to the thick and persistent concentration of smoke coming from Canadian wildfires over these regions” of the northern United States, specifies the NWS.
Because in Canada, the number of fires continues to increase, particularly in the west of the country, where in a few days several hundred outbreaks of fires have been recorded, mainly triggered by thunderstorms. “We find ourselves this year with figures that are worse than our most pessimistic scenarios,” Yan Boulanger, a researcher for the Canadian Ministry of Natural Resources, told AFP. “What is completely crazy is that there has been no respite since the beginning of May,” analyzes this forest fire specialist.
More than 10 million hectares have already gone up in smoke across the country – more than 11 times the one-year average of the past decade. The absolute annual record – set at 7.3 million hectares in 1989 – has already been largely exceeded. Greenhouse gas emissions are increasing the strength, duration and rate of repetition of heat waves, experts say.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency indicates in particular that “heat waves are occurring more frequently than before in major cities across the United States”. “Their frequency has increased continuously, from an average of two heat waves per year during the 1960s to six per year during the 2010s and 2020s,” she says.
