Tag: air-quality emergencies

After this summer’s first searing heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest, the environmental scientist Robert Rohde posted an unusual observation on Twitter.

Looking through a report that analyzed temperature patterns for the region over the past 70 years, he noted, “the heatwave was statistically ‘impossible.’” Obviously, the heat wave wasn’t literally impossible, given that, after all, it happened. But the broiling temperature that the Northwest reached—108 degrees Fahrenheit at one point in Seattle, 121 degrees in British Columbia—was so