Funny Clip About the Central Valley Heat
The West's fourth major heat wave will roast the northern Rockies.
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Another weekend is set to bring another string of potentially record-breaking high temperatures to another part of the Western United States.
This time, it is the northern Rockies and the High Plains, including parts of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, that will be under a high-pressure system known as a heat dome, according to forecasts. That will set temperatures in those states soaring through the weekend and early next week, peaking on Monday.
Bozeman, Mont., could record its hottest temperature reading ever by reaching 107 degrees on Monday, according to the private forecasting service AccuWeather. Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City may see rare triple-digit highs on Sunday and Monday.
One thing could end up keeping those temperatures down a bit: the wildfires burning in other parts of the West. "There is the chance that smoke from nearby wildfires can keep the sky hazy, which could curb some of the heat," said Jessica Storm, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.
This will be the fourth major heat wave to afflict parts of the West since early June, bringing dangerously hot temperatures and helping fuel the deepening drought and exploding wildfires across the region.
A spate of triple-digit temperatures that roasted the Pacific Northwest in late June and early July — also the result of a heat dome — killed hundreds of people in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. The event would have been all but impossible without climate change, according to a team of researchers.
This past weekend, California's Death Valley hit a 130-degree high, matching a reading from last year that may be the highest reliably recorded temperature on earth. Las Vegas tied its record high, 117 degrees, and Grand Junction, Colo., topped its previous record, hitting 107 degrees.
At least 67 weather stations from Washington State through New Mexico have recorded their hottest temperatures ever this summer, the National Weather Service said this week. Those records stretched back at least 75 years.
The Bootleg fire in Oregon is among more than 60 wildfires in the U.S.
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The Bootleg fire, a fast-moving wildfire in southern Oregon, has burned more than 200,000 acres, and meteorologists warned on Thursday that weather conditions in the next few days could make it worse.
The fire, the largest of dozens across the United States, began more than a week ago and remains only 7 percent contained. It has destroyed 21 homes, threatens 1,900 and has set off a wave of evacuations and prompted more than 130 engines to respond, according to fire officials.
The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for areas of southwest Oregon, indicating critical fire weather conditions, through 8 p.m. on Thursday. It said a weather watch would be in effect through Friday, meaning strong winds and other factors could increase the spread potential of fires.
The wildfires in the West have been fueled by extreme drought conditions, single-digit humidity and high temperatures.
The Bootleg fire has churned through more than 227,200 acres, the officials said on Thursday. It is the largest of nine active fires in Oregon.
"This fire is going to continue to grow; the extremely dry vegetation and weather are not in our favor," Joe Hessel, a commander with the Oregon Department of Forestry's incident team, said in a statement.
Fires were also raging in several other Western states, including California, Idaho, Montana and Arizona, where two firefighters were killed on Saturday while responding to a blaze. In Canada, fires have burned more than 500,000 acres.
As of Tuesday, more than 993,000 acres were burned by 71 large fires across the Western United States, drawing more than 14,000 firefighters and support personnel, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
The Beckwourth Complex, one of at least eight large fires in California, has burned about nearly 95,700 acres in the Plumas National Forest and is about 73 percent contained, officials said. The fires jumped a major highway on Saturday, scorching cars and hillsides across U.S. 395. Evacuation orders across the area were reduced on Tuesday, the authorities announced.
Jake Cagle, operations section chief for California Incident Management, said in a news conference on Tuesday that fire crews were working hard.
"We want to put this fire out," Mr. Cagle said. "I know there's a lot of rumors out there that we're just out here just managing it, letting the fire burn. That is not the case."
After days of extreme heat in Canada, flames consumed the small town of Lytton on June 30, destroying 90 percent of the structures and killing at least two people. On Tuesday, there were more than 300 active fires burning across the province of British Columbia, including 34 that started in the past two days.
So far this year, there have been nearly 34,000 fires across the United States, burning more than 2 million acres, the National Interagency Fire Center said. That's up from 2020, which saw 27,770 fires that burned about 1.6 million acres.
Christine Hauser contributed reporting.
Listen to 'The Daily': The Heat Wave That Hit the Pacific Northwest
Record-breaking climate extremes, from heat to drought to wildfires, are blanketing the United States this summer. This is how one region has been struck.
transcript
transcript
Listen to 'The Daily': The Heat Wave That Hit the Pacific Northwest
Hosted by Astead W. Herndon; produced by Annie Brown, Jessica Cheung, Rachelle Bonja and Asthaa Chaturvedi; edited by Liz O. Baylen and Paige Cowett; and engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Shawn Hubler.
Record-breaking climate extremes, from heat to drought to wildfires, are blanketing the United States this summer. This is how one region has been struck.
- michael barbaro
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From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.
- [music]
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Today: Record-breaking climate extremes are blanketing the United States this summer — from heat, to drought, to wildfires. Astead Herndon spoke with our colleagues, Sergio Olmos, about the historic heat wave that scorched the Pacific Northwest, and to Henry Fountain about how much climate change is to blame.
It's Wednesday, July 14.
- astead herndon
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Sergio, I feel like Portland has been basically at the center of every national news story recently.
- sergio olmos
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Well, we had a pretty extreme year in Portland. We had Covid shutdowns, 100 days of consecutive protests. Then we had historic wildfires where the sky just turned red. And then, finally, the city is starting to open back up again. Covid restrictions are starting to get lifted. People are starting to come out of their houses, go to restaurants, go to bars, and regular life was resuming a little bit. And then this massive heat wave just descends on the Pacific Northwest in late June.
- archived recording
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The Northwest bracing for record-breaking and potentially life-threatening heat this weekend. Dozens of records, some of them decades-old are expected to fall —
- sergio olmos
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It's Oregon, Washington and parts of Western Canada, and it brings this punishing heat.
- archived recording 1
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Portland hit an all-time record high of 112 earlier today.
- archived recording 2
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Today in Portland, Oregon, temperatures soared to 114 degrees.
- archived recording 3
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Portland hit 116 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, making it one of the hottest places in the world.
- sergio olmos
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In Portland, we saw temperatures for three days in a row break record after record, and it finally got to 116 degrees.
- archived recording
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This is some serious heat. Average temperatures this time of year — lower and middle 70s. We're talking about —
- sergio olmos
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You know, 116 degrees is like 40 degrees above what it should normally be for this time of the year.
- astead herndon
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Wow.
- sergio olmos
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And that's 9 degrees above the previous record of 107.
- archived recording
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Many people that are not used to relying on air conditioning are needing to seek out cooling centers to stay safe.
- sergio olmos
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And so we see Portland thrown back into this state of emergency, right? Just like Covid or the protests, the wildfires — everything shuts down. No one's outside. And this time, it's a different catastrophe. It's heat.
- astead herndon
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I know reporters have this weird experience, where people are staying in, and you run out. And I know that that is a reporter's shared instinct. But can you describe what it was like over those last couple of weeks? What has it felt like, just physically being in that level of heat?
- sergio olmos
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Yeah it felt like, I walk out of the door, and the heat wave hits you. It's like, OK. Feels like Vegas, right? But I'm in Portland. This is the Pacific Northwest, where it's raining a lot of the time. It's cool. It's not a place you think of to buy an AC. It never gets that hot. We're not used to this. 116-degree weather is something that — the health officer here for the county explained it that bodies acclimate to heat, but it takes time. You can't just acclimate one day to the next, one week into the next. And so yeah, we're not acclimated to that, and our infrastructure's not built for it.
For instance, I was driving around, and just a few blocks from my house, in the middle of the road, the pavement just buckled. It cracked, and it rose up. And the city said it was heat-related. I don't know anything about pavement, Astead, but I assume it wasn't —
- astead herndon
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I've never seen it buckle, so you've already got me shocked. [LAUGHS]
- sergio olmos
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Public transportation here, right? So the city, ahead of time, was like, hey, public transportation is gonna be free this weekend. If you need to get to a cooling center or anything, just get on there. Don't worry about paying for it. But as soon as the heat hit, the streetcars and the trains — they stopped them because the overhead wires for the light rail system were being strained. They were only designed to work in temperatures of up to 110 degrees. And the streetcars — the cables that power them were actually melting.
- astead herndon
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Wow.
- sergio olmos
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So the city of Portland paused all trains, all streetcars, at the time they needed them the most. So it was harder for some people just to get to the cooling centers.
And there's a socioeconomic aspect to all this. There's a professor at Portland State University named Vivek Shandas, and he studies climate adaptation. And during the heat wave, he went around Portland with a thermometer. It's not the kind you buy at the store. It's a scientific-grade thermometer. And he took measurements of different parts of Portland, and he found that the wealthiest parts of Portland were, in some cases, 98, 99 degrees. Right?
And then he went to the working class parts of Portland, parts of Portland where the highest concentration of people of color, historically, have been disinvested. So not a lot of sidewalk, not a lot of tree covers, a lot of it exposed to sun, and a lot of concrete that just absorbs the sun's radiation. He found a reading of 121 degrees in the poorest neighborhoods in Portland.
- [music]
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And so if you look at that and look at the big picture here, the county released a map of where people died in the city. And in the poorest zip codes, the highest number of deaths occurred. And in the wealthiest zip codes, we had the lowest number of deaths occur.
- astead herndon
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And what do we know about the people who died? Who are there?
- sergio olmos
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Right now, at least 193 people have died across Oregon and Washington related to the heat. What we know is that many of the people who died were elderly, living alone, without air conditioning. Others were homeless, and others had underlying health conditions.
For example, there's a story of an 84-year-old woman in Washington state, Dorothy Galliano, who was found dead in her home. She lived alone and had no air conditioning. A friend said that she was found with the window cracked open and the TV on, and she just imagined that Dorothy was watching TV, dozed off and just didn't wake up.
Another woman, Debra Moore, was found collapsed on the sidewalk just a few steps from a house she was visiting. And the police said that she had serious, underlying health issues. You have the story of a houseless man, Joseph Wade Davis, who's 64. And he had just this tent on the side of the road with PVC pipe and tarp. And he was just discovered dead at 10 a.m.
So it's a mix of people. Obviously, the most vulnerable, elderly who were living alone without AC, homeless folks — these are the highest number. But there are other people, healthy adults, who also died, and some of them died at work.
- sergio olmos
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- speaker
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- sergio olmos
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- speaker
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- sergio olmos
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Sebastian Francisco Perez — he was the first reported workplace fatality related to the heat. And he died in the Willamette Valley, where he lived and worked. And so I went there to learn more about him. And it's like a farmland community there, where they grow a lot of fruit, trees and kind of the breadbasket of Oregon. And I eventually tracked down his brother-in-law and his nephew, and they were working in the field when I find them. And he tells me about Sebastian Francisco Perez.
- speaker
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- sergio olmos
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He came from Guatemala three months ago. He wanted to have children, but he couldn't afford it in Guatemala. Lived just very austere conditions. They grew their food. They didn't have any wages. Came here to try to get some money to start a family.
- speaker
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- sergio olmos
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And he owed a coyote — these are the people that help immigrants cross illegally — he owed them $8,000 for the crossing. Five to front, three after. And so he was desperate to work. And that Saturday, when it was extraordinarily hot — and a lot of farm workers could take the day off, took it.
- speaker
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- sergio olmos
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He asked to work.
- speaker
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- sergio olmos
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He was told by relatives, like, don't do it. It's too hot. He said, no, please. I need the money.
- speaker
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- sergio olmos
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That Saturday, he was moving irrigation lines in a field of trees, and his co-workers, other laborers, found him collapsed among the trees. And they called 911, but they couldn't tell the operator where he was exactly. A lot of the laborers, a lot of them immigrants, they work from farm to farm, and they get brought in together. And they don't necessarily know where they are all the time. So they called his nephew, and they said, hey, he's collapsed on the ground. We don't know what to do.
- speaker
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- sergio olmos
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He tells them, take him to the shade. I'm on my way.
- speaker
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- sergio olmos
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And —
- speaker
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- sergio olmos
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Unfortunately, they couldn't resuscitate him. He died that day.
- speaker
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[SPEAKING SPANISH]
- [music]
- sergio olmos
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So this heat wave was kind of an opening salvo to what's going to be a catastrophic season. The west is currently in the midst of a historic drought. Another heat wave is already sweeping across California and the southwest, and fire season has already begun here in Oregon. And this is unprecedented. This is the earliest in the year that I've covered a wildfire season. There's a fire right now burning in Oregon. It's uncontained. It's already burned 150,000 acres as of Monday. And nobody expected the season to begin this early or already have been this destructive.
- astead herndon
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So from one climate disaster to the next?
- sergio olmos
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Yeah.
- [music]
- astead herndon
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Thank you, Sergio.
- sergio olmos
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Thank you, Astead.
- [music]
- michael barbaro
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We'll be right back.
- astead herndon
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OK, Henry, I've been speaking with our colleague who has been reporting on the heat waves out in the West. There was the record-breaking one that happened in June in the Pacific Northwest and another that's underway in California. The question that's running in the back of my head is, how much of what we're seeing is related to climate change?
- henry fountain
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Well, you know, that's the question that journalists and others always ask after a heat wave or other kind of extreme weather event. And it's really a central question. So right after the late June heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, in fact, there was actually a group of scientists trying to figure that very question out.
- archived recording (friederike otto)
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Good morning, good afternoon. Thank you very much for joining.
- henry fountain
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This group is called World Weather Attribution, and they held a press conference on Zoom announcing their findings. It was led by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Friederike Otto.
- archived recording (friederike otto)
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In our study, we focus on the hottest day of the year, which is what broke the records and what you will have heard in the news. So the question immediately arose, what is the role of climate change in this event?
- henry fountain
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They try to figure out a link, if it exists, between the world that's warming and these extreme events, like this really, really bad heat wave. And they try to do it really quickly.
- archived recording (friederike otto)
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We have done this study within a week, and everyone worked nights and weekends and really —
- henry fountain
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They think that getting it out when it's still fresh in people's minds would help people understand the problem.
- astead herndon
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And how exactly do they do that analysis? How do they measure the impact of climate change when it comes to a single event?
- henry fountain
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They use a lot of computers, basically, that run models of the world. They simulate the world. And they run some models with the world as it is today, which is, it's warmed about 2 degrees Fahrenheit because we've poured all this CO2 into the atmosphere. They also run models of a world that would exist if we hadn't pumped all that CO2 in the atmosphere — in other words, a world without warming. And then they compare the two results.
So for instance, if a heat wave like this had a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year in a world that hadn't warmed, and in a world that warmed it has a 1 in 10 chance of happening in a given year, then you know that climate change had an impact.
- astead herndon
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So when these scientists ran this model, what did they find?
- henry fountain
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Well, what you've got to understand about this heat wave — it was really off the charts. It was extraordinary.
- archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh)
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We've never seen a jump in record temperature like the one in this heat wave, as far as I can remember.
- henry fountain
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And when they ran the analysis, the results were clear.
- archived recording (friederike otto)
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There is absolutely no doubt that climate change played a key role here.
- henry fountain
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This extreme heat wave in this place would have been impossible before we started warming the world.
- archived recording (friederike otto)
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It means that, without the additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such an event just does never occur. Or if it occurs, it occurs once in a million times, which is the statistical equivalent of never.
- henry fountain
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So it was still a rare event, but 100 years ago, it was an impossible event. And that's because the world has warmed.
- archived recording (friederike otto)
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So heat waves are increasing in likelihood by orders of magnitude — more than any other type of extreme event.
- henry fountain
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And what these researchers have also found is that heat waves are more affected by climate change than any other extreme weather.
- archived recording (friederike otto)
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So for any other type of extreme event, we do see extreme rainfall or droughts. We do see an increase maybe by a factor of four, but for heat waves, we see orders of magnitude. So this event was made at least 150 times more likely.
- henry fountain
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And she said that heat waves, more than any other type of climate-related natural disaster, are not only more likely, but they also tend to kill more people.
- archived recording (friederike otto)
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And, yeah. And I think this is really — heat waves is how climate change kills us today. I think this is how climate change manifests most strongly.
- henry fountain
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Just think about it. A flood might affect a relatively small region, area near a river, whatever. But a heat wave can cover a huge amount of area. In this Pacific Northwest heat wave that ended in the end of June, everybody in Oregon, everybody in the state of Washington, and most of the people in British Columbia were affected. So I think the researchers estimated that that was something like nine million people, and that's really a lot of potential victims of extreme heat. And so all of this has these scientists concerned.
- archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh)
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We feel that we do not understand heat waves as well as we thought we did.
- henry fountain
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You know, I've covered a bunch of these attribution studies, and I've talked to a lot of scientists about them. And normally, it's pretty straightforward. But there's one thing Dr. Van Oldenborgh said that really struck me, and I frankly I kind of found it alarming.
- archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh)
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I think most of us, or all of us, have just dialed down our certainty of how heat waves behave. We are much less certain about how the climate affects heat waves than we were two weeks ago.
- henry fountain
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Essentially, he said, like, after this heat wave, it was so unusual, so extreme, we're not sure we really understand heat waves anymore. Like, it's really kind of jolted us in our certainty of the way heat waves behave.
- astead herndon
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Henry, it sounds like what you're saying is what really surprised you is the fact that the scientists themselves were surprised, and that they were saying the heat wave that was just experienced in the Northwest may have actually changed their understanding of how these operate. What exactly are we saying, though? How is this heat wave possibly different than ones that we have seen previously?
- henry fountain
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So what we'd expect with a kind of quote, unquote, "normal" heat wave is that, as the average baseline temperature goes up, you'd expect the hottest, record-breaking temperatures to go up at about the same rate more or less. But with this heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, the highest temperatures broke the record not by a couple of degrees, but by as many as 9 degrees.
So the scientists are trying to figure out what's going on here, and they say there's really only two possibilities.
- archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh)
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The first one is the obvious one. It's that it was just a really, really rare event, and this region was unlucky.
- henry fountain
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Maybe it's just this confluence of bad luck, as they put it.
- archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh)
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I mean, the Earth is a really huge place, and weird things happen or very improbable happen somewhere on Earth on a fairly regular basis.
- henry fountain
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The Pacific Northwest had a heat wave that was compounded by the drought that's been going on in the West, and the jet stream was acting funny or whatever, and maybe that's the case. And in that case, maybe it's not such a concern.
- archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh)
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The second possibility is that we could be past the threshold that made these kind of heat waves certainly much more likely.
- henry fountain
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But if it's some other mechanism, some other threshold idea, that's a concern. Maybe this one time of it now becomes once every five years or 10 years or once a year or whatever. So that's the fundamental issue they're trying to figure out. More and more, I think this heat wave is a big deal. It's like a seminal event, really. Kind of like a big volcanic eruption or something, and it's going to be studied for a long time because it was so unusual. And they've got to figure out why.
- astead herndon
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So what's most alarming about their findings is that it could mean that we have hit a sort of tipping point.
- henry fountain
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It's not necessarily that we've hit a tipping point. But the thing that really stuns a lot of climate scientists, and it certainly stuns a lot of people, is how fast things are happening. I'm guilty of this, too. I've been writing about climate change for a while, and it was always like, yeah, the big impacts are going to be in the middle of the century. Well, the big impacts are starting now. And it's obvious now that the impacts are hitting us, but it seems like they're sort of accelerating. So whether we've passed a tipping point or not, I don't know. But we're in a bad state right now where bad climate events are happening, and what we thought would happen in the future is happening now.
- astead herndon
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Hm. This makes me think back to the beginning of our conversation, when you were talking about all of those scientists who are rushing to get information out to the public after each of these extreme weather events. There seems to be an optimism at the core of that effort, a belief that, with a little more information, with a little more knowledge, that policymakers and the public will care more about this issue — will push people to do something. But I guess I'm wondering, is that true? Is this really a problem of lack of information?
- henry fountain
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Well, a couple of things. Scientists are scientists, right? They're like men and women who believe in empirical thought and experimentation and getting data and analyzing it, and figuring out what's going on and explaining it. If they're optimistic, they think they're going to do what they can do, which is explain the world — the way it is, the physical world, the warming world — to people.
And then there are some scientists who then take that and use it to go out and directly influence the policy makers, like they go lobby Congress or whatever. But there's a lot who just think, I'm going to do my job, and then it's up to the public and the public's elected officials to do their job and deal with it. And, you know, I think you've seen some of that. Scientists have gotten better about explaining what's going on more quickly. And this whole attribution study by this group — I mean, that's their goal.
But what's really going to change people's minds is the more they're personally affected by things like heat waves or floods or droughts, particularly if they keep happening or if, God forbid, they lose a loved one to a flood or to a heat wave.
- astead herndon
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I guess the "glass half full" read is that, as these things like heat waves become more tangible in people's lives, then something will be done. But that same view also means that a lot of bad things are going to happen to people before they really come to know the bad effects of climate change. And we know that the people who are most likely to experience those negative effects are the people who are most vulnerable in our communities — the people who are most unheard, the people who have the least amount of political power to do something about it.
- henry fountain
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You know, sadly, I think that's really true.
- [music]
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The poorest and most disadvantaged people in society tend to suffer the most from all kinds of climate-related disasters, and heat waves are really no exception. And what we've learned is that as the world continues to warm, heat waves are going to continue to increase in frequency and get hotter, and we may even see more events like this one in the Pacific Northwest with really off-the-charts, extreme heat. And that doesn't bode well for all of society, but it's especially bad news for the poorest and disadvantaged among us.
- astead herndon
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Thank you, Henry, for your time.
- henry fountain
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Well, thanks. Nice talking to you.
- [music]
- michael barbaro
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We'll be right back.
Here's what else you need to know today.
- archived recording (joe biden)
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So hear me clearly. There's an unfolding assault taking place in America today, an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections. An assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are — who we are as Americans.
- michael barbaro
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In a speech delivered on Tuesday in Philadelphia, President Biden issued his most forceful denunciation to date of Republican efforts to restrict voting in states across the country and to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his victory.
- archived recording (joe biden)
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Bullies and merchants of fear, peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country.
- michael barbaro
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The speech was designed to reassure Democrats, who say Biden has failed to deliver on a promise to make voting rights a central theme of his presidency. And it comes as Republican lawmakers in Texas try to adopt voting restrictions over the objections of their Democratic colleagues, many of whom have fled the state to block the legislation.
- archived recording (joe biden)
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I'll be asking my Republican friends in Congress and states and cities and counties to stand up for God's sake and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote. [APPLAUSE] Have you no shame?
- michael barbaro
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Today's episode was produced by Annie Brown, Jessica Cheung, Rachelle Bonja, Asthaa Chaturvedi and Austin Mitchell. It was edited by Liz O. Baylen and Paige Cowett, contains original music by Dan Powell and was engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Shawn Hubler.
- [music]
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That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.
See where wildfires are burning across the West.
Some of the largest wildfires in U.S. history are burning across the American West this year, charring vast swaths of forest land and threatening communities. This interactive map built by The New York Times, using government and satellite data, is tracking wildfires as they spread across Western states. Check back regularly for updates.
In Europe, hundreds are missing and scores are dead amid devastating floods.
Swift-moving water from swollen rivers surged through cities and villages in western Europe this week, with the death toll passing 90 in the hardest-hit regions of Germany on Friday, and more fatalities expected.
At least a dozen more people were reported to have died in Belgium. The storms and resulting high water also battered neighboring Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg as a slow-moving weather system threatened to dump even more rain on the inundated region
Extreme downpours are among the most visible and damaging signs that the climate is changing as a result of warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Studies have found that they are now occurring more frequently, and scientists point to a simple reason: A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, which creates extreme rainfall.
Germans struggled even to grasp the scale of the calamity in their country. Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her shock and solidarity from Washington, where she was visiting the White House. Politicians of all stripes called for a truce in the German election campaign.
The focus was on how to deal with a disaster that was growing by the hour, with thousands left homeless, in addition to the missing.
Monsoon rains flood the Grand Canyon, leaving one camper dead.
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A woman was found dead and five people were injured after a flash flood in the Grand Canyon this week, the National Park Service said on Friday, as monsoon rains left parts of Arizona awash in muddy, fast-moving and potentially dangerous water.
As parts of the West prepare for the fourth major heat wave of the summer, monsoon season in the Southwest has also brought heavy rain to New Mexico and Arizona, with an unusually intense downpour propelling a torrent of water through part of the Grand Canyon, washing away a camp where about 30 people on a rafting trip were spending the night.
Park officials started a search after receiving a report of two people missing and "multiple parties injured." Early Thursday, search and rescue workers found five people, one of whom was in critical condition, the park service said. Two more were later found, one uninjured and one dead.
The park service said the person who died was Rebecca Copeland, 29, of Ann Arbor, Mich.
Kaitlyn Thomas, a park service spokeswoman for the National Park Service, said the flood overtook the campsite from the sides of the canyon, an uncommon occurrence.
Large parts of the Southwest are susceptible to flash floods, with dry, sparsely vegetated land that does not easily absorb rain and makes it easy for the smallest of storms to create a torrent, as rain runoff moves rapidly through narrow canyons and steep terrain.
Floods can get even worse during monsoon season, which runs from June to September. The National Weather Service issued flash flood and storm warnings for parts of Arizona on Wednesday and Thursday, and said the warnings would remain in place through the next few days.
Flash floods have pummeled the state this week, especially in Flagstaff, where the waters have washed away cars. Gov. Doug Ducey announced a state of emergency on Friday in Coconino County, which includes Flagstaff, saying that the state would make up to $200,000 available for response efforts.
What role does climate change play in the West's tinderbox conditions? Let us explain.
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As large swaths of the West dry out and burn, scientists say climate change is playing an increasing role in the earlier fire seasons, the deadly heat waves and the lack of water.
The record-high temperatures that assaulted the Pacific Northwest in late June and early July, for instance, would have been all but impossible without climate change, according to a team of researchers who studied the deadly heat wave.
Heat, drought and fire are connected, and because human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases have raised baseline temperatures nearly two degrees Fahrenheit on average since 1900, heat waves, including those in the West, are becoming hotter and more frequent.
"The Southwest is getting hammered by climate change harder than almost any other part of the country, apart from perhaps coastal cities," Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan, recently told The New York Times. "And as bad as it might seem today, this is about as good as it's going to get if we don't get global warming under control."
Smoke is choking Western skies, causing health problems.
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As wildfires burned across a dozen Western states, the region's scorching heat acquired a dystopian companion: thick, acrid smoke obscuring the sky for millions of Americans.
"Light density smoke" covered most of the western half of the United States early this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's satellite imaging division said, with areas of "thick density smoke" stretching from California to West Texas and from Montana to New Mexico.
Much of central Canada was also blanketed in "moderate to thick density smoke."
We've had a lot of questions about the source of our smoky skies. Here is GeoColor satellite imagery from #GOESWest of the smoke, with likely contributors annotated. The Bootleg fire in OR and Beckwourth complex in CA are main culprits, fires in ID may be contributing too #utwx pic.twitter.com/LV5ZxDveLe
— NWS Salt Lake City (@NWSSaltLakeCity) July 11, 2021
The smoke-filled skies led to health concerns, as states and counties issued public health advisories warning people with heart and respiratory issues, as well as older residents, to stay indoors. Wildfire smoke can include carbon monoxide and particulate matter, both of which can irritate the eyes and lungs and exacerbate existing health problems.
California's heat wave could wipe out all of the young salmon in the Sacramento River.
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Abnormally warm water from the punishing heat that has settled on much of the West this summer and a lack of water during the worst drought in decades are threatening the endangered Chinook salmon population in the Sacramento River, officials said this week.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife said the river, which flows more than 400 miles from the northern mountains through the state's capital city, is facing a "near-complete loss" of young salmon, which cannot grow beyond their egg stage in waters heated by extended temperatures of over 100 degrees.
"It's an extreme set of cascading climate events pushing us into this crisis situation," Jordan Traverso, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Wildlife and Fish, said in a statement.
To save as many as possible, officials transported millions of juvenile salmon to San Pablo Bay, San Francisco Bay and other seaside net pens in recent days. The truckloads of fish will "ensure the highest level of survival for the young salmon on their hazardous journey" to the Pacific Ocean, Ms. Traverso said.
A series of summer heat waves across the Western United States and Canada are already responsible for the death of hundreds of millions of marine animals this summer.
"Extreme heat and near-record lack of precipitation are putting unprecedented stress on ecosystems and species, including our iconic Chinook salmon," Lisa Lien-Mager, a spokeswoman for the California Natural Resources Agency, said. "The challenges are great, but a complete die-off of in-river juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon is not a certainty this year and we are working hard to mitigate that risk."
Health tips for coping with extreme heat.
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Dr. Maria Raven, chief of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, offers some tips for staying safe if you are going to go outside in the heat.
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Give yourself time to acclimate: Dr. Raven said it takes a week or two to get used to extreme heat. Increase the amount of time you spend outdoors each day gradually, if you can, by about 20 percent.
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Go outside in the morning or evening: Even a five- or 10-degree temperature drop can make a big difference.
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Know the signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke: If you've got heat exhaustion, you'll be sweating profusely, and you may feel a little nauseated. Your skin may be red and hot to the touch, as if you have a fever. If your body approaches heat stroke, which is severe enough to require medical attention, you will stop sweating, and your core temperature will elevate quickly.
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Know what to do if you're suffering from heat-related illness: The top priority, Dr. Raven said, is to hydrate. Drink water. You can also use ice packs (in the groin or armpits) and sit near a fan if possible.
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Don't push yourself, or anyone else, past comfort: "It can be a badge of honor to go and work out when it's really hot, but it's not worth it," Dr. Raven said. That includes student athletes and employers. It's crucial to give everyone who is outside in the heat time to rest and drink water.
How hot was it? Records fell across the West.
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Last month was the hottest June in the country's recorded history, and July continues to bring the heat. In Nevada and Colorado this past weekend, reported highs beat records set years ago, while California's Death Valley might have reached a planetary peak.
Temperature check
130 degrees: California's Death Valley matched a previous record set less than a year ago, in August 2020. It might be the highest temperature ever recorded on earth, barring a disputed 134-degree reading from 1913.
118 degrees: Daggett, Calif., reached 118 degrees for the third time ever, having last done so in 2007 and 1994.
117 degrees: This Saturday temperature reading at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas marks the fifth time Nevada has reached this record high, most recently in 2017. At least 364 flights were delayed by the heat.
117 degrees: A Sunday temperature reading in St. George, Utah, might tie the state's record, pending further investigation.
113 degrees: Desert Rock, Nevada, matched a high previously reached in 2013.
107.7 degrees: This Sunday reading in Stovepipe Wells, in Death Valley, is the warmest daily low temperature recorded in the United States.
107 degrees: The Grand Junction Regional Airport in Colorado recorded this temperature on Friday for the first time, beating a previous record of 106 degrees set in 2005.
Correction :
July 14, 2021
An earlier version of this article misattributed a heat record set in Salt Lake City on July 11. The temperature of 104 degrees was the highest recorded on that date, not the highest in city history. (It has reached 107 degrees in Salt Lake City several times.)
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/12/us/us-heat-wave
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