Hellish conditions. The West of the United States continued to suffocate under extreme temperatures on Wednesday, with the risk of power cuts in California, whose electricity network is bent in the face of the heat wave which has hit the region for a week.
California, as well as parts of Nevada and Arizona, are facing scorching temperatures, flirting with 45°C in some places, due to a heat dome over the area. Mercury is yet to reach such extremes on Wednesday and Thursday, according to the US weather service, the NWS.
In this stifling atmosphere, several large fires are ravaging the region and two of them have already proved fatal. In northern California, the “Mill Fire” killed two people, destroyed more than a hundred buildings, and devastated more than 1,600 hectares in Siskiyou County.
Strong winds expected
The “Fairview Fire”, which killed two people southeast of Los Angeles, continues to grow and “is progressing faster than our efforts”, according to a local fire chief, Josh Janssen. The fire “continues to threaten several populated areas”, he added. Since Monday, the flames have ravaged more than 2,800 hectares.
The mercury should drop from Friday thanks to the arrival of a cold air front from Canada, according to meteorologists. But this phenomenon brings with it the risk of violent winds capable of multiplying the flames in the West of the United States.
“This cold air front will also generate gusts of wind” over the American West, explained the NWS in a press release. “Coupled with relatively low humidity, this is likely to fuel the risk of new fire starts and existing fires at risk of spreading out of control. In Montana, gusts could reach 95 km/h, according to the Storm Prediction Center.
10,000 people called to evacuate
In California, more than 10,000 residents were ordered to evacuate their homes to protect themselves from the “Fairview Fire”, but many ignored the alert according to the Riverside County police, who sent their officers door-to-door -door to try to convince the recalcitrant.
“People should take it more seriously, given the speed of spread, and that’s why we are extending the evacuation zone so much, because with the changes in the wind, the weather is unpredictable, and the fire is progressing quickly,” a spokeswoman for the local sheriff, Brandi Swan, told the Los Angeles Times.
Risk of flash floods
Struck for more than 20 years by drought, the American West is particularly vulnerable to fires, which have intensified in recent years. Global warming also accentuates extreme phenomena according to scientists: heat waves are more frequent and intense, and storms are more violent and unpredictable, with sometimes torrential rains.
In the Southwest of the United States, forecasts promise torrential rains just after the fall of the mercury on Friday. A hurricane is looming off Mexico and could bring up to 6 inches of precipitation to parts of Arizona and California. “This amount of rain is likely to cause flash floods here and there, especially in areas already destroyed by fire,” the NWS warned.
Power outages in California
Meanwhile, the heat wave continues to put pressure on the power grid in California, due to record air conditioning demand. The network regulator, California ISO, narrowly avoided the use of rotating power cuts (controlled and distributed over different areas) on Tuesday. He renewed his alert on Wednesday to “urge consumers to lower demand” in the evening.
Californians are therefore asked to avoid recharging their electric vehicles from 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., not to set the air conditioning below 25.5°C and to avoid turning on lights unnecessarily.
“The state and most of the West are suffering from a historic heat wave in terms of its duration and temperatures, which puts the network under pressure with high electricity use,” insisted the regulator. In the middle of the day, all the solar panels generally provide one third of the electricity in California. However, when the sun goes down, the supply of photovoltaic energy is suddenly interrupted, and the other sources of electricity are currently struggling to meet the demand for air conditioning.