Americans are being crushed by an unprecedented heat wave in some areas. And if this heat wave was confined to the south of the country for the moment, it should spread further across the country, warn the authorities, who warn that this month of July could be the hottest ever recorded on Earth.
According to forecasts from the US Weather Service (NWS), around 80 million Americans will experience temperatures of 41°C or even more this weekend.
In Phoenix, Arizona, the mercury could rise to over 46°C in the next few hours. The residents of this city are currently experiencing the longest heat wave the city has ever known: Friday, the mercury exceeded 43 ° C for a 22nd day in a row.
On Thursday, a fire broke out at a propane storage site, with explosions of gas tanks. “On a hot day like this, these propane tanks expand with the heat, they become real missiles” sending debris up to more than 450 meters, a local fire official told local television KPHO.
71-year-old man dies in Death Valley
Some 500 km away, in California, Death Valley and its highest temperatures on the planet attract tourists, the latter wanting to take their picture alongside a screen displaying ever more extreme temperatures. Some are waiting for the all-time record on Earth — recorded at 56.6°C here in 1913 but disputed by some experts — to be broken.
A 71-year-old man died there earlier this week, and Death Valley National Park rangers suspect “heat played a part” in his death, which would make it the second of the year.
Hottest month in ‘hundreds, if not thousands of years’
For the rest of July, the heat wave should move towards the center of the country, on the side of the Rockies and the great plains of the Midwest, according to the American Agency for Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation (NOAA).
And July is on track to break the record for the hottest month ever recorded on Earth, not only for the first time measurements were taken, but also for “hundreds, if not thousands of years,” NASA chief climatologist Gavin Schmidt told reporters. And it’s not just due to El Niño, the cyclical weather phenomenon that originates in the Pacific Ocean and causes global temperatures to rise, he says. For the specialist, the extreme temperatures will persist because “we continue to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”.