Some 100 million Americans from California to New England were sweating due to warnings and warnings from the National Weather Service on Wednesday, with a brutal heat wave in the central part of the country showing no signs of abating.
Some parts of the southeast and southern plains faced the most oppressive temperatures, with the three-digit forecast for Wednesday and beyond in parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, said Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist. Meteorological Service. And humidity in parts of Oklahoma and Texas will bring the heat index closer to 115 degrees.
Oklahoma City on Tuesday broke a daily heat record dating back to the 110-day Dust Bowl era, tied with the state’s highest July temperature, the Weather Service said, and Austin is scheduled Wednesday to see its 40th consecutive day of highs of more than 100 degrees.
“These are definitely dangerous heat conditions,” Mr. Orrison. Oklahoma’s largest ambulance service said earlier this week that it was seeing an increase in heat-related health emergencies in Oklahoma City and Tulsa.
On the east coast, there are heat warnings along much of Interstate 95 from Philadelphia to Boston, as well as parts of New York State and southern New England. The real highs will be between the mid and high of the 90s, while the heat indices will reach 105 degrees. With the forecast that the heat will intensify over the weekend, several cities opened cooling centers for residents.
The Boston area will have five or six consecutive days above 90 degrees this week and over the weekend, said Kyle Pederson, a meteorologist with the New England Meteorological Service. The last time the city saw six consecutive days of more than 90 degrees was in July 2016. The average temperature in Boston for this time of year is 83 degrees.
California’s central valley also had excessive heat warnings on Wednesday, though that’s not uncommon for this time of year.
The relentless heat wave affecting the center of the country shows no signs of ending at least during the rest of July, and could spread to places that have been largely saved this summer, such as the northeast until this week.
A high-pressure heat dome is expected to expand to more parts of the west and east coasts over the weekend and early next week. The Meteorological Service is already forecasting heat warnings for the Pacific Northwest this weekend, Orrison said.
Several of the records that have been broken on the southern plains this week were set during the heat waves of the 1930s, when the Dust Bowl decimated agriculture and the economy.
“The fact that we’re seeing these temperatures approach what happened then, just shows how impressive or the magnitude of the heat wave we’re currently seeing,” Mr. Orrison.