One of the severe weather threats that will occur next week is a potent heat dome.
It's predicted that the temperatures in these cities will break records.
Next week is officially the start of summer, and it will demonstrate to the US what happens when fossil fuel pollution causes global warming in the absence of El Niño. A region of the country that has mostly dodged prolonged, record-breaking heat is about to experience it, wildfire dangers are increasing in the West, and bathtub-warm water may serve as fuel for the first tropical depression of the Atlantic hurricane season.
Heat dome to deliver millions of people an extreme heat wave
The first substantial heat wave of the year is expected in the Midwest and Great Lakes as a result of an enormous and unusually strong heat dome that forms over the East on Sunday and moves on to reach those regions over the next several days. Every day gets hotter than the last because heat domes hold the air in place and bake it with lots of sunshine for days on end. This one will cause the temperature to soar to heights greater than even the hottest day of the average summer. By the end of next week, hundreds of records for both daytime and nighttime temperatures could be broken.
Over a large area of the eastern half of the country, Monday afternoon temperatures will peak at 15 to 20 degrees above average. However, from Tuesday through Friday, they will occasionally soar to 25 degrees over normal. For tens of millions of people who don't normally bake in sustained heat, this amounts to days with high temperatures far into the nineties.
Another sign that the earth is warming is that there is no respite from the heat at night. In many places, overnight lows aren't predicted to fall below the mid 60s or low 70s. In certain areas of the East, the heat index—a measure of how hot it feels to the human body—will reach deadly triple digits due to a combination of high heat and humidity. Next week, temperatures as high as the low 100s might be recorded as far north as Maine.According to a scale from the National Weather Service and CDC, millions of people will be at extreme risk of heat-related illness starting next week. In the US, heat is the worst weather condition, killing more lives annually on average than all of the combined effects of hurricanes and tornadoes.
Tropical peril is starting to show signs.
The extreme summer heat is baking most of the country, and it appears like the Atlantic hurricane season is about to awaken. The first tropical cyclone of the year might develop from one of two short-term danger regions, both of which are a little too near to the US coast.
The region with the best possibility of developing into the first tropical system is in the southwest Gulf of Mexico. The same stormy pattern that is causing Florida's rains has a slight window of opportunity and a slim probability of developing into a tropical depression off the Southeast coast before it is driven out to sea this weekend. The Central Pacific is causing robust tropical moisture to whirl in the southwest Gulf. a broad, haphazard region of thunderstorms and showers that circles over the oceans encircling Central America. When the right conditions are met, such as warm ocean water and favourable upper-level winds, tropical systems can form in regions of the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and even the far eastern Pacific Ocean thanks to the gyre's vast spin and abundance of moisture.
By midweek, that may well be the case; according to the National Hurricane Centre, there is a medium likelihood that a tropical depression will form in the southwestern Gulf in the Bay of Campeche. Given how warm the Gulf of Mexico is over most of it, there would be plenty of fuel for any tropical system that were to emerge. In the event that something forms, it will probably move northwest or north. Parts of Mexico that have been sweltering under intense heat and severe drought for weeks may receive much-needed wet weather thanks to a moisture surge similar to the one that caused the deluges in South Florida, regardless of tropical development. However, it will also make flooding along the Gulf Coast more likely, particularly in places that have seen a lot of rain this spring.
Parts of Mexico that have been sweltering under intense heat and severe drought for weeks may receive much-needed wet weather thanks to a moisture surge similar to the one that caused the deluges in South Florida, regardless of tropical development. However, it will also make flooding along the Gulf Coast more likely, particularly in places that have seen a lot of rain this spring. Starting on Sunday and extending through the week, the Gulf Coast from Texas to Alabama is expected to get several days of rain.
Risk of wildfires rising
In addition to making us perspire and accelerating hurricane season, heat has contributed to a number of noteworthy wildfires in recent years. The National Interagency Fire Centre reports that there is a steady increase in fire activity across the country. In the West, there are currently about a dozen sizable flames, half of which broke out recently. The West has seen hot, dry weather since the beginning of the month, which will keep raising the risk of wildfires and maybe making already-existing ones worse. During this time, wildfire fuels including grass and vegetation will continue to dry out, increasing the likelihood that a fire may start or spread.
In the area, winds will also pick up later this weekend and early next week. Wildfires spread swiftly when there are strong winds, as the Corral Fire in California showed at the beginning of June. Next week, gusty weather may also be problematic for the Rose Fire, a damaging small-scale wildfire located in Arizona about 70 miles northwest of Phoenix. At least 15 buildings, including seven residences, and at least 12 cars were burned in the fire, according to information released by the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management on Thursday. By Thursday night, barely 20% of the fire's total area had been contained, despite having consumed at least 166 acres since it started on Wednesday.
